21

Heteropaternal superfecundation.

The two words were the only coherent thought in Miss Parker’s brain. The whole concept behind it, though, seemed so far away, so unrealistic, that she was unable to properly grasp it. Somewhere at the edges of her conscious, not yet obscured by the fog that seemed to waver around her brain, she heard Jarod, trying to make things easier for her. He gave her numbers and facts, cases and examples. He obviously offered to her, what always helped him come to terms with things that he felt were out of his reach: Science, statistics, explanations.

Miss Parker wasn’t interested in numbers. Had never been.

She had been working for years to get her strong emotions under control and had succeeded by repressing everything but the anger she knew was essential to her being.

She didn’t want to do that anymore. She wanted to sink to the floor right there and curl into a tight ball of despair.

Shouldn’t she be relieved that Lyle was only her half-brother? That they shared less DNA than she had feared? That they were only a very rare case of twins born by the same mother who were fathered by two different men?

Why was the only thing she could think of the fact that she had been living a lie and Lyle hadn’t? And how devastated must her father have been when he had realized that they had given away the wrong baby? That they had kept the unwanted daughter who wasn’t his and that he had been deprived of his son?

Did he even know? Was he aware of the fact that not all was lost? That not all of his family members were as worthless as she must be to him? Miss Parker knew that blood meant everything to her father... Why had he let her stay after all? Why hadn’t he given her away after her mother had died and couldn’t protect her anymore?

A gentle shake of her arm snapped her back into reality, into her dimly lit kitchen in which she stood, facing Jarod whom she had been looking right through.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, stroking her forearm, but her body felt so numb that she couldn’t feel his tenderness, just see his motions.

“This is... a little too much.”

Shouldn’t she be happy that Sydney was her father? That her parents were a gentle and loving mother and a caring altruistic man instead of all the evil she knew Mister Parker represented? Why was she so angry that the identity she had worked so hard to assume was not hers but only her brother’s? Had everything felt that wrong because of that? Had she somehow realized in her subconscious all along that she did not truly belong to the Parker clan? At least not in a way that mattered to her father?

Her hair fell around her face, tousled, the sheets had wrapped themselves around her legs and from time to time she gave an uncomfortable shrug as if trying to get them off.

Jarod silently approached her and disentangled her from the sheets, arranged them comfortably around her shoulders and smoothed her hair back from her face. Her face looked pale in the moonlight and her slightly opened lips gave a sharp, dark contrast. Her naked leg that he usually found arousing now only seemed to give her vulnerability away.

This was exactly what he had wanted to protect her from. The knowledge that her life had been built on lies. With all the deceit going on at the Centre her parentage had always been constant to her and he had known that taken the basis of her identity from her might ruin her. And maybe it had.

She had looked distant through all of his explanations of the scientific possibility that fraternal twins could have two different fathers. It was very rare and only happened in about 2 or 3 per cent of all twin couples but it was still possible. And it had happened in Catherine’s case. He had come across it in the file he had also found Miss Parker’s DNA test in. Obviously in a recent routine check at the Centre somebody had noticed that hers and Lyle’s DNA were too different to be those of twins so questions had been asked and tests had been run.

He slid into bed next to Miss Parker and lay there in silence, not touching her. She had been distant ever since his revelation and had soon fallen asleep, her back to him. He knew that she needed time to herself and that she would not react well to being touched by him now. He turned off the light and stared into the darkness of her bedroom.

It was the first time he was staying and in his very short and illegal visits to her home he hadn’t had the time to look around.

When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light the moon cast across the floor, he could make out the windows-seat again. There was a paperback novel face down that he had noticed in passing was some kind of crime fiction, the title displayed in bold red letters on the cover. There were more books in a bookcase downstairs. Up here there was only the wide bed, a huge wardrobe about which he still couldn’t figure out how it could accommodate her extensive collection of clothes and a dressing table on which stood a bottle of perfume and a case that must contain her make-up. What was very obvious about her home was, that everything was in its place. With no knick-knack around to speak of, it looked more like a hotel-room or a rented apartment than a house someone had lived in as long as Miss Parker had. There was a single picture of her with her mother, but that was about the only personal item he could spot.

Why had he never realized how this home gave an impression of loneliness? Tasteful and expensive loneliness, but loneliness still.

He reached out to gently rest his hand on Miss Parker’s back. He remembered her tender ways with Amanda and how he had found her holding the baby. She pretended not to need anyone, but she was as human as everyone else was and she couldn’t fool him.

Inching closer, he gently pressed his lips into her neck and inhaled the scent of her.

Feeling another little jolt of guilt for his past actions, he ran his finger over her open palm were the outline of the angry red scar was still visible in the half-darkness.

Someone would have to put a stop to all of this madness.

He thought back to his conversation with Sydney earlier that evening. The older man had sounded more furious than Jarod could recall having ever heard him, demanding to know how Jarod had found out. He hadn’t even once asked why Jarod had told her, maybe because he knew how important his origins were to Jarod, or maybe because he knew that it was wrong to keep the truth from his daughter.

