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Chapter 5
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The quiet hum of Jefferson Parker’s office was suffocating to his son. After slamming the door, his father had moved slowly toward his desk, his whole body a vision of tension and displeasure. J.P. wrenched his dry hands together as he watched his father’s slow movements. Each step Jefferson took was taxed with pain that only his son could see; pain he thought he could hide, but actually revealed by the lines around his burnt-copper eyes. The pain lines, as J.P. called them, slowly dissipated and reappeared with each wincing step and release of pressure on his father’s knee and ankle joints. Rheumatoid arthritis had beset Jefferson two summers ago, and though he was on a constant medley of Aspirin for pain, corticosteroids for swelling, and Plaquenil for disease remission, his joints seemed to be deteriorating at an alarming rate.
At his desk, Jefferson dropped his briefcase and blazer on top of the cluttered gathering of papers, text books, and folders, and slowly moved across the room to the large industrial window. The glass between the panes was clouded in pale grime that made it difficult to see. Jefferson placed his weathered hands on the wooden sill and leaned forward so his nose was a few inches from the glass. He stared down at the students passing below his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. J.P. watched as the muscle in father’s jaw worked slowly. The older man’s lips twitched with his thoughts and he blinked rapidly as if to clear them. Bringing his arms stiffly behind his back, he began to pull at his fingers, possibly popping joints that were stiff and immovable.
“You have got one hell of a nerve talking to your Mama like that,” Jefferson murmured without looking at his son.
His jaw flexed and his lips twitched, but the real indication of his ire and disappointment was in his eyes, which suddenly took on a very melancholy glow. J.P. felt a sudden twinge of guilt, not for yelling and storming out on his mother, but for bringing obvious sadness into their lives. In his search for answers he had unearthed painful memories and secrets, secrets that J.P. knew his father didn’t want to talk about. Jefferson slowly turned his head to stare at his son with a look that begged J.P. for something, understanding maybe. It was as if J.P. was supposed to accept that he had a twin brother who died tragically, move on, and not ask questions that would undoubtedly hurt everyone.
As much as J.P. wanted to drop everything and ignore the fact that he had an identical twin, he couldn’t. Why was his brother given up when he had been giving a life that many would envy?
“I had a brother.” J.P.’s voice was firm, showing no indication that he felt even the slightest bit of remorse for his actions earlier with his mother, or for showing up unannounced at his father’s office. “I had a twin brother.”
Jefferson looked away and shook his head. He ran his fingers over the top of his head, scratching at the soft gray curls that twisted tightly against his scalp. J.P. watched the older man’s eyes as they flickered back and forth from different objects outside the window. Defeated, he sighed, his breath fogging up the glass between the square panes. Jefferson turned and looked at his son.
“Yes, Jackson, you had a brother.”
“You know he’s dead right?” J.P. demanded. “Murdered in Kentucky about twenty-three years ago?” His father walked across the room and dropped down into his leather, wing-backed desk chair, exhausted. He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers and lowered his hands to his lap. He didn’t meet J.P.’s eyes. He simply stared at the crystal paperweight sitting at the front of the large mahogany desktop with other knickknacks and gifts he had been given over the years.
“For God sake, Jackson, of course I know about it!”
Feeling his frustration and anger mounting, J.P. set the shoebox down on a chair in front of his father’s desk and stalked toward the window. Like his father, J.P. stared down at the campus below and tried to think of something to say. Two girls, both blond and dressed in jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirts, were moving slowly down the ramp J.P. had used to get into the building. One of the girls wrapped her arm around the other’s shoulders in a consoling gesture. A gust of wind blew the girls blond locks up off their shoulders and sucked the papers that one was holding out of her hands. He watched as they scrambled across the grass to pick up the blowing sheets. J.P. watched the girls until they reached a little red coop in the parking lot and got in. He then brought his palms to his face and tried to rub the tension he felt building up just behind his eyes.
When he spoke to his father again, his voice was calm and collected, though he wasn’t sure how long he could hold his temper: “So, you know that he was sent to a group home and was found lynched in the woods?”
