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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Research Subject - by MMB
Chapter 1: Taking Chances
I was bored. I must have been to even consider filling out the form to become one of a large group of anonymous research subjects. I must have been REALLY bored to have signed up to participate in a project involving the emotional cost of surviving the death of one's twin. Bored nothing - I must have been full-goose crazy! You see, I hadn't talked about Caryn's death with anyone, ever, in all these years. That was part of the reason Jake and I divorced - he kept pushing at me to “open up to him”, and I just wanted to have folks leave me alone about that private grief. Jake wasn't a twin - he wouldn't understand.
Anyway, I showed my acceptance form from the Centre to my supervisor, along with the tentative date for my time of participation, and got permission to take a week of my vacation to travel to Delaware. I needed the vacation anyway - I hadn't taken any time off since my break-up three years ago, and only a week off the year before that when Caryn... Well, leave it to say that I was due, and I was determined. I'd have probably called in sick if I hadn't gotten the permission, but Julia knew I needed the time. Hell, she was probably thrilled I'd finally agreed to take some vacation time for a change, no matter that the fall was slowly beginning to chill down into winter. Besides, the vacation time reimbursement checks I'd been getting weren't helping the lab finances much.
The Centre would provide transportation from New York City to Dover and then back when the study was concluded as well as back and forth from the Centre itself. Also included in the package was housing in one of Dover's better hotels for the three nights while I was to be participating in interviews and questionnaires and other phases of the study. My room was comfortable and well appointed, and there was a Centre van at the front lobby bright and early on Wednesday morning to take me to wherever it was I was to go. I have to admit I enjoyed the ride along the seaside - living in the mid-west, I had never had a chance to do that. And then I caught my first glimpse of the Centre itself, and I WAS impressed.
The van driver let me off at the front of the building, along with two other people also participating in the study. We had quietly observed each other in the van while en route, but none of us seemed very much in the mood to strike up a conversation. As it was, we were met at the front door by a somber-faced man in a dark suit that guided us through the airy foyer and toward the banks of elevators. He stopped at a particular one and pushed the button, and the door opened immediately. I noticed that the floor numbers available to this elevator were limited - from 15 to 18 - but wasn't prepared for the elevator to begin moving DOWN.
Of course! The building I'd seen from the outside, impressive as it was, had been three stories high at best. The rest of the Centre facility was obviously underground. I breathed a sigh of gratitude that I didn't suffer from claustrophobia like Caryn had - she would have gone NUTS in a place like this. Even though the elevator was well-lit, and the corridor that it put us out into wide and open, well-lit and filled with fresh-smelling air, she would have been cowering in a corner somewhere in no time knowing she was seventeen stories underground.
Our guide showed us down a long corridor, then one by one called us by name and opened a door for that individual to enter. I ended up in a little cement room with a table, a trash can, two chairs and mirrored glass at the far end that I presumed was a one-way window. I sat myself down at the table to wait, and soon a young man came in carrying a clipboard and a funny-looking recorder - and a box of tissues.
I don't know why, but the idea that this was someone who didn't know me and didn't know Caryn made it easier to answer the questions about her and our childhood years. These questions seemed to get more in detail and more probing as time went by until each was like a scalpel cutting into my grief - and yet I answered each willingly and fully. Perhaps it was the knowledge that this young man had no investment in who I was or what I felt that made it so that I didn't mind him slowly dissecting me verbally or seeing the emotional wreck I was becoming. Maybe it was that the young man made no notes of anything I said, but simply checked off the questions on his clipboard one at a time as we went through them. I knew he was listening to me, but it was one of the most impartial, uninvolved sorts of listening I'd ever experienced.
I, on the other hand, eventually felt as if I'd had the protective cover that I'd carefully cultivated over the pain that was Caryn ripped away, leaving my every emotion, my every thought, raw and exposed. By the end of the day, my eyes were red from crying and I felt drained and depleted. Why oh why had I agreed to this? Why had I been so foolish to think that this was going to help me pull out of my depression? At the end of the day my young interviewer shook my hand pleasantly with a smile that was meant to be comforting, I'm sure, and then turned to brushing my many drenched and spent tissues from table top into trash can. Meanwhile yet another guide in a dark suit gently took my arm and guided me back to the elevator.
I noticed that none of us riding in the van back to Dover were in very good shape. The others looked as if they'd been put through their own versions of the hell I'd weathered. I wasn't looking at the ocean either - I just laid my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. I wasn't hungry when the van let me out in front of the hotel, but I choked down a salad just for the sake of argument before calling it a day.
That night I cried for Caryn as if I hadn't cried for her before - I missed her more than I had since the shock had worn off and I realize that the other half of me was gone. She had been the extrovert of us, I the shy and studious introvert - she the president of the student body in college, I the valedictorian at both high school and university. She had become a socialite, a media darling on the arm of her politician husband; and I had retreated to my laboratory and test tubes, contented with a physicist husband with his own lab and experiments and research grants and a precocious daughter.
And then Caryn was dead, hit by a drunk driver as she walked through a supermarket parking lot, and I was alone in a world filled with well-meaning people who wanted to help but didn't know how to reach me. I retreated to my lab, buried myself in my research, and eventually lifted my head long enough to sign the divorce papers before diving right back in.
For the first time, though, those questions and the lack of animosity or any perception of agenda behind them gave me the excuse to take stock of who and what I'd become with half my soul ripped away. It wasn't a pretty sight. As I finally started to drop off in the wee hours of the morning, I made myself a promise to lift my head and look around me again. Caryn was gone, but I was still alive. That had to count for something.
I was still feeling pretty drained the next morning, but I forced myself to eat a slightly more nutritious breakfast before the van arrived for me again. This time, we were only two riding to the Centre - evidently this project processed three subjects per week, each phase taking one day to conclude. No doubt tomorrow I would be alone in the van. I pushed myself to look out the windows and watch the ocean go by again. I was glad that I'd made arrangements to stay in Dover an extra night after the study was concluded - the van drove past a couple of signs pointing to public beaches that looked inviting.
Today I was escorted to a different room on that underground level - a room with a chair and a machine with many wires attached to it. Another young man entered from a doorway next to yet another mirrored window the moment I did, instructing me to seat myself and make myself comfortable. Then he busied himself attaching wires to several places on my body - my wrists, on my upper chest - and then settling a circlet of metal with several wires protruding from it around my forehead. He exited the room briefly after that, then returned with yet another clipboard, recorder, and another box of tissues.
If I had thought yesterday's questions were difficult and painful, today's were even more so. Today the subject of the questions was Caryn's death and every possible detail of the way she died, her funeral, and the events that had followed. That verbal scalpel dug deep, cutting into my reactions to my family, my husband, my daughter, my brother-in-law, my co-workers, my friends, myself. If there was an emotional rock behind which I had hidden a portion of my grief, the questions were designed to discover and turn that rock. I think I had emptied the box of tissues by the day was done and the young man had finished disconnecting me from the machine and shaking my hand.
Again, I was in no mood to look at anything as we drove back to Dover, and no longer questioned why none of the others yesterday had been wanting to do much sharing either. But where I was obviously still quite upset, the other man was pensive. And again I could only convince myself to have a salad before falling into bed.
I woke up Friday morning - half-way through what was SUPPOSED to be a vacation - and barely wanted to climb out of bed. My dreams that night had been nightmares, grief-mares where I relived the shock of Caryn's death and the aftermath over and over again. Emotionally beaten and thoroughly convinced that I'd made a serious error, I choked down a bagel and a cup of tea and went to meet the Centre van driver in the lobby. If there was one thing I was not, it was a quitter. I'd signed up to participate, and by God I'd see the study through to the bitter end.
I think I slept most of the way to the Centre, I know the driver had to shake my shoulder to wake me enough to climb out of the van. Again I had a new dark-suited guide to show me the way to the elevators and the underground laboratory. But today I didn't end up in a featureless cement cubby-hole. Today I was escorted through a rather large room and up to the door of the office that opened onto it. My guide knocked, listened for the voice inside to bid him enter, then showed me in.
What a change! The office had been paneled in warm wood and lined with bookshelves, and there was a comfortable-looking leather couch and a couple of chairs in front of a sturdy-looking wooden desk. And behind the desk was a distinguished-looked gentleman who rose as I came in and extended his hand. He had an unidentifiable but most well-educated accent that caught my attention immediately. "I have just a few questions for you."
He waved me toward one of the chairs in front of his desk and then seated himself. While he shifted the papers in front of him, I had a chance to study him - he was far more interesting to look at than the nondescript young interviewers over the last two days had been. His very bearing was one of character and refinement. His grey hair was unstylishly long, curling over the top of his collar even as it was abandoning the crown of his head. His face was lined and care-worn, yet had a gentle expression that seemed to invite trust and confidence. His hands were long-fingered and moved gracefully and expressively in sorting through the papers he held. When he finally looked up at me, I saw he had a caring expression in his brown eyes, and I relaxed a bit.
"I realize you've probably had a rough last two days," he began in that wonderfully smooth and accented baritone, "and I want you to know how much we appreciate your candor and honesty."
Then he gently began asking me questions - this time about my responses to the last two days' worth of probing. Had my sleep habits changed? Was I feeling more depressed, anxious, out of control? Caryn had very little to do with the questions I fielded from this man - I myself was the subject of the probing today.
