Page 20 of Mirror Image

Mary

Five years ago

I’d been sitting in the waiting room for nearly three hours when my mother came bursting through the door.

“Mary! Oh, thank God!” she cried, pulling me into her arms the instant I was on my feet. “Thank God you’re all right!”

“Mom!” I gasped, feeling my ribs contract in her viselike grip. “Mom, please! You’re hurting me!”

She let go of me abruptly and took a step back, still gripping my upper arms as she scanned me from head to toe and back again. When she was convinced that I truly was unharmed, she let go, wiping at the tears running down her cheeks.

“Oh, baby, I’m just so . . . relieved,” she whispered with a sniff.

Then we heard my father yelling from down the hall.

“Terry? Terry, where are you?” he called out.

“Doug, we’re here,” she responded loud enough for everyone on the floor to hear.

When he, too, came flying in, making a beeline for me, I held up my palms. “Don’t. Please. I’m fine, Dad. Really, not a scratch on me.”

He stopped just in front of me, both hands running through his hair at the same time as he looked up at the ceiling and blinked back tears of his own. After a long moment, he pulled me into his arms and just held onto me as I listened to the muffled sound of his heart beating through the wall of his chest.

Wow, they really were scared!

I looked up into his face. “I’m sorry for what I said before I left,” I whispered, blinking back tears of my own. “I didn’t mean it—”

“I know, baby,” he murmured, pulling my head back to him and stroking my hair the way he did when I was a little girl.

At last he loosened his grip after a few minutes. “Honey, what happened?” he asked.

I didn’t really know—everything had happened so fast. And I had to walk a very thin line. If I told the whole truth, there was a real chance they’d decide Sam needed to be put on psychiatric lockdown for her own safety. Maybe she’d been impulsive, sure, but she wasn’t dangerous. And I wasn’t about to lose my sister—not now that I’d finally found her. So I told the police the same version I told the nurses: a softened version of what happened, something that didn’t involve the words “jumped out of a moving car.” It wasn’t exactly a lie . . . just the version least likely to get her locked away.

“The car door—it wasn’t latched all the way, and I-I don’t know, I somehow tripped the locks with my elbow. It was one of those perfect-storm things, and she just sort of . . . fell out of the car.”

What little color had remained in my mother’s face drained in front of me. “While it was moving?” she gasped.

“Yeah. But I had just driven into a construction zone, so I was going way slower than I could’ve been,” I explained, digging deeper into my alternate version of events.

“But you’re okay?” my father confirmed.

I nodded again. “Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. I didn’t even want the cops to call you, but they said they had to since the car’s registered in your name.”

They looked at each other, then back at me, and I had the distinct impression that they’d spent time discussing how to handle this. How to handle me.

“Mary,” Mom began softly, “we’re sorry about how things went this afternoon. You just . . . it was just such a shock, finding out about Sam. It’s going to take a little time for us to get used to the idea of her, you know?”

I’d spent the last three hours kicking myself over this. I hadn’t done any of us any favors by ambushing them earlier. But here was an opportunity. I was certain of it.

“I’m so sorry too—about how I sprang all this on you . . . and about what I said.”

There were fresh tears in her eyes. “Mary, you know that we could not possibly love you any more if you’d been our biological child. I’d do anything to keep you safe and happy. So . . . if you want us to spend time getting to know Sam with you, of course we’ll do that. We’d do anything for you.”

I flung myself into her arms once more and held on tight.

It was another hour before the doctor came to find us in the waiting room, still wearing his surgical scrubs and cap. He looked tired as he approached us.

“Are you Mr. and Mrs. Kinski?” he asked my parents.