“I know everything, Jackson!” Jefferson bellowed. He seemed putout that J.P. mentioned such a graphic detail of the death. “Christ, boy… how can you—” His voice trailed off as he shook his head. Rolling his chair closer to his desk, Jefferson picked up a folder and began rummaging through it, to give him something to do besides talk. He watched his father for a few moments and then turned to rest his hip against the window sill. Jefferson glanced at him with his peripheral vision and then began straightening his paperwork in an obvious attempt to avoid the situation. The man’s hands trembled.
Pressing down on the window sill with his palms and pushing off, J.P. moved slowly toward the side of the desk and stared down at his father’s face. Jefferson pressed his lips together and turned so J.P. couldn’t see him directly. Normally the slightest sign of distress would make J.P. end his interrogation; he wasn’t the type of man who could easily disobey his father. This time, however, it was different. For years he had always felt that something big was missing in his life, and now he knew what and knew that his parents were the reason for it. He was desperate for answers.
“Why wasn’t I told?” His voice was still calm, which under the circumstances was pretty remarkable. He crossed his arms over his chest dragging his fingernails slowly over his biceps, and watched as his father straightened another stack of papers.
“No one in the family knows,” Jefferson answered after a moment. “It wasn’t an easy decision for us to make—your mother and me. We were very young at the time.”
J.P. didn’t believe it, sure they may have been young, but couldn’t someone in the family take in his twin brother? “You couldn’t take care of two babies?” he demanded.
“It’s not that simple, Jackson,” his father’s hands stilled over a third pile and he slowly sat back. Jefferson stared at the bookcase near the door where he had dozens of framed pictures of his family. He blinked slowly and then closed his eyes. J.P. moved away from the desk but didn’t stray too far. He stopped and looked at his father, waiting for the entire story to come out.
“Your mother didn’t realize she was pregnant until she was well into her sixth month. She never had morning sickness and we just assumed she was gaining weight. We didn’t have the money for prenatal care and didn’t know we were having twins. Your brother came out a few minutes after you. He was… very small and under developed. Regardless of his size, we were thrilled to have two boys; your mother was over the moon with joy. Then the doctors gave us some bad new… Alexander was sick. Very sick.”
“Alexander?” J.P. asked. “His name wasn’t—”
Jefferson held up his hand, “Let me finish, son. Let me finish.” He slowly linked his fingers together and continued to stare at the far wall. He thought for a moment and then continued his explanation. “The doctors found five holes in his heart; Alexander needed emergency surgery. It was a surgery that would have cost us thousands and thousands of dollars, and your mother and I didn’t have the money. Back then—” he shook his head and sighed. “Things were different then, Jackson. Even if we had managed to pay for the surgery, the following months would require constant care, which we couldn’t provide, and a long hospital stay, which we couldn’t pay for.
“Since the hospital wouldn’t refuse to treat him, we signed away our rights and took you home.” Jefferson finally blinked, drawing his eyes to his son’s for the first time in several minutes.
“And never looked back?” J.P. asked flatly. “Just signed away my twin and didn’t look back?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Jefferson snapped, “We—”
“That was you child!” J.P. cried. “How could you leave your child behind because you couldn’t pay for his treatment? Didn’t you care that—”
Jefferson stood rather quickly for a man whose joints were still and swollen and pointed his gnarled finger in J.P.’s face. The heat in his father’s eyes pacified J.P.’s anger for the time being. He held up his hands in surrender and then crossed the room to the window. The wind was blowing at an alarming rate, causing the nearby tree braches to sway and tremble violently, sending their red, brown, yellow, and orange leaves sprinkling to the ground.
Never in J.P.’s life had he raised his voice to either of his parents. He had always been taught to respect his elders, and he always had. However, knowing that he could have had a brother to play with when he was lonely, and that he had been denied a sibling, threw all past lessons of respect and propriety out the window.
He knew he should apologize and mean it, but it came out in a half-felt sigh, “Sorry.”
“Watch your tone,” was all Jefferson said as he moved around the desk and headed toward the bookcase by the door. J.P. glanced at the shoebox on the chair in front of his father’s desk and returned to it. He picked it up between his long fingers and watched as his father looked at family pictures. He picked up a frame and stared at the picture, one of J.P. at age eleven wearing a little league baseball jersey. “You may be a grown man, Jackson, but I am still your father,” He set the frame down hard and glanced at his son. “You respect your father, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jefferson shook his head sadly and sighed as he picked up a frame with an old photograph his wife taken a year before the twins were born. He ran his thumb over her young face and smiled sadly.