The questions were just as in-depth as those I'd fielded already in either of the two previous interviews. They were, however, not so much painful dissections of grief too long hidden away as much as they were careful and cautious examinations of the emotions that the previous days' questions had aroused within me. And this time my interviewer was not only recording my answers but taking occasional notes. He was listening, and listening very closely, to everything I said. No doubt he was even paying attention to my body language. And by the time the day had passed, I had begun listening too - to myself. As the guide in the dark suit came to escort me out of the Centre again, I was almost sorry to bid the man farewell. Maybe I'd been only a research subject, but I had gained from the experience after all.
Interesting that the ocean at twilight, when the van transported me back to Dover, was so very different than the ocean at early morning. The cloud cover on the horizon was dark and mysterious, hinting at the darkness of the night to come. I even paid attention to the rolling countryside as the van finally headed inland again into Dover even as I tossed several of the more pointed questions I'd been asked that day at myself again.
I slept in Saturday morning, slept in for the first time in I don't know how long. I felt drained but at peace when I awoke - and I only realized after finishing my shower and getting dressed that I hadn't automatically sought out the emotional touchstone of that empty place in the back of my mind where I kept Caryn. And I was hungry too. I walked down to the hotel restaurant and had a hearty meal of bacon and eggs and toast, the kind Mom used to make.
The concierge helped me rent a car for my free day, and I bought a road map of the area so I could find my way back to one of those beaches I'd been thinking of visiting. The one I chose, the one farthest from Dover, had a parking lot back amid the rolling and grass-covered hills, and a path that lead to the beach beyond. I found a log not far from the grass and off to the side that looked like an inviting seat. I parked myself there for a long time, listening to the soothing and repetitive sound of the waves washing onto the shore and the occasional mad cry of a seagull floating overhead.
Looking out over the water, studying the way the clouds floated across the horizon and faded into the distance and following the flight path of the occasional seagull, I didn't notice at first that I wasn't alone. It was only when the lone figure walked slowly past me at the water's very edge that I noticed him. He was bundled more warmly against the cool ocean breeze than I was, and was sauntering just out of reach of the waves along the wet sand.
I didn't realize I knew him, or at least recognized him, until he had turned and begun walking back towards me and towards the path to the parking lot. It was the distinguished-looking man with whom I'd spent several hours only the day before. I raised my hand half-heartedly as he passed by my log, and I could see his eyebrows rise in surprise when he recognized me too. He paused for a moment, then came toward me.
"I didn't realize you were from around here," he said in a mildly surprised tone.
"I'm not," I admitted. "I saw the signs for the beach from the van on the way to the Centre, and I decided that I'd check it out before I headed back to New York and my flight home."
He nodded, then turned and looked out at the ocean for a while. I was wondering if I had intruded on his privacy when he looked down at me again. "Is this your first time visiting the ocean?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I nodded, letting the call of a seagull lure my attention away to the vastness of the ocean's beauty. "It's beautiful here."
"I know," he replied. "I come here sometimes when..." He glanced down at me with an unreadable expression. "I should leave you to your ocean visit, though," he said, more to himself than to me, I think. "This is a good place to put yourself back together again after the emotional drubbing of the study questions, and I'm intruding on your space."
"Not at all. I don't mind your company if you don't mind mine." God, I couldn't believe I said that! Neither could he, I think - those eyebrows of his were almost as expressive as his eyes, the way they demonstrated his being taken by surprise.
But then he smiled - a wonderful, full and genuine even-toothed smile of good humor. "You mean there's room on that log for two?"
I giggled - what in the world was I doing? - and slid over so that he'd have room to park himself next to me. He sat for a moment, once more looking out over the ocean with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat. Then, "If we're going to share a log, I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I'm Sydney."
"I'm Catherine," I answered, then shook hands with him - and found his hands were warm from the protection they'd received from his overcoat.
I could feel his eyes on me, but it was a soft expression of curiosity. "So... what do you do, Catherine?"
"I'm a research chemist - you know, test tubes, Bunsen burners, periodic table of the elements..." I tucked my hands into my armpits. I really should have worn something warmer on this jaunt. I knew better. I knew I knew better. To hide my chagrin at suddenly being aware that I was freezing my butt off so soon after inviting him to join me, I looked back at him. "So... and you do research on twins?"
And I discovered those warm brown eyes had heavy lids that could fall like curtains at times. He looked away. "For the moment," he commented finally.
Something was going on in him, something that he didn't want to discuss, evidently. Maybe my spur-of-the-moment invitation to join me hadn't been such a good idea after all. Nervous and now self-conscious, I lost my concentration on appearing comfortable and shivered when a slightly stiffer blast of ocean breeze cut straight through my light sweatshirt. I got to my feet rather quickly. "I think I'll head back in now," I said lamely, avoiding looking at him. "I really didn't dress for the ocean, I guess."
Sydney got to his feet too, almost as quickly as I did. "Wait. I'm sorry," I heard him say, and then it was my turn to look at him with surprise. "I didn't mean to shut down the conversation," he continued with a hand reaching out for my elbow. "It's just been a very long week, and I'm tired - and when I get tired, I can become a real bear. You didn't deserve for me to take it out on you..."
"Don't worry about it," I reassured him, but shivered again as another blast cut through the sweatshirt. "The thing is, and I hate to admit it, but I also am really freezing..."
And then I stared as he quickly shed his overcoat and put it around my shoulders. "I thought you looked a little underdressed for a trip to the beach," he said gently. "I, on the other hand, usually end up wearing more than enough." Indeed, he had a heavy cardigan sweater beneath that overcoat, and it looked like a flannel shirt or a light sweatshirt beneath that. He also had a very gentle hold on my nearest elbow. "Come. Sit down and enjoy your ocean in a bit more comfort."
His overcoat warmed me quickly on the outside almost as fast as his cavalier gesture warmed me on the inside, and I pulled the coat closed around me and nodded then sat down next to him on the log again. I took a deep breath of the sea air and found that now I could smell his scent coming softly from the overcoat - a crisp and spicy tang that seemed imminently suited to the man.
"Still... I... didn't mean to pry. I'm sorry." I still felt that I owed him an apology too.
"You weren't prying anymore than I was." He folded his hands in front of him and looked out over the ocean again. "Right now, my assignment explores the psychology of one twin surviving the death of the other. It just hits a little close to home sometimes."
"Because you're a twin too," I whispered as I recognized the same signs in Sydney that I had just been made aware of in myself. I saw him glance in my direction and knew I was right. "And your twin is gone too." He looked down at his big and graceful hands and nodded. "How long now?"
"Four years now." God, but his voice told of his pain so vividly that I had to fight from having tears in my eyes.
"Same as me." I looked over at him, and his eyes were hooded again and looking down at his hands still. "Was it sudden?"
He stirred himself and took a very deep sigh. "No, not in some ways. Jacob was in a coma for many years - but the end came very quickly and suddenly when it did come."
I tried to put myself in his shoes and found I couldn't even begin to fathom the pain of watching Caryn lie unresponsive in a bed day after day for years, only to have her suddenly vanish. That, I think, was worse than having her vibrantly alive one moment and bloody and still on the pavement the next. I found the opening of the overcoat with a hand and touched one big hand hesitantly. "I'm sorry."
His other hand came over to pat mine, and then didn't move away but held mine sandwiched between his almost absently. "That's why I came here today, after a week of talking to others about the way they lost their..." He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts. "This was a place we both enjoyed - we'd pack a picnic lunch and take more than an hour from the Centre every once in a while, or come on a Saturday much like this one. We'd watch the ocean and..."
"Jacob worked with you?" I asked, finding I didn't mind my hand being in his keeping all that much.
He nodded. Then his eyebrows rose again in surprise, and he looked down at me. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this..."
"I do." And I did. "It's hard for anybody to understand what it's like who hasn't been a twin. It can be like talking to a brick wall. But I've been there, been through it too." I saw Sydney's mouth tighten as if he were swallowing hard. "I know how it hurts." He nodded and looked away again, and I could have sworn I saw water swimming in those pretty brown eyes of his.
"You know what?" I asked softly, nudging him with my shoulder to get his attention back. I waited until I could see the eyebrows raised expectantly before I continued. "These past few days have been really hard, making me look at everything six ways from Sunday - but I think talking to you yesterday did more to help me finish dealing with Caryn's death than anything else has." I turned my hand beneath his and clasped the hand above mine. "If you think it would help you, I can repay the favor by listening to you..."
"You don't need to do that..." he challenged immediately, the hand on top of mine now clasping mine as well, and those expressive brown eyes no longer swimming but warm.
"I know," I told him, "but maybe you need me to. And I don't mind... really... I have the whole rest of the day to listen..."
I could see the wheels of his mind turning my offer over slowly and carefully. Then, "Have you had lunch?"
I twisted my head slightly so I could make out the time on his wristwatch. "It's a little late for lunch, don't you think?"
His lips twitched, and then I was gifted with that smile again. "Alright. An early dinner then?"
"You're buying?"
The smile got wider. "Actually, I have a fair-sized pot of stew on my stove simmering as we speak. I was going to have it for my supper. But if you wouldn't mind sharing peasant fare..."