Jarod had told Sydney that the Centre didn’t know, that he had nothing to fear anymore and that he could arrange for Miss Parker and Sydney to meet far away from the Centre so they could talk things over, but Sydney had rudely declined, asking him not to embarrass himself.

“If we’re smart, we will deny this has ever happened,” he had said and with that, had hung up.

What was wrong?

Sydney stood by the window of his living-room and stared out into the garden where the moonlight was reflected on the rippling surface of the pond he had created last summer in an attempt to find a pastime that didn’t involve books and being inside a stuffy study.

His hand that held back the heavy curtains he drew at night was shaking. The image of the very kind Catherine kept flashing at him in his head, always blurring into the face of Miss Parker, the stony expression she always wore right in place.

He grabbed the fabric harder, thinking of the previous afternoon, of the look on her face, the moment when her features had softened, revealing a person that could have just been Catherine.

He dropped the curtain and walked out of the living-room into his study, the one place in the house where he felt most at home. He went past the ceiling-high bookcases and rounded the heavy oak desk, sinking into the comfortable leather-chair behind it. His fingertips brushed the framed photograph that stood on the desktop and touched the cold glass.

Catherine.

“Catherine.”

He sat down next to her on the couch as she had indicated and forced himself to look at the little girl’s face. She was beautiful and there was already something of her mother in her eyes.

“How does your husband feel about her?” he asked without preamble, then regretted his words immediately.

She turned towards him with an intent stare. “He is never to know, do you understand?”

He did- although it felt like a knife carving though his body.

“What are you going to name her?” Sydney asked awkwardly.

Catherine traced the baby’s face gently with her forefinger, but when she looked up, her expression betrayed the tenderness.

“Whatever her first name will be, remember she will always have to be Miss Parker to you.”

“Don’t worry,” Sydney replied evenly, while her words tore at his insides.

Their old confidence seemed to seep away and he knew he had to ask before she became distant enough to ignore his words.

“Are you sure she is mine?” he asked, huskily, looking down at the child’s half-closed eyes.

“She looks like you...” Catherine whispered despite herself, then nodded.“You know the Centre’s scientific progress. I had a test run. You should have never found out.”

Her expression hardened, she looked like business. It was this look on her face that Sydney would always remember.

It was that look that he had received from Miss Parker when she had returned from boarding school after years of absence and his heart had seemed to freeze in its place. And when she had begun to talk, when he had watched her go about her work every day, he had realized that she had become all that he had seen in Catherine that fateful day.

It had destroyed their relationship and forbid him to ever be close to his daughter who was what her mother had foreseen she would always be to him-Miss Parker.

Jarod woke to kisses that were planted downwards from his jaw done to his collarbone. Still groggy with sleep, he gave a soft groan and received a laugh in return. His eyes fluttered open to the image of Miss Parker who was next to him, her hand moving from his chest down to his stomach. The memory of the previous night’s stony silence and her absentmindedness came flying back at him and he was confused for a moment at how her mood had changed.

He already felt his reaction to her, returning her hungry kisses. Being rather inexperienced for obvious reasons, Jarod still hadn’t learned how to control himself when actually something else was on his mind and so the thought of her previously rather desolate state of mind just drifted away from him and returned only when they were done and Miss Parker swung her legs over the side of the bed without looking back at him.

He grabbed her arm just before she could leave and pulled her back.

“Now what was that all about?”

“Now what?” she replied in a clipped tone. “I felt like it that was all. And now I am going to take a shower. You’re coming?” She winked and he knew instantly that she was playacting.

“I know what you’re trying to do but it won’t work,” he told her sternly. “We were far beyond the point were you were trying to make me believe you were a cold bitch who doesn't care, remember?”

Her face fell and for a moment he wondered whether he had been too hard on her.

“You know me too well, Jarod. And that scares me.”

He searched her face for signs of sarcasm but found genuine fear.

“So what do you think I’ll do with that knowledge, huh?” he asked softly. “You have to learn to trust me finally.”

She gave him a long look that melted when he held the stare and then looked away, pressing one hand to her heart.

“Do you think Sydney will talk to me again?” she asked in a firm voice that was betrayed by the expression on her face.

Jarod was glad that he had managed to break the old routine she had too easily fallen back into. Playing the non-caring femme fatale came far easier to her, than dealing with her own feelings which she finally had to understand required much more strength and bravery than masking them.

“I am sure he will. He was just surprised, Parker. Once he has given it some thought I am sure you two will be able to work it out.”

He gently pulled her closer and enjoyed her warmth, pulling the sheets back over her.

“Promise me you’ll always be honest with me from now on,” he asked. There was a momentary silence, then she replied: “I will try, Jarod. I will try.”

It was picked up after the first ring. No wonder. He practically lived at the Centre.

“Mister Parker, there is something I would like to tell you...”

Sydney caught his reflection in the window and was shocked for the briefest of moments: His face was harder than he had ever seen it.

... to be continued ...