“It wasn’t an easy decision, Jackson, and we made it with heavy hearts. It would have been easier, had there been someone in our family who could take in a sickly child, but you know where we’ve come from. You know that there was no one adequate enough,” he began to limp slowly across the office. J.P. started for him, to help assist him to his chair, but stopped as his father made it on his own.
“What about Aunt Sophia?”
“We didn’t know it at the time that Sophia was bipolar. She had major swings in her mood levels, especially depression when she barely took care of herself. She couldn’t watch over a little boy with heart defects. Alexander was placed in an orphanage—or a group home, whichever you prefer to call it. We were told that he would be held there until we could take him in.
“Your mother and I had every intension bringing him home once we were settled and established in our careers. We went back to the home and found that it had been closed; all of the children were spread out to different adoption agencies across the east coast. Alexander was sent to a home in Kentucky and was then placed with a family who began the adoption process.”
“Alexander?” J.P. questioned again. “That—”
Again Jackson waved off his question and said he was getting to that part. J.P. sat down in the chair and rubbed his temples where a headache was growing.
“Shortly before the adoption was finalized, the woman became pregnant with her own child. Alexander was placed back in foster care, which was when his records where were jumbled up with a boy named Jason Murray. He was taken by the Sinistia Adoption Agency in Perry County, Kentucky, and placed in another group home. We didn’t know of the mistake in the records. When you were seven, we located who we thought to be our son and your brother, Alexander Parker, but instead we found a little Caucasian child who always thought his name was Jason but started to go by Alex.”
J.P.’s eyes widened. “Wow, that seems—strange. How could they mix up the paperwork for a little black boy with that of a white boy? What happened to the first agency he was placed in? Why was it closed?”
“Illegal practices, I believe,” Jefferson answered thoughtfully. “We weren’t told the exact reasoning behind the closure. A lot of the smaller agencies at the time were doing backwards dealings with these kids. Stealing money from the state. Anyway, your mother was devastated by it all—she always has been.” Jefferson leaned forward to set the photograph on his desk and winced with excruciating pain. His hand visibly trembled as he reached to touch his back. J.P. set the shoebox aside and rose quickly, rounding the desk he put his hand on his father’s shoulder, easing him forward he adjusted the back pillow behind Jefferson's bowed spine.
“You shouldn’t be working so much, Dad. Where are your meds?”
“My briefcase,” Jefferson said breathlessly as he pointed a gnarled finger at the brown case. As J.P. fished for the bottle of pills, his father stared at the photograph. “It took another two years to sort out the adoption and placement records, and by the time we located Alexander he was dead.”
J.P. twisted the cap off the pill bottle and shook a few pills into his palm. He handed them to his father and then went to the small mini-refrigerator just behind the desk and took out a bottle of water. He removed the cap, because his father’s fingers wouldn’t cooperate, and then walked around the desk sit down. He put the shoebox on his knees, but didn’t open it. He just laid his palm over the lid and stared at nothing in particular. When he finally looked up he found his father watching him with curiosity.
“How did you find this out, J.P.?” Jefferson asked. “We never made any indications or showed evidence that would lead you to believe that you had a brother. It seems… very odd that you would question it now.”
J.P. nodded. Had he not gone to Austin for his mother he would have never run into Elliot Cooper. There would be nothing to indicate that his parents were keeping such a deep secret. Elliot Cooper was the key to everything. His reaction to J.P. and his hard exterior made J.P. curious. He wouldn't have believed any of it had he not found the shoebox in his mother's closet.
“When I was in Austin,” he began. “I met this guy who practically passed out at the sight of me,” he said as he tapped his finger against the lid of the shoebox. “I don’t know why, but I looked him up when I got back to town. Something just didn’t sit right, you know? Found out that his name is Elliot Cooper.” J.P. saw his father’s eyes flicker as he registered Elliot’s name in his memory. Flipping open his mother’s shoebox, J.P. took out the first aged-yellow newspaper article clipping. Elliot’s nine-year-old face peered out from under the arm of his foster mother, woman who looked to be barely in her twenties. He set it on his father’s desk.