Stew! I hadn't had any of that since my parents' deaths over a decade ago. "Stew sounds good," I said, trying not to sound as starved as I suddenly felt.
"Good. That's settled, then." His voice sounded relieved. "You drove?" I nodded, and he nodded back. "So did I. You can follow me."
Sydney didn't let me give him his overcoat back until I was ready to climb into my rental - "when you'll at least have a heater to keep you from freezing," he told me. He led me past the gate and guard that was the entrance to the Centre and on down the road until we were entering a tiny seaside village called Blue Cove. Then with only a turn or two, he led me to his two-story tract house on what looked like the newer end of town. He pulled into the driveway and then came out to the street to meet me, overcoat in hand.
"Come on in. I'll get a fire going to warm you," he said, putting the overcoat back where it had been earlier. I wasn't unhappy to have the coat back. It was cold.
His house was like him - gracious, refined, and decidedly masculine. Obviously he had been the one to decorate the office I'd met him in at the Centre to match his home, because there was an abundance of warm wood on the walls and well-finished wood in the sturdy furniture. He led me into the living room and let me explore while he began laying the kindling for a fire in his spacious hearth. The bookshelves that lined one entire wall of the room were filled with an eclectic and literate collection of fiction and non-fiction - some looking very old and very valuable, and even a few that looked suspiciously like science textbooks I'd had in my university days.
There was a small collection of photographs that lined his mantle, and I moved closer to the growing fire both to warm myself and to satisfy my curiosity. My eyes lit on the black and white picture on the end - where two young and athletic young men grinned impishly in mirror image into the camera after a tennis match. Sydney had risen next to me and took note of the object of my attention. "We were juniors at Yale when that was taken. Jacob was the better tennis player - I could hardly compete. I tended to be the bookworm."
"Me too. Caryn was the one who had all the friends," I remembered, for the first time without more than a slight ache. Then I turned my eye to the other pictures on his mantel: a much younger picture of himself with a very pretty young lady, and then a much more recent picture of that same lady with a young man next to her that obviously had Sydney's eyes and smile. I touched that one. "Your wife and son?"
"My son," he admitted with a soft expression, "but not my wife. We... never married."
There was muted pain in that statement, so I moved past it so as not to distress him. The next picture was of stunning young brunette woman, and the one next to it was of another very handsome young man with dark hair. I looked up at my host. "Your other children?"
The eyebrows climbed his forehead again in a clear demonstration of surprise, and then an amused twist of the lips settled on his face. "It seems like it sometimes," he responded cryptically, then took pity on my look of complete confusion. "They are very dear friends I've known since they were very young. I sometimes forget that they aren't mine."
The fire was making the room cozy, and I remembered the reason I'd come here. I touched his hand lightly and gestured at his long leather couch. "So... Tell me about Jacob," I invited and walked around the coffee table to sit down and wait for him to join me.
After a brief spate of not knowing precisely how to start the conversation, the time flew. Somewhere along the way, we relocated temporarily to the kitchen table for one of the tastiest and heartiest meals I'd eaten in a very long time and then shared cleanup duties afterwards - all this framed within non-stop talking. The teapot refilled and steeping again, we moved back to the couch in front of the fire, our conversation flexing enough to allow him to feed the flames several times. No longer shy, we sat close, turned toward each other with knees touching as we went from one memory to the next.
Sydney talked and spoke proudly of his brother's accomplishments as a clinical psychologist, talked of the horrors of the Holocaust and being an orphaned survivor and then of making a life in a strange land. Then he talked of automobile accidents and decades spent visiting an unresponsive brother in a hospital bed and then of burying him in a secluded place. Strangely, our talk ended up being as much a sharing experience for me as a cathartic experience for him - every so often I could bring forth a memory of my time with Caryn that echoed the memory he had just related to me of his time with Jacob. We laughed together over the lighthearted, and we cried together as we shared the tragic. I felt as if I had known him forever, and that he'd known me at least as long.
Then I looked over my shoulder at his front picture window and saw that the daylight was now long gone, and that it was dark and raining outside. Even the room we were in was dark except for the warm glow of the flames on the hearth. The thought that my time with this fascinating man with the hypnotic accent and the surprisingly quirky sense of humor was coming to an end was almost painful, and I think it showed. "What is it, Cat?" he asked, now comfortable using my sister's nickname for me. He was the first person I'd actually invited to use that name in years, and it felt right to hear him call me that after everything we'd shared. He said he had known a Catherine years ago - I was sure that she and I were probably nothing alike.
I jerked my head in the direction of his window. "Look. How am I going to find my way back to Dover? This has been a wonderful time, Syd - and I'm really glad I got to know you - but..."
Those expressive brown eyes glanced at the darkness outside the window and then back at me, and the sudden burst of warmth in them was surprising. "Don't go," he said suddenly, putting out at hand and capturing mine. "It's cold and wet out there, and you don't know the roads. I have a perfectly good guest room - and I suppose I could be convinced to be a perfect gentleman."
"Sydney," I said, touched more than he imagined at the offer. "I really should go..." I got to my feet and tried to reclaim my hand.
"Stay," he insisted, following my hand and rising to his feet too. "I want... I need... you to be safe." Was he moving closer? My God, he was - and then there was a warm hand on my cheek. "It isn't a safe night for you to drive unfamiliar roads, Cat. I'd never forgive myself if something were to happen to you. Stay, please..." His voice had become low, a purr.
Having him moving ever closer to me was like becoming wrapped in his warm overcoat all over again. I could smell the spicy tang that was him, and for the first time in years, I felt my heart give a thump before starting to beat faster. I looked up into those warm brown eyes and felt as if I were drowning in dark honey. My logical mind tried to rebel against my feelings - I hadn't come half-way across the continent for a casual fling at this late date in my life - but my logical mind shut down the moment he bent and touched his lips to mine.
My God but his lips were soft and gentle, and his kiss tender and loving in a way I'd never believed possible! My arms twined around his neck of their own accord, and then he was pulling me into his arms and holding me tightly. When his lips finally left mine aching and wanting more, they moved smoothly and surely up my cheek to rest against the side of my head near my ear. "Stay, Cat," he purred imploringly into my ear.
Jake had always been a take-charge man in our marriage, and especially when it came to our intimate moments. He had always been the initiator, bowling me over with his sheer animal magnetism - and I had always been swept along whether I'd wanted to or not. At first it had been exciting - later it had become controlling, especially as I tried to juggle being a successful scientist and a successful mother to our one daughter. Our final, painful months together had been made just that much more agonizing every time Jake would try to take charge and I would just keep withdrawing until I couldn't withdraw any further and then end up being overwhelmed anyway against my will. Our daughter was home from college when we went through our tortured dance that last time - and I know she still hasn't forgiven her father. It hadn't exactly been rape in the end, but it had deadened all desire for the touch of a man, I thought.
Boy, was I wrong!
I felt Sydney's hands smooth up my back and tangle in my hair, felt his lips trace the line of my chin and drop kisses of fire onto my neck. Every nerve in my body was coming alive and vibrating, and every so often he would return to kiss my ear and whisper, "Stay," and set the whole lot singing just that much louder.
Strangely, I knew without a doubt that all it would take from me would be a tiny movement of withdrawal - a word of refusal - and Sydney would let me go without argument. His arms around me weren't bands of restrictive steel, but cherishing and supportive and persuasive - and the difference between the two was staggering. And God help me, I knew that this sudden rush of emotions and physical responses wasn't wise. I was leaving for home in less than twenty- four hours with no idea when or even if I'd ever be back this way again. He was responding to the deep sense of intimacy our long discussion had created between us over the course of a single afternoon and evening. Hell, so was I.
I knew better. I knew I knew better. But it had been SO long.
The next time his smoldering gaze met mine and he murmured, "Stay with me, Cat," I answered with my heart.
I said, "Yes," and put my lips to his briefly.
There it was again, that wide and unassuming smile of pure happiness. He bent and, with a sweep of a hand behind my knees, had me up in his arms and was kissing me with an aching passion, stealing my breath away, stealing my ability to think away. He carried me out of the living room and up the stairs, down a short hallway and then into a bedroom. When he let me go so I could stand on my own feet again, I slid down the length of his body - and both his catch of breath and mine at the sensations told the tale of what would surely happen next.
I awoke much, much later to find myself carefully pillowed on his chest in the darkness, his arms holding me lightly. I was tender, and muscles I hadn't used in ages were softly and pleasantly aching. His lovemaking had been gentle, slow, tender - shattering. I felt as if I had been worshipped from head to toe. I felt as if I'd come home - as if I belonged in these arms, in this bed, with this man.
I knew better. I knew I knew better. But for a little time, I allowed myself to dream.
I watched his face, relaxed in slumber - my sweet and unexpected lover - and I concentrated on memorizing every feature so that I would be able to recall them the next time I felt again as if no one in the world understood me or cared. I carefully straightened some of that unstylishly long hair back behind an ear again and traced the line of his aristocratic nose. He roused at my touch as my fingers traced the outline of his lips, and then kissed them and then me. I melted at his kiss, I couldn't help it. His hand moved on my skin and mine moved on his, and then he deepened the kiss and rolled and pressed me back into the pillow, covering me like a warm and heavy blanket.
His hands were gentle and teasing, nothing like the rough and crude gropings I'd endured from Jake. He stroked and petted and smoothed and kissed and suckled and made me moan with wanting more of him, and then gave me everything I wanted. And when our passion was spent yet again, he settled me back into the hollow of his body with my head pillowed once more on his chest and his arms wrapped around me holding me lightly. And again we slept, sated and content.
When I roused next, it was fully morning. This time, however, I found that he'd awakened first and had lay there quietly, unmoving, watching me sleep. Waking to find myself reflected in those eyes of warm, dark honey was an experience I'll remember to the end of my days. It was one of the most erotic moments I'd ever had. "Good morning, Cat," he'd rumbled in a low register, then kissed my forehead. "Sleep well?"
"Better than I deserved," I answered him, rolling toward him and into him closer, then put a leg over the top of him and sat up. The time of our parting was approaching - I knew it and dreaded it - and I didn't want to face it yet. I don't think Sydney did either, because he was more than happy to rise to the challenge of helping me forget it entirely again for a while. But when the pitch of our lovemaking this time grew toward the frantic and desperate, I felt one of his large hands move to the bottom of my spine, near where our bodies were joined, and bring everything to a complete standstill.
Then with his other arm he drew me down close and cuddled me against him, shushing me and kissing my face and forehead very softly over and over again as I found myself suddenly crying. Eventually he kissed my tears from my eyes and, once I had regained a little of my composure, began stroking me and kissing me deeply again in a way that was designed to arouse quickly and surely. Once I was once again moaning in his arms, that huge hand on my spine moved to the side of my hip, and he began moving slowly and surely inside me again. Afterwards we lay panting and quiet in each other's arms for a long time, just enjoying being together.
Surrendering to the inevitable, however, I finally rose and gathered my scattered clothing from the floor to take a long, hot shower. I thought that perhaps I would have company, but instead found, once I was dried off and dressed, that delicious smells were rising up the stairwell from the kitchen - smells that included coffee. And like the bemused cartoon character, I followed my nose to the source of the temptation.
I stood in the kitchen door for a moment, watching him work over the stove, standing there in a homey flannel robe over trousers that left suspenders drooping and well-worn corduroy slippers. I could smell bacon and eggs behind that fragrant coffee. Unable to stay back, unable to resist the temptation to touch, I finally made my way across the kitchen floor and leaned against his back, winding my arms around to his front. "You're spoiling me," I mumbled into his back.
"I can only hope," he quipped back, a hand falling back briefly to pat my joined hands around his belly and then returning to its work. "Coffee cup's over there by the coffee maker. Help yourself."
I heard the clatter of plates as I poured the dark, steaming brew into my mug and turned to see he had the places already set at the little kitchen table and was putting plates with breakfast down. We sat around the corner of the table from each other, our knees touching - and ate quietly for a while. Then, "What time is your flight from New York?"
"About six this evening," I said in surprise after having to nearly choke back the dismay at the rapidly approaching end to this idyll. "And I need to check out of my hotel in Dover at eleven." Damn, I hadn't wanted to cry again. What was wrong with me? Where were my defenses?
His hand wandered over to mine and grasped it gently. "Let me drive you to New York," he asked softly. "I'll follow you to your hotel and help you check out, then we can take our time getting to the airport."
It was an emotional life-preserver, and a very short-term one at that, but at that point I wasn't choosy. I had found a refuge in his arms, and he'd helped me remember that I was still alive - I didn't want to lose that yet. I nodded, not willing to trust my voice. I felt his hand leave mine and then land, warm and gentle, on my face, thumb brushing aside the tears I couldn't help shedding. "Don't cry, Cat."
He pulled on me until he could lean forward and kiss me, and we both tasted of bacon and eggs and coffee. I looked up into those dark honeyed eyes and swallowed my tears back - for him. I kissed him again gently, and then we went back to quietly sharing our meal.
He took a shower while I cleared the kitchen for him, and we both finished at about the same time. Sydney came down the stairs carrying his cardigan sweater from the day before in his hands despite wearing another heavy sweater himself. "Here," he said, pulling me close and then drawing the sweater over my head and helping me get my arms into it properly, "so you can stay warm for a change."
The sweater smelled of him and was like being in his arms all over again. We embraced for a moment, and then he handed me my purse. He led the way from his house to the narrow highway that went past the Centre and our beach, then let me take the lead. I rubbed my face against his sweater as I drove my rental, and remembered his touch on my face, on my body. Knowing he was directly behind me and yet holding me close kept me from being lonely all that drive.
In the hotel room, he opened my dress bag and started packing the more business-like clothing I'd brought for my time at the Centre while I dug through the drawers and packed the small wheeled suitcase. When I saw him ready to hang my light jacket in the dress bag I stopped him and began pulling at the bottom hem of his sweater. "I'll need that. You'll want this back," I said, wishing I dared keep it.
"No, I don't - at least, not this way," he replied, continuing to hang the jacket in the dress bag and then coming over to me and pulling the sweater's bottom hem back into place. Then he reached into a pocket and drew out a small fold of paper with something heavy and hard inside, and he pressed it into my hand and then closed my fingers around it. "This is my name, my address, my phone number, and," he smiled at me, "my house key. When you decide the time has come to return my sweater, use them - and come back to me, to stay. Promise me."
"This is nuts." I said the words at last. "We don't know each other..."
"We know each other better than most know us," he argued gently, looping his arms around my back loosely. "We understand each other too, which is even more important."
"I have my job... my career..."
"The Centre employs research chemists too. Nothing says you can't continue to do research."
"I could be a thief... a..."
"Right," he snorted with amusement. "A thief who was too honest to try to keep a sweater she liked. And you thought I hadn't noticed..."
"Sydney!" I looked up into his eyes, all my arguments brushed away. "You're crazy!"
"I know," he responded, pulling me even closer. "This is all crazy and it's far less than wise. For what it's worth, I should be shot for having even talked to you yesterday on the beach after your being one of my research subjects - and by rights, I should discard your information immediately and forget I ever met you. I know you well enough now that I'd be able to spot your information from out of all the rest in a heartbeat. I've broken every ethical consideration important to research in the last twelve hours. But I don't care." At last I was in his arms completely again, and his lips were in my hair above my ear. "I don't want to let you go, Cat. "
God help me, but I wanted exactly what he did - to be free to stay with him. But I knew that the cards were stacked against such a thing happening anytime soon. And I was particular in that when I made promises, I was scrupulous about keeping them - what Sydney was asking, I didn't know if I could do in the end.
I leaned in closer, savoring the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his heart beating in his chest beneath my ear. "All I can promise is that someday I'll bring your sweater back myself, Sydney. I just don't know that I can ever promise more than that."
I felt his lips in my hair, and then on my cheek. "I warn you, I can be patient - and insistent. AND I'm more than willing to try to be persuasive too - in case it will help improve my chances," he said in a soft but vehement tone. Then he lowered his lips to mine in a searing kiss that once more stole away my ability to think clearly. God help me but by the time his lips left mine I was aching for more again. He kissed his way back up my chin and purred, "Come back to me, Cat, SOON," into my ear in a tone that I was hard-pressed to refuse. Then he kissed me again.
Somehow we managed to get ourselves calmed down enough to be reasonably presentable as I checked out of my room. And sometime while I was finishing up with that, Sydney waylaid and deflected the Centre transportation that was going to take me to New York. I turned from the front desk and walked over to him as he stood guard over my meager luggage.
The trip to New York flew by, buoyed by the kind of conversation we should have expected to have engaged in long before this point in our relationship - our likes, dislikes, tastes in music and food and art, our interests, hobbies. Our children. We compared our reading rates and chuckled at the idea that we'd found a fellow bookworm. He pulled a CD of Rossini string symphonies to provide a soft background of music we both appreciated to ease the trip along. And I gave him a slip of paper similar to the one he had given me - with my name, my address and my phone number - and then admitted that I'd have given him my house key too, but I didn't have my spare with me.
I was in luck, because he seemed very familiar with the airport and its convoluted arrangement. We found the concourse I needed to be at rather quickly, but then he insisted on parking and walking me into the terminal, standing with me in line at the ticket counter and then again for the security check. The moment I had been dreading was here at long last. "The next time you decide to do a twins' study..." I began.
He pulled me into his arms roughly and held me more tightly than ever before. "You'll be at the top of the list of research subjects I call," he growled in a low and distressed tone. "And the next time you decide to take a vacation..." he began.
"I'll consider Delaware to be my best bet," I responded and then stretched up so that our lips could meet in one last, long, deep, fiery kiss that would have to last us both for a very long time. Then I was going through security, and then separated from him by machinery and walls.
I wore his sweater all the way home, breathing in deeply of his spicy scent and then leaning my head back and reliving in my mind the amazing events of the day before. When I got home, there was a single message on my machine. It was he, his intoxicating accent heavier than usual with his emotions:
"My house is empty, Cat. Come home to me." I spend the next hour weeping and breathing deeply of the scented sweater.
The next day, Julia made a point of remarking how relaxed I seemed, how rested - how actually taking time off agreed with me. And what a nice sweater I'd gotten as a memento.
She'll never know that I spent my first hour in my lab looking at my calendar, wondering when I could get away with asking for another week off.
Wondering what Delaware looked like in winter.