“You met the little boy who was there when your brother was killed,” Jefferson seemed shocked, as if it wasn’t possible. “We tried searching for him as well, but he seemed to vanish. What are the odds of this?” He took the article between his fingertips and slowly dragged it across his desk for a better look. Jefferson read the old article slowly, his eyes flickering back and forth across the page like an old-fashioned typewriter. When he was done, Jefferson set the article down and looked at J.P.
“I’m sorry, Jackson.”
“Yeah, me too,” J.P. leaned forward and took back the article. He put it carefully with the others, replaced the lid, and slowly rose to his feet. “Look, I’m gonna take a few weeks of leave. Yemi will be upset because we were saving it for a trip to Tahiti, but—”
He tucked the shoebox under his arm again and glanced at his father before turning and heading to the door. As his strong fingers wrapped around the doorknob, Jefferson called out to him. J.P. stood there for a moment and then turned to acknowledge his father’s tired eyes.
“What will you do, son?” Jefferson asked as he rose with a tremble that made J.P. start toward him. His father managed to right himself and gathered up his briefcase and blazer. He moved slowly around his desk, each step calculated and small, and each step brought forth the pain lines at the corner of his eyes. J.P. crossed the remaining distance and put his arm out for his father to grab. Once Jefferson would have shrugged away from aid, but now he accepted it more often than naught and never with shame. “What will you do?”
“Not sure, Dad,” J.P. answered as he flipped off the office light and closed the door behind them. “But, I’m going to go back to Austin and talk with Cooper.”
“Why?”
“Because,” J.P. answered. “He’s the only one who knew what Alexander was like—I want to know too.”
Jefferson was quiet for several minutes before he nodded and told J.P. to be safe and cautious of digging too deep into the past. He even mentioned that J.P.’s mother wouldn’t want to hear anything more about the death of her child. J.P. didn’t want to burden his mother with unnecessary details and promised that he wouldn’t bring up his search to her.
They walked to the elevators and rode down in silence. J.P. helped his father to his car and stood on the curb to watch him maneuver the car from the parking space. As his father drove away slowly, a strong gust of wind hit J.P. from behind. Shocked by the force of the air, J.P. stumbled, dropping the shoebox. The lid flew off and the wind rushed into the box and sent the articles flying upward and then they spread out in different directions. J.P. went after each one with full determination to reclaim them. He refused to let the wind take them way, they were the key to unlocking painful and shocking secrets.
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Hazard, Kentucky
The rushing October winds assaulted the metal siding of the unhitched travel trailer parked in Windy Willows RV Resort at the top of Crescent Hill just outside Hazard. The trailer rocked faintly on its foundation, the movement barely sensed by its young inhabitant. She sat on the middle of a ratty, throw-covered futon cushion in a camisole and panties, nibbling on the corner of her tuna salad sandwich as she thought about more pleasant times in her past. A time when she could run and play with her brothers. A time before everything grew bleak and poignant. A time when things were much easier.
Kaylie Ryan listened to the wind as it wafted over the old metal panes of her home of five years. The rush of wind resonance of a reed symphony of gentle whistles and woody sighs. It was a gentle nature song that rose and fell in crescendos and decrescendos timed with the speed and velocity of the wind. The soft noises brought such a swell of peace to her spirit, as if a long time ago the darkness had never touched her. As if it had never stolen away the light in her life.
Kaylie had always felt connected to the wind. As child she insisted it spoke to her, telling her its secrets, whispering what was coming. She loved being embraced and wrapped up in its arms. When touched by the wind, her heart would pump with adrenaline and her skin tickle with goose bumps. The wind blew and Kaylie would stop, tilt her face to it, and breathe in deeply. It filled her soul in a way that nothing else could. Only one person in her life had understood that feeling, and had felt what she had felt. Like the wind, this person had vanished almost the moment they touched her soul and heart, and unlike the wind, they never returned.