Chapter 1: Taking Chances
I was bored. I must have been to even consider filling out the form to become one of a large group of anonymous research subjects. I must have been REALLY bored to have signed up to participate in a project involving the emotional cost of surviving the death of one's twin. Bored nothing - I must have been full-goose crazy! You see, I hadn't talked about Caryn's death with anyone, ever, in all these years. That was part of the reason Jake and I divorced - he kept pushing at me to “open up to him”, and I just wanted to have folks leave me alone about that private grief. Jake wasn't a twin - he wouldn't understand.
Anyway, I showed my acceptance form from the Centre to my supervisor, along with the tentative date for my time of participation, and got permission to take a week of my vacation to travel to Delaware. I needed the vacation anyway - I hadn't taken any time off since my break-up three years ago, and only a week off the year before that when Caryn... Well, leave it to say that I was due, and I was determined. I'd have probably called in sick if I hadn't gotten the permission, but Julia knew I needed the time. Hell, she was probably thrilled I'd finally agreed to take some vacation time for a change, no matter that the fall was slowly beginning to chill down into winter. Besides, the vacation time reimbursement checks I'd been getting weren't helping the lab finances much.
The Centre would provide transportation from New York City to Dover and then back when the study was concluded as well as back and forth from the Centre itself. Also included in the package was housing in one of Dover's better hotels for the three nights while I was to be participating in interviews and questionnaires and other phases of the study. My room was comfortable and well appointed, and there was a Centre van at the front lobby bright and early on Wednesday morning to take me to wherever it was I was to go. I have to admit I enjoyed the ride along the seaside - living in the mid-west, I had never had a chance to do that. And then I caught my first glimpse of the Centre itself, and I WAS impressed.
The van driver let me off at the front of the building, along with two other people also participating in the study. We had quietly observed each other in the van while en route, but none of us seemed very much in the mood to strike up a conversation. As it was, we were met at the front door by a somber-faced man in a dark suit that guided us through the airy foyer and toward the banks of elevators. He stopped at a particular one and pushed the button, and the door opened immediately. I noticed that the floor numbers available to this elevator were limited - from 15 to 18 - but wasn't prepared for the elevator to begin moving DOWN.
Of course! The building I'd seen from the outside, impressive as it was, had been three stories high at best. The rest of the Centre facility was obviously underground. I breathed a sigh of gratitude that I didn't suffer from claustrophobia like Caryn had - she would have gone NUTS in a place like this. Even though the elevator was well-lit, and the corridor that it put us out into wide and open, well-lit and filled with fresh-smelling air, she would have been cowering in a corner somewhere in no time knowing she was seventeen stories underground.
Our guide showed us down a long corridor, then one by one called us by name and opened a door for that individual to enter. I ended up in a little cement room with a table, a trash can, two chairs and mirrored glass at the far end that I presumed was a one-way window. I sat myself down at the table to wait, and soon a young man came in carrying a clipboard and a funny-looking recorder - and a box of tissues.
I don't know why, but the idea that this was someone who didn't know me and didn't know Caryn made it easier to answer the questions about her and our childhood years. These questions seemed to get more in detail and more probing as time went by until each was like a scalpel cutting into my grief - and yet I answered each willingly and fully. Perhaps it was the knowledge that this young man had no investment in who I was or what I felt that made it so that I didn't mind him slowly dissecting me verbally or seeing the emotional wreck I was becoming. Maybe it was that the young man made no notes of anything I said, but simply checked off the questions on his clipboard one at a time as we went through them. I knew he was listening to me, but it was one of the most impartial, uninvolved sorts of listening I'd ever experienced.
I, on the other hand, eventually felt as if I'd had the protective cover that I'd carefully cultivated over the pain that was Caryn ripped away, leaving my every emotion, my every thought, raw and exposed. By the end of the day, my eyes were red from crying and I felt drained and depleted. Why oh why had I agreed to this? Why had I been so foolish to think that this was going to help me pull out of my depression? At the end of the day my young interviewer shook my hand pleasantly with a smile that was meant to be comforting, I'm sure, and then turned to brushing my many drenched and spent tissues from table top into trash can. Meanwhile yet another guide in a dark suit gently took my arm and guided me back to the elevator.
I noticed that none of us riding in the van back to Dover were in very good shape. The others looked as if they'd been put through their own versions of the hell I'd weathered. I wasn't looking at the ocean either - I just laid my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. I wasn't hungry when the van let me out in front of the hotel, but I choked down a salad just for the sake of argument before calling it a day.
That night I cried for Caryn as if I hadn't cried for her before - I missed her more than I had since the shock had worn off and I realize that the other half of me was gone. She had been the extrovert of us, I the shy and studious introvert - she the president of the student body in college, I the valedictorian at both high school and university. She had become a socialite, a media darling on the arm of her politician husband; and I had retreated to my laboratory and test tubes, contented with a physicist husband with his own lab and experiments and research grants and a precocious daughter.
And then Caryn was dead, hit by a drunk driver as she walked through a supermarket parking lot, and I was alone in a world filled with well-meaning people who wanted to help but didn't know how to reach me. I retreated to my lab, buried myself in my research, and eventually lifted my head long enough to sign the divorce papers before diving right back in.
For the first time, though, those questions and the lack of animosity or any perception of agenda behind them gave me the excuse to take stock of who and what I'd become with half my soul ripped away. It wasn't a pretty sight. As I finally started to drop off in the wee hours of the morning, I made myself a promise to lift my head and look around me again. Caryn was gone, but I was still alive. That had to count for something.
I was still feeling pretty drained the next morning, but I forced myself to eat a slightly more nutritious breakfast before the van arrived for me again. This time, we were only two riding to the Centre - evidently this project processed three subjects per week, each phase taking one day to conclude. No doubt tomorrow I would be alone in the van. I pushed myself to look out the windows and watch the ocean go by again. I was glad that I'd made arrangements to stay in Dover an extra night after the study was concluded - the van drove past a couple of signs pointing to public beaches that looked inviting.
Today I was escorted to a different room on that underground level - a room with a chair and a machine with many wires attached to it. Another young man entered from a doorway next to yet another mirrored window the moment I did, instructing me to seat myself and make myself comfortable. Then he busied himself attaching wires to several places on my body - my wrists, on my upper chest - and then settling a circlet of metal with several wires protruding from it around my forehead. He exited the room briefly after that, then returned with yet another clipboard, recorder, and another box of tissues.
If I had thought yesterday's questions were difficult and painful, today's were even more so. Today the subject of the questions was Caryn's death and every possible detail of the way she died, her funeral, and the events that had followed. That verbal scalpel dug deep, cutting into my reactions to my family, my husband, my daughter, my brother-in-law, my co-workers, my friends, myself. If there was an emotional rock behind which I had hidden a portion of my grief, the questions were designed to discover and turn that rock. I think I had emptied the box of tissues by the day was done and the young man had finished disconnecting me from the machine and shaking my hand.
Again, I was in no mood to look at anything as we drove back to Dover, and no longer questioned why none of the others yesterday had been wanting to do much sharing either. But where I was obviously still quite upset, the other man was pensive. And again I could only convince myself to have a salad before falling into bed.
I woke up Friday morning - half-way through what was SUPPOSED to be a vacation - and barely wanted to climb out of bed. My dreams that night had been nightmares, grief-mares where I relived the shock of Caryn's death and the aftermath over and over again. Emotionally beaten and thoroughly convinced that I'd made a serious error, I choked down a bagel and a cup of tea and went to meet the Centre van driver in the lobby. If there was one thing I was not, it was a quitter. I'd signed up to participate, and by God I'd see the study through to the bitter end.
I think I slept most of the way to the Centre, I know the driver had to shake my shoulder to wake me enough to climb out of the van. Again I had a new dark-suited guide to show me the way to the elevators and the underground laboratory. But today I didn't end up in a featureless cement cubby-hole. Today I was escorted through a rather large room and up to the door of the office that opened onto it. My guide knocked, listened for the voice inside to bid him enter, then showed me in.
What a change! The office had been paneled in warm wood and lined with bookshelves, and there was a comfortable-looking leather couch and a couple of chairs in front of a sturdy-looking wooden desk. And behind the desk was a distinguished-looked gentleman who rose as I came in and extended his hand. He had an unidentifiable but most well-educated accent that caught my attention immediately. "I have just a few questions for you."
He waved me toward one of the chairs in front of his desk and then seated himself. While he shifted the papers in front of him, I had a chance to study him - he was far more interesting to look at than the nondescript young interviewers over the last two days had been. His very bearing was one of character and refinement. His grey hair was unstylishly long, curling over the top of his collar even as it was abandoning the crown of his head. His face was lined and care-worn, yet had a gentle expression that seemed to invite trust and confidence. His hands were long-fingered and moved gracefully and expressively in sorting through the papers he held. When he finally looked up at me, I saw he had a caring expression in his brown eyes, and I relaxed a bit.
"I realize you've probably had a rough last two days," he began in that wonderfully smooth and accented baritone, "and I want you to know how much we appreciate your candor and honesty."
Then he gently began asking me questions - this time about my responses to the last two days' worth of probing. Had my sleep habits changed? Was I feeling more depressed, anxious, out of control? Caryn had very little to do with the questions I fielded from this man - I myself was the subject of the probing today.
The questions were just as in-depth as those I'd fielded already in either of the two previous interviews. They were, however, not so much painful dissections of grief too long hidden away as much as they were careful and cautious examinations of the emotions that the previous days' questions had aroused within me. And this time my interviewer was not only recording my answers but taking occasional notes. He was listening, and listening very closely, to everything I said. No doubt he was even paying attention to my body language. And by the time the day had passed, I had begun listening too - to myself. As the guide in the dark suit came to escort me out of the Centre again, I was almost sorry to bid the man farewell. Maybe I'd been only a research subject, but I had gained from the experience after all.
Interesting that the ocean at twilight, when the van transported me back to Dover, was so very different than the ocean at early morning. The cloud cover on the horizon was dark and mysterious, hinting at the darkness of the night to come. I even paid attention to the rolling countryside as the van finally headed inland again into Dover even as I tossed several of the more pointed questions I'd been asked that day at myself again.
I slept in Saturday morning, slept in for the first time in I don't know how long. I felt drained but at peace when I awoke - and I only realized after finishing my shower and getting dressed that I hadn't automatically sought out the emotional touchstone of that empty place in the back of my mind where I kept Caryn. And I was hungry too. I walked down to the hotel restaurant and had a hearty meal of bacon and eggs and toast, the kind Mom used to make.
The concierge helped me rent a car for my free day, and I bought a road map of the area so I could find my way back to one of those beaches I'd been thinking of visiting. The one I chose, the one farthest from Dover, had a parking lot back amid the rolling and grass-covered hills, and a path that lead to the beach beyond. I found a log not far from the grass and off to the side that looked like an inviting seat. I parked myself there for a long time, listening to the soothing and repetitive sound of the waves washing onto the shore and the occasional mad cry of a seagull floating overhead.
Looking out over the water, studying the way the clouds floated across the horizon and faded into the distance and following the flight path of the occasional seagull, I didn't notice at first that I wasn't alone. It was only when the lone figure walked slowly past me at the water's very edge that I noticed him. He was bundled more warmly against the cool ocean breeze than I was, and was sauntering just out of reach of the waves along the wet sand.
I didn't realize I knew him, or at least recognized him, until he had turned and begun walking back towards me and towards the path to the parking lot. It was the distinguished-looking man with whom I'd spent several hours only the day before. I raised my hand half-heartedly as he passed by my log, and I could see his eyebrows rise in surprise when he recognized me too. He paused for a moment, then came toward me.
"I didn't realize you were from around here," he said in a mildly surprised tone.
"I'm not," I admitted. "I saw the signs for the beach from the van on the way to the Centre, and I decided that I'd check it out before I headed back to New York and my flight home."
He nodded, then turned and looked out at the ocean for a while. I was wondering if I had intruded on his privacy when he looked down at me again. "Is this your first time visiting the ocean?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I nodded, letting the call of a seagull lure my attention away to the vastness of the ocean's beauty. "It's beautiful here."
"I know," he replied. "I come here sometimes when..." He glanced down at me with an unreadable expression. "I should leave you to your ocean visit, though," he said, more to himself than to me, I think. "This is a good place to put yourself back together again after the emotional drubbing of the study questions, and I'm intruding on your space."
"Not at all. I don't mind your company if you don't mind mine." God, I couldn't believe I said that! Neither could he, I think - those eyebrows of his were almost as expressive as his eyes, the way they demonstrated his being taken by surprise.
But then he smiled - a wonderful, full and genuine even-toothed smile of good humor. "You mean there's room on that log for two?"
I giggled - what in the world was I doing? - and slid over so that he'd have room to park himself next to me. He sat for a moment, once more looking out over the ocean with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat. Then, "If we're going to share a log, I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I'm Sydney."
"I'm Catherine," I answered, then shook hands with him - and found his hands were warm from the protection they'd received from his overcoat.
I could feel his eyes on me, but it was a soft expression of curiosity. "So... what do you do, Catherine?"
"I'm a research chemist - you know, test tubes, Bunsen burners, periodic table of the elements..." I tucked my hands into my armpits. I really should have worn something warmer on this jaunt. I knew better. I knew I knew better. To hide my chagrin at suddenly being aware that I was freezing my butt off so soon after inviting him to join me, I looked back at him. "So... and you do research on twins?"
And I discovered those warm brown eyes had heavy lids that could fall like curtains at times. He looked away. "For the moment," he commented finally.
Something was going on in him, something that he didn't want to discuss, evidently. Maybe my spur-of-the-moment invitation to join me hadn't been such a good idea after all. Nervous and now self-conscious, I lost my concentration on appearing comfortable and shivered when a slightly stiffer blast of ocean breeze cut straight through my light sweatshirt. I got to my feet rather quickly. "I think I'll head back in now," I said lamely, avoiding looking at him. "I really didn't dress for the ocean, I guess."
Sydney got to his feet too, almost as quickly as I did. "Wait. I'm sorry," I heard him say, and then it was my turn to look at him with surprise. "I didn't mean to shut down the conversation," he continued with a hand reaching out for my elbow. "It's just been a very long week, and I'm tired - and when I get tired, I can become a real bear. You didn't deserve for me to take it out on you..."
"Don't worry about it," I reassured him, but shivered again as another blast cut through the sweatshirt. "The thing is, and I hate to admit it, but I also am really freezing..."
And then I stared as he quickly shed his overcoat and put it around my shoulders. "I thought you looked a little underdressed for a trip to the beach," he said gently. "I, on the other hand, usually end up wearing more than enough." Indeed, he had a heavy cardigan sweater beneath that overcoat, and it looked like a flannel shirt or a light sweatshirt beneath that. He also had a very gentle hold on my nearest elbow. "Come. Sit down and enjoy your ocean in a bit more comfort."
His overcoat warmed me quickly on the outside almost as fast as his cavalier gesture warmed me on the inside, and I pulled the coat closed around me and nodded then sat down next to him on the log again. I took a deep breath of the sea air and found that now I could smell his scent coming softly from the overcoat - a crisp and spicy tang that seemed imminently suited to the man.
"Still... I... didn't mean to pry. I'm sorry." I still felt that I owed him an apology too.
"You weren't prying anymore than I was." He folded his hands in front of him and looked out over the ocean again. "Right now, my assignment explores the psychology of one twin surviving the death of the other. It just hits a little close to home sometimes."
"Because you're a twin too," I whispered as I recognized the same signs in Sydney that I had just been made aware of in myself. I saw him glance in my direction and knew I was right. "And your twin is gone too." He looked down at his big and graceful hands and nodded. "How long now?"
"Four years now." God, but his voice told of his pain so vividly that I had to fight from having tears in my eyes.
"Same as me." I looked over at him, and his eyes were hooded again and looking down at his hands still. "Was it sudden?"
He stirred himself and took a very deep sigh. "No, not in some ways. Jacob was in a coma for many years - but the end came very quickly and suddenly when it did come."
I tried to put myself in his shoes and found I couldn't even begin to fathom the pain of watching Caryn lie unresponsive in a bed day after day for years, only to have her suddenly vanish. That, I think, was worse than having her vibrantly alive one moment and bloody and still on the pavement the next. I found the opening of the overcoat with a hand and touched one big hand hesitantly. "I'm sorry."
His other hand came over to pat mine, and then didn't move away but held mine sandwiched between his almost absently. "That's why I came here today, after a week of talking to others about the way they lost their..." He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts. "This was a place we both enjoyed - we'd pack a picnic lunch and take more than an hour from the Centre every once in a while, or come on a Saturday much like this one. We'd watch the ocean and..."
"Jacob worked with you?" I asked, finding I didn't mind my hand being in his keeping all that much.
He nodded. Then his eyebrows rose again in surprise, and he looked down at me. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this..."
"I do." And I did. "It's hard for anybody to understand what it's like who hasn't been a twin. It can be like talking to a brick wall. But I've been there, been through it too." I saw Sydney's mouth tighten as if he were swallowing hard. "I know how it hurts." He nodded and looked away again, and I could have sworn I saw water swimming in those pretty brown eyes of his.
"You know what?" I asked softly, nudging him with my shoulder to get his attention back. I waited until I could see the eyebrows raised expectantly before I continued. "These past few days have been really hard, making me look at everything six ways from Sunday - but I think talking to you yesterday did more to help me finish dealing with Caryn's death than anything else has." I turned my hand beneath his and clasped the hand above mine. "If you think it would help you, I can repay the favor by listening to you..."
"You don't need to do that..." he challenged immediately, the hand on top of mine now clasping mine as well, and those expressive brown eyes no longer swimming but warm.
"I know," I told him, "but maybe you need me to. And I don't mind... really... I have the whole rest of the day to listen..."
I could see the wheels of his mind turning my offer over slowly and carefully. Then, "Have you had lunch?"
I twisted my head slightly so I could make out the time on his wristwatch. "It's a little late for lunch, don't you think?"
His lips twitched, and then I was gifted with that smile again. "Alright. An early dinner then?"
"You're buying?"
The smile got wider. "Actually, I have a fair-sized pot of stew on my stove simmering as we speak. I was going to have it for my supper. But if you wouldn't mind sharing peasant fare..."