She was in such a serine and blissful state of memory and reflection that she startled at the loud bang of metal and plastic as someone pounded against the door of her trailer. Slowly and uncertainly Kaylie unwound her legs from under her and set the paper plate with her lunch on a pillow. She jumped as a second pound echoed, trembling her small home more than the wind had. She pushed herself up off her sofa and moved to the small kitchen area where she paused and hooked her finger around the corner of the baby-pink curtain that covered the small 2-foot by 3-foot window. She peered outside and sighed with relief when she saw Sam Rider’s 2000 Heritage Softail Classic Harley Davidson motorcycle parked along side her rusty Ford pick-up truck.
“Sam Rider, you scared the hell out of me!” She cried as she stepped down into the little stare well before the door.
She unlocked the deadbolt and pressed her thumb against the door latch. As she pushed the door outward, a cold gust of October wind grabbed it from her hand and blew it hard enough to bang noisily against the side wall. The force of the door hitting the trailer caused the small rounded vessel to tremble hard enough to knock one of her little figurines off a shelf. Stepping into the doorway, Kaylie shivered as the wind from the mountains, laced lightly with a faint scent of snow, rushed over her pale skin and through her unkempt auburn hair. Her nipples tightened painfully at the cold touch, and Sam noticed instantly.
“Jesus Christ, Kaylie,” he grunted, turning his deep-set black eyes from her breasts, clearly visible through her thread-bare camisole. He scratched the back of his thick neck and then stepped off the little wooden stoop and started toward his bike and her truck. Kaylie shivered again as another gust of air pushed at her body.
“What’s up Sam?” She called as she crossed her thin arms over her aching chest.
“Get dressed and come on out—I’ll have a look-see at your Ford.” She watched as he wretched the driver’s door open and reached in. The hood latch popped with a familiar click and was followed closely by the sound of the door creaking and slamming. Sam walked around to the front of the truck and pushed up the heavy hood, which he leveraged with a piece of metal Kaylie had tied to the frame.
Stepping back inside, Kaylie moved down to the far end of her trailer to her bedroom. She stopped beside her twin-sized bed, unmade and covered with an odd assortment of blankets and sheets, and picked up a sweatshirt that she wore to bed every night. She pulled it over her head, stepped into a pair of cotton shorts, combed her fingers through her hair, and then hurried back to the door. Slipping on her purple fuzzy house shoes, she hurried out of the trailer.
As she stepped outside she saw that Sam was already tinkering under the hood of her old Ford F-150. The back hem of the stained polo shirt that he always wore under his aged Harley Davidson leather jacket, lifted up to reveal the small of his back, feathered lightly with black hair. As he leaned under the hood a little farther his shirt rode up and his jeans down, exposing the very top of his butt crack. Kaylie giggled and then slapped her hand over her mouth. She waited until Sam reached back to hitch his pants up before she moved to his side.
Crossing her arms and ignoring the cold on her bare legs, Kaylie bent over and peered at the innards of her truck. Not familiar with cars or most machinery, Kaylie was unsure of what she was looking at or what Sam was examining between his already grease-covered fingers. Brushing strands of her auburn hair from her face, she watched his sausage fingers roll a small cylinder object back and forth a moment before he shoved it back into place and repositioned the rubber cover.
As Sam looked over her truck engine, his breath coming in and out in short gasps—maybe because his belly was pressed too tightly against the grill—Kaylie looked at her nails. They were chipped and worn, and if she had the money, she’d be in Lucy’s nail shop getting them done right now. She hadn’t had a manicure in ages. Maybe Joshua would lend her twenty dollars? But then Kaylie didn’t want to take money from Joshua Honeycutt because he was the type of man who would hold it over her head; he would demand something in return. And that something was probably a sexual favor that Kaylie wouldn’t mind doing if he didn’t always like it so—rough. She wouldn’t ask him for the money because she didn’t want to be indebted to him or to anyone else.
She looked over at Sam, who was inspecting a long thin piece of metal, which he had pulled from god knows where. As he replaced it with a firm push, Kaylie really examined him. He was such a nice man, always looking for her, always there to lend a helping hand, although he complained about it continuously. If he was younger and maybe a little less pot-bellied she would date him. She was strong enough to take care of herself, but having someone there to do it “just because” was nice too.