Stew! I hadn't had any of that since my parents' deaths over a decade ago. "Stew sounds good," I said, trying not to sound as starved as I suddenly felt.
"Good. That's settled, then." His voice sounded relieved. "You drove?" I nodded, and he nodded back. "So did I. You can follow me."
Sydney didn't let me give him his overcoat back until I was ready to climb into my rental - "when you'll at least have a heater to keep you from freezing," he told me. He led me past the gate and guard that was the entrance to the Centre and on down the road until we were entering a tiny seaside village called Blue Cove. Then with only a turn or two, he led me to his two-story tract house on what looked like the newer end of town. He pulled into the driveway and then came out to the street to meet me, overcoat in hand.
"Come on in. I'll get a fire going to warm you," he said, putting the overcoat back where it had been earlier. I wasn't unhappy to have the coat back. It was cold.
His house was like him - gracious, refined, and decidedly masculine. Obviously he had been the one to decorate the office I'd met him in at the Centre to match his home, because there was an abundance of warm wood on the walls and well-finished wood in the sturdy furniture. He led me into the living room and let me explore while he began laying the kindling for a fire in his spacious hearth. The bookshelves that lined one entire wall of the room were filled with an eclectic and literate collection of fiction and non-fiction - some looking very old and very valuable, and even a few that looked suspiciously like science textbooks I'd had in my university days.
There was a small collection of photographs that lined his mantle, and I moved closer to the growing fire both to warm myself and to satisfy my curiosity. My eyes lit on the black and white picture on the end - where two young and athletic young men grinned impishly in mirror image into the camera after a tennis match. Sydney had risen next to me and took note of the object of my attention. "We were juniors at Yale when that was taken. Jacob was the better tennis player - I could hardly compete. I tended to be the bookworm."
"Me too. Caryn was the one who had all the friends," I remembered, for the first time without more than a slight ache. Then I turned my eye to the other pictures on his mantel: a much younger picture of himself with a very pretty young lady, and then a much more recent picture of that same lady with a young man next to her that obviously had Sydney's eyes and smile. I touched that one. "Your wife and son?"
"My son," he admitted with a soft expression, "but not my wife. We... never married."
There was muted pain in that statement, so I moved past it so as not to distress him. The next picture was of stunning young brunette woman, and the one next to it was of another very handsome young man with dark hair. I looked up at my host. "Your other children?"
The eyebrows climbed his forehead again in a clear demonstration of surprise, and then an amused twist of the lips settled on his face. "It seems like it sometimes," he responded cryptically, then took pity on my look of complete confusion. "They are very dear friends I've known since they were very young. I sometimes forget that they aren't mine."
The fire was making the room cozy, and I remembered the reason I'd come here. I touched his hand lightly and gestured at his long leather couch. "So... Tell me about Jacob," I invited and walked around the coffee table to sit down and wait for him to join me.
After a brief spate of not knowing precisely how to start the conversation, the time flew. Somewhere along the way, we relocated temporarily to the kitchen table for one of the tastiest and heartiest meals I'd eaten in a very long time and then shared cleanup duties afterwards - all this framed within non-stop talking. The teapot refilled and steeping again, we moved back to the couch in front of the fire, our conversation flexing enough to allow him to feed the flames several times. No longer shy, we sat close, turned toward each other with knees touching as we went from one memory to the next.
Sydney talked and spoke proudly of his brother's accomplishments as a clinical psychologist, talked of the horrors of the Holocaust and being an orphaned survivor and then of making a life in a strange land. Then he talked of automobile accidents and decades spent visiting an unresponsive brother in a hospital bed and then of burying him in a secluded place. Strangely, our talk ended up being as much a sharing experience for me as a cathartic experience for him - every so often I could bring forth a memory of my time with Caryn that echoed the memory he had just related to me of his time with Jacob. We laughed together over the lighthearted, and we cried together as we shared the tragic. I felt as if I had known him forever, and that he'd known me at least as long.
Then I looked over my shoulder at his front picture window and saw that the daylight was now long gone, and that it was dark and raining outside. Even the room we were in was dark except for the warm glow of the flames on the hearth. The thought that my time with this fascinating man with the hypnotic accent and the surprisingly quirky sense of humor was coming to an end was almost painful, and I think it showed. "What is it, Cat?" he asked, now comfortable using my sister's nickname for me. He was the first person I'd actually invited to use that name in years, and it felt right to hear him call me that after everything we'd shared. He said he had known a Catherine years ago - I was sure that she and I were probably nothing alike.
I jerked my head in the direction of his window. "Look. How am I going to find my way back to Dover? This has been a wonderful time, Syd - and I'm really glad I got to know you - but..."
Those expressive brown eyes glanced at the darkness outside the window and then back at me, and the sudden burst of warmth in them was surprising. "Don't go," he said suddenly, putting out at hand and capturing mine. "It's cold and wet out there, and you don't know the roads. I have a perfectly good guest room - and I suppose I could be convinced to be a perfect gentleman."
"Sydney," I said, touched more than he imagined at the offer. "I really should go..." I got to my feet and tried to reclaim my hand.
"Stay," he insisted, following my hand and rising to his feet too. "I want... I need... you to be safe." Was he moving closer? My God, he was - and then there was a warm hand on my cheek. "It isn't a safe night for you to drive unfamiliar roads, Cat. I'd never forgive myself if something were to happen to you. Stay, please..." His voice had become low, a purr.
Having him moving ever closer to me was like becoming wrapped in his warm overcoat all over again. I could smell the spicy tang that was him, and for the first time in years, I felt my heart give a thump before starting to beat faster. I looked up into those warm brown eyes and felt as if I were drowning in dark honey. My logical mind tried to rebel against my feelings - I hadn't come half-way across the continent for a casual fling at this late date in my life - but my logical mind shut down the moment he bent and touched his lips to mine.
My God but his lips were soft and gentle, and his kiss tender and loving in a way I'd never believed possible! My arms twined around his neck of their own accord, and then he was pulling me into his arms and holding me tightly. When his lips finally left mine aching and wanting more, they moved smoothly and surely up my cheek to rest against the side of my head near my ear. "Stay, Cat," he purred imploringly into my ear.
Jake had always been a take-charge man in our marriage, and especially when it came to our intimate moments. He had always been the initiator, bowling me over with his sheer animal magnetism - and I had always been swept along whether I'd wanted to or not. At first it had been exciting - later it had become controlling, especially as I tried to juggle being a successful scientist and a successful mother to our one daughter. Our final, painful months together had been made just that much more agonizing every time Jake would try to take charge and I would just keep withdrawing until I couldn't withdraw any further and then end up being overwhelmed anyway against my will. Our daughter was home from college when we went through our tortured dance that last time - and I know she still hasn't forgiven her father. It hadn't exactly been rape in the end, but it had deadened all desire for the touch of a man, I thought.
Boy, was I wrong!
I felt Sydney's hands smooth up my back and tangle in my hair, felt his lips trace the line of my chin and drop kisses of fire onto my neck. Every nerve in my body was coming alive and vibrating, and every so often he would return to kiss my ear and whisper, "Stay," and set the whole lot singing just that much louder.
Strangely, I knew without a doubt that all it would take from me would be a tiny movement of withdrawal - a word of refusal - and Sydney would let me go without argument. His arms around me weren't bands of restrictive steel, but cherishing and supportive and persuasive - and the difference between the two was staggering. And God help me, I knew that this sudden rush of emotions and physical responses wasn't wise. I was leaving for home in less than twenty- four hours with no idea when or even if I'd ever be back this way again. He was responding to the deep sense of intimacy our long discussion had created between us over the course of a single afternoon and evening. Hell, so was I.
I knew better. I knew I knew better. But it had been SO long.
The next time his smoldering gaze met mine and he murmured, "Stay with me, Cat," I answered with my heart.
I said, "Yes," and put my lips to his briefly.
There it was again, that wide and unassuming smile of pure happiness. He bent and, with a sweep of a hand behind my knees, had me up in his arms and was kissing me with an aching passion, stealing my breath away, stealing my ability to think away. He carried me out of the living room and up the stairs, down a short hallway and then into a bedroom. When he let me go so I could stand on my own feet again, I slid down the length of his body - and both his catch of breath and mine at the sensations told the tale of what would surely happen next.
I awoke much, much later to find myself carefully pillowed on his chest in the darkness, his arms holding me lightly. I was tender, and muscles I hadn't used in ages were softly and pleasantly aching. His lovemaking had been gentle, slow, tender - shattering. I felt as if I had been worshipped from head to toe. I felt as if I'd come home - as if I belonged in these arms, in this bed, with this man.
I knew better. I knew I knew better. But for a little time, I allowed myself to dream.
I watched his face, relaxed in slumber - my sweet and unexpected lover - and I concentrated on memorizing every feature so that I would be able to recall them the next time I felt again as if no one in the world understood me or cared. I carefully straightened some of that unstylishly long hair back behind an ear again and traced the line of his aristocratic nose. He roused at my touch as my fingers traced the outline of his lips, and then kissed them and then me. I melted at his kiss, I couldn't help it. His hand moved on my skin and mine moved on his, and then he deepened the kiss and rolled and pressed me back into the pillow, covering me like a warm and heavy blanket.