Sam sighed and scratched at his beard. He shook his head and then removed the rubber cap and took the cylinder thing back out. She watched as he examined it closer and wondered if he would want payment for helping her out. She hadn’t asked him to come over and take a look at her truck, and she certainly didn’t have the money to pay him. She had been really tight on cash the last few months. Most of her money had gone to Joe O’Malley, a mechanic who owned a body shop that did regular car servicing. While Joe was kind enough to give her a decent discount each time she brought her truck in, the mechanic’s bill were still piling up. Her biggest debt, however, was the monthly payments on the hunk of rusted metal in front of her, which she had bought from a police auction last year.
Joshua told her not to buy it because of its poor condition, but she couldn't turn down a three thousand dollar truck, which she needed badly at the time. So she overlooked the rusted sides and hood, the cracked front windshield, the slashed leather seats, and the missing radio and bought the truck with all of her savings. She and Robin had patched it up nicely. They used clear packing tape to fix the seats and then covered them with a soft suede material, which Robin had stapled in place. They rubbed oil into the old leather dash and then scrubbed these brownish-red stains from the floor boards. When the stains didn’t come up Robin gave her an old bath rug, which they cut up and made into cute little floor rugs. The finishing touches girly things, like the fuzzy purple dice that they had hot glued to the ceiling because the rearview mirror was long gone and a little plastic flower sticking out of the air vent.
Kaylie watched as Sam turned the cylinder over in his fingers; he stepped back from the truck with a grunt and nodded. He wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced at her, his eyes traveling from her face, to her breasts, to her hips, to her calves, and finally to her feet. As he turned the piece over and over again between his fingers, his eyes lifted to the juncture of her legs.
“Hungry, Sam?” She asked, her voice trembling with uncertainty of what Sam thought this favor would cost. She ran the top of her foot up and down her calf in effort to keep it warm and then shifted back and forth growing uncomfortable under his intense stare. “I made tuna salad, it’s really good.” Sam stared at her a moment longer and then chuckled and shook his head. He mumbled something under his breath, but she couldn't hear. He turned his eyes back on her and shook his head no.
He licked his dry, chapped lips. “Nah, its okay Kaylie. Not a big tuna guy.” He held up the piece of her engine as he took a step back toward her bike. “You need new spark plugs.” He tossed it in the air and caught it expertly. “I’ll pick you up a few plugs and will replace them today.”
Kaylie hesitated, “I… I can’t pay for new spark plugs, Sam. And I can’t ask you to pay for them. So, let’s just wait until I have some extra money.” A strong gust of wind rushed up the hill and whipped Kaylie’s hair around her face. She reached up to drag tendrils from her eyes and then looked at Sam with confusion. “Is a storm coming?”
“Not that I’ve seen on the weather channel,” Sam answered as he mounted his bike and made the engine roar at her. He slowly moved toward her. She watched as he slipped dark mirror-reflected sunglasses over his eyes. She didn’t like it that she could no longer see where his eyes were looking at her. She took a few steps back toward the trailer when another gust of wind lifted up her hair and rushed down her neck and inside the collar of her sweatshirt. Shivering she looked up to the clear blue sky and then over the roof of the trailers in the RV park to the mountains.
When she looked back at Sam she could practically feel his eyes staring at her breasts. She pulled her sweatshirt down a little lower and crossed her arms.
“You sure there’s no storms?”
He shook his head no. “Ain’t no telling what the wind’s gonna blow in, Kaylie. It’s finicky.” He shrugged with indifference. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“Wait, I don’t want you to pay for them!”
“Ain’t a big deal, Kaylie, so stop yappin’ about it! I’ll be back.”
She watched as he pulled out onto her little street and headed out of the trailer resort. Glancing up at the sky one more time, Kaylie wondered if he was wrong about the weather; it sure felt like a storm was blowing in. Perhaps winter was coming earlier this year, she pondered as she hurried back inside the trailer and out the wind’s reach. As she sat down, again listening for the reed symphony playing along the siding of her home, she felt her soul grow heavy. The wind had changed to something fast and fierce, blowing too hard to entertain her with soft whistles and instead began to howl like angry dogs. She was certain that it was bringing with it something wild, reckless, and dangerous.
No longer at peace, Kaylie turned on her small 13-inch TV and prayed that the wind hadn’t knocked loose her antenna.