His hands were gentle and teasing, nothing like the rough and crude gropings I'd endured from Jake. He stroked and petted and smoothed and kissed and suckled and made me moan with wanting more of him, and then gave me everything I wanted. And when our passion was spent yet again, he settled me back into the hollow of his body with my head pillowed once more on his chest and his arms wrapped around me holding me lightly. And again we slept, sated and content.
When I roused next, it was fully morning. This time, however, I found that he'd awakened first and had lay there quietly, unmoving, watching me sleep. Waking to find myself reflected in those eyes of warm, dark honey was an experience I'll remember to the end of my days. It was one of the most erotic moments I'd ever had. "Good morning, Cat," he'd rumbled in a low register, then kissed my forehead. "Sleep well?"
"Better than I deserved," I answered him, rolling toward him and into him closer, then put a leg over the top of him and sat up. The time of our parting was approaching - I knew it and dreaded it - and I didn't want to face it yet. I don't think Sydney did either, because he was more than happy to rise to the challenge of helping me forget it entirely again for a while. But when the pitch of our lovemaking this time grew toward the frantic and desperate, I felt one of his large hands move to the bottom of my spine, near where our bodies were joined, and bring everything to a complete standstill.
Then with his other arm he drew me down close and cuddled me against him, shushing me and kissing my face and forehead very softly over and over again as I found myself suddenly crying. Eventually he kissed my tears from my eyes and, once I had regained a little of my composure, began stroking me and kissing me deeply again in a way that was designed to arouse quickly and surely. Once I was once again moaning in his arms, that huge hand on my spine moved to the side of my hip, and he began moving slowly and surely inside me again. Afterwards we lay panting and quiet in each other's arms for a long time, just enjoying being together.
Surrendering to the inevitable, however, I finally rose and gathered my scattered clothing from the floor to take a long, hot shower. I thought that perhaps I would have company, but instead found, once I was dried off and dressed, that delicious smells were rising up the stairwell from the kitchen - smells that included coffee. And like the bemused cartoon character, I followed my nose to the source of the temptation.
I stood in the kitchen door for a moment, watching him work over the stove, standing there in a homey flannel robe over trousers that left suspenders drooping and well-worn corduroy slippers. I could smell bacon and eggs behind that fragrant coffee. Unable to stay back, unable to resist the temptation to touch, I finally made my way across the kitchen floor and leaned against his back, winding my arms around to his front. "You're spoiling me," I mumbled into his back.
"I can only hope," he quipped back, a hand falling back briefly to pat my joined hands around his belly and then returning to its work. "Coffee cup's over there by the coffee maker. Help yourself."
I heard the clatter of plates as I poured the dark, steaming brew into my mug and turned to see he had the places already set at the little kitchen table and was putting plates with breakfast down. We sat around the corner of the table from each other, our knees touching - and ate quietly for a while. Then, "What time is your flight from New York?"
"About six this evening," I said in surprise after having to nearly choke back the dismay at the rapidly approaching end to this idyll. "And I need to check out of my hotel in Dover at eleven." Damn, I hadn't wanted to cry again. What was wrong with me? Where were my defenses?
His hand wandered over to mine and grasped it gently. "Let me drive you to New York," he asked softly. "I'll follow you to your hotel and help you check out, then we can take our time getting to the airport."
It was an emotional life-preserver, and a very short-term one at that, but at that point I wasn't choosy. I had found a refuge in his arms, and he'd helped me remember that I was still alive - I didn't want to lose that yet. I nodded, not willing to trust my voice. I felt his hand leave mine and then land, warm and gentle, on my face, thumb brushing aside the tears I couldn't help shedding. "Don't cry, Cat."
He pulled on me until he could lean forward and kiss me, and we both tasted of bacon and eggs and coffee. I looked up into those dark honeyed eyes and swallowed my tears back - for him. I kissed him again gently, and then we went back to quietly sharing our meal.
He took a shower while I cleared the kitchen for him, and we both finished at about the same time. Sydney came down the stairs carrying his cardigan sweater from the day before in his hands despite wearing another heavy sweater himself. "Here," he said, pulling me close and then drawing the sweater over my head and helping me get my arms into it properly, "so you can stay warm for a change."
The sweater smelled of him and was like being in his arms all over again. We embraced for a moment, and then he handed me my purse. He led the way from his house to the narrow highway that went past the Centre and our beach, then let me take the lead. I rubbed my face against his sweater as I drove my rental, and remembered his touch on my face, on my body. Knowing he was directly behind me and yet holding me close kept me from being lonely all that drive.
In the hotel room, he opened my dress bag and started packing the more business-like clothing I'd brought for my time at the Centre while I dug through the drawers and packed the small wheeled suitcase. When I saw him ready to hang my light jacket in the dress bag I stopped him and began pulling at the bottom hem of his sweater. "I'll need that. You'll want this back," I said, wishing I dared keep it.
"No, I don't - at least, not this way," he replied, continuing to hang the jacket in the dress bag and then coming over to me and pulling the sweater's bottom hem back into place. Then he reached into a pocket and drew out a small fold of paper with something heavy and hard inside, and he pressed it into my hand and then closed my fingers around it. "This is my name, my address, my phone number, and," he smiled at me, "my house key. When you decide the time has come to return my sweater, use them - and come back to me, to stay. Promise me."
"This is nuts." I said the words at last. "We don't know each other..."
"We know each other better than most know us," he argued gently, looping his arms around my back loosely. "We understand each other too, which is even more important."
"I have my job... my career..."
"The Centre employs research chemists too. Nothing says you can't continue to do research."
"I could be a thief... a..."
"Right," he snorted with amusement. "A thief who was too honest to try to keep a sweater she liked. And you thought I hadn't noticed..."
"Sydney!" I looked up into his eyes, all my arguments brushed away. "You're crazy!"
"I know," he responded, pulling me even closer. "This is all crazy and it's far less than wise. For what it's worth, I should be shot for having even talked to you yesterday on the beach after your being one of my research subjects - and by rights, I should discard your information immediately and forget I ever met you. I know you well enough now that I'd be able to spot your information from out of all the rest in a heartbeat. I've broken every ethical consideration important to research in the last twelve hours. But I don't care." At last I was in his arms completely again, and his lips were in my hair above my ear. "I don't want to let you go, Cat. "
God help me, but I wanted exactly what he did - to be free to stay with him. But I knew that the cards were stacked against such a thing happening anytime soon. And I was particular in that when I made promises, I was scrupulous about keeping them - what Sydney was asking, I didn't know if I could do in the end.
I leaned in closer, savoring the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his heart beating in his chest beneath my ear. "All I can promise is that someday I'll bring your sweater back myself, Sydney. I just don't know that I can ever promise more than that."
I felt his lips in my hair, and then on my cheek. "I warn you, I can be patient - and insistent. AND I'm more than willing to try to be persuasive too - in case it will help improve my chances," he said in a soft but vehement tone. Then he lowered his lips to mine in a searing kiss that once more stole away my ability to think clearly. God help me but by the time his lips left mine I was aching for more again. He kissed his way back up my chin and purred, "Come back to me, Cat, SOON," into my ear in a tone that I was hard-pressed to refuse. Then he kissed me again.
Somehow we managed to get ourselves calmed down enough to be reasonably presentable as I checked out of my room. And sometime while I was finishing up with that, Sydney waylaid and deflected the Centre transportation that was going to take me to New York. I turned from the front desk and walked over to him as he stood guard over my meager luggage.
The trip to New York flew by, buoyed by the kind of conversation we should have expected to have engaged in long before this point in our relationship - our likes, dislikes, tastes in music and food and art, our interests, hobbies. Our children. We compared our reading rates and chuckled at the idea that we'd found a fellow bookworm. He pulled a CD of Rossini string symphonies to provide a soft background of music we both appreciated to ease the trip along. And I gave him a slip of paper similar to the one he had given me - with my name, my address and my phone number - and then admitted that I'd have given him my house key too, but I didn't have my spare with me.
I was in luck, because he seemed very familiar with the airport and its convoluted arrangement. We found the concourse I needed to be at rather quickly, but then he insisted on parking and walking me into the terminal, standing with me in line at the ticket counter and then again for the security check. The moment I had been dreading was here at long last. "The next time you decide to do a twins' study..." I began.
He pulled me into his arms roughly and held me more tightly than ever before. "You'll be at the top of the list of research subjects I call," he growled in a low and distressed tone. "And the next time you decide to take a vacation..." he began.
"I'll consider Delaware to be my best bet," I responded and then stretched up so that our lips could meet in one last, long, deep, fiery kiss that would have to last us both for a very long time. Then I was going through security, and then separated from him by machinery and walls.
I wore his sweater all the way home, breathing in deeply of his spicy scent and then leaning my head back and reliving in my mind the amazing events of the day before. When I got home, there was a single message on my machine. It was he, his intoxicating accent heavier than usual with his emotions:
"My house is empty, Cat. Come home to me." I spend the next hour weeping and breathing deeply of the scented sweater.
The next day, Julia made a point of remarking how relaxed I seemed, how rested - how actually taking time off agreed with me. And what a nice sweater I'd gotten as a memento.
She'll never know that I spent my first hour in my lab looking at my calendar, wondering when I could get away with asking for another week off.
Wondering what Delaware looked like in winter.
