Light from Her Mirror (Mirrors Don't Lie Book 3) (26 page)

He
looked first at Makenna, then at Kenzie. There was an odd softness in his voice
as he said, “Hello, Lady Girl. It’s been a long time.”

“Not
long enough.” Kenzie’s voice was cold and sharp.

“K-Kenzie?”
Makenna asked. “Kenzie, who- who is this man?”

The
air crackled around them. The man’s eyes glittered expectantly as he waited for
the dark haired woman to answer the question. Kenzie assessed him with cool
green eyes, while Makenna stood to the side, frowning in confusion.

“Kenzie?”
she asked again.

“Sorry.
I’m just not sure how to introduce him. Richard Adams? Eddie O’Connell? Murray Beckerman?
Ronald McWhorter? Leon Reese? Or should I just call him his real name, Joseph
Mandarino?” Kenzie’s voice remained cold and steady as she said, “Makenna, meet
your father.”

Too
stunned to even speak, Makenna stared at the man in surprise. The only photos
she had ever seen of their father were taken well over twenty years ago. Intellectually,
she knew he would look different now, but she had not expected the years to
change him so drastically.

In
the pictures, he had appeared tall and handsome. This man was smaller than she
expected, barely five foot eight after his shoulders stooped inward. He was
thin, almost to the point of being gaunt. Instead of the dark wavy hair in the
photographs, this man’s hair was as much gray as it was blond. The thinning
strands were long enough to pull back and hold with a leather band. A
mostly-gray beard hid much of his face, but what she could see of his face was
pale and drawn. And his eyes. His dark, intelligent eyes were best described as
weary.

Those
eyes were flitting between the two women now, noting the similarities and
differences.

Quite
out of the blue, he began to ramble. “Have you two ever considered zygosity
testing? The science of gemellology wasn’t well refined when you were born in
‘88, and of course testing wasn’t readily available for another ten years, but
I often wondered if you were polar body twins or, in fact, monozygotic twins.
Here in the United States, roughly only 30% of spontaneously conceived twins
are monozygotic. Except for the hair color, which was just a wisp of a curl
when you were born, we had trouble telling you two apart, which would lead one
to believe you were, in fact, monozygotic, or identical. However, as you became
toddlers, there were a few differences in the two of you. Not much, mind you,
just a scant handful of features in minute capacity, but it gave thought to the
notion you might possibly be polar body twins, or, in lay-men’s terms,
half-identical. This phenomenon happens when the ovum splits in two before
fertilization. Each half is then fertilized by a separate sperm, so the twins
share 75% of their DNA, as opposed to-”  

“Stop
it!” Kenzie hissed. Her low voice was filled with such venom it drew two sets
of startled eyes her way. “You haven’t seen me in eight years. You haven’t seen
Makenna - Tamara- in twenty-three years. And the first question you think to
ask is whether or not we’ve considered some sort of scientific test? All you
can do is spew technical terms at us? Just stop it!”

Joseph
Mandarino stared at the ranting woman before him for a full ten seconds. He
finally blinked, his eyes clearing as he visibly pulled himself from an
intellectual trance. As his gaze sharpened with focus, he looked first at
Kenzie, then Makenna. Despite his earlier observation, it was as if he saw them
for the first time.

“Lady
Girl, is that really you? You’ve become such a beautiful woman…”

In
spite of herself, Kenzie’s eyes filled. Praise from her father was so rare.

When
he turned his gaze upon Makenna, it was Joseph’s eyes that filled with mist.
“Tamara? Is that you? I-I thought I’d lost you forever!”

Makenna
huddled closer against her sister, clutching her hand.

With
an anguished wail, Joseph dropped to his knees and buried his head in his
hands. His daughters watched in stunned silence as he shook his head from side
to side and moaned aloud. “How did it go so horribly wrong? How did this
happen?”

Kenzie
finally went to him. He was her father, after all, and he was obviously
distraught. She touched his shoulder with light fingers. “D-Dad?” After so many
years, the epithet seemed foreign on her tongue.

His
words came out muffled through his palms. “We planned it out so carefully.” He
lifted his head suddenly and grabbed Kenzie’s wrist. His eyes held a desperate
light as he insisted frantically, “We just wanted to protect you girls.”

His
words were so ominous. She was not sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask.
“Wh-What, Dad? What are you talking about?”

Joseph
stumbled to his feet. It struck Kenzie that her father had aged in the eight
years since she had seen him last. His entire body seemed to have shrunk, curling
into itself. Never a big man, his shoulders were now hunched, his spine
stooped. Even without the graying hair, he looked far older than a man yet to
see his sixtieth birthday.

When
he did not answer right away, Kenzie sighed. Her father’s attention span had
never been long, and she wondered if this would be yet another time when his
brilliant mind wandered away, chasing a new line of thought. Without a word,
Joseph walked past his daughters, around a stack of boxes and odds and ends,
disappearing behind the brick support beams that dominated the middle of the
old basement.

Kenzie
threw a helpless shrug to her sister before scrambling to follow.

Beyond
the beams, a small cot was set up along the outside wall, under another set of
low windows. As her father sank onto the rumbled covers, Kenzie realized this
was where he was living, in this dark, dank basement.

After
a brief hesitation, she settled on the opposite end of the bed, motioning for
Makenna to take the only chair in the room. Oddly enough, it was an upholstered
Queen Anne wing chair, covered in rich burgundy brocade. If not for the gash
running along one arm, the chair would be upstairs in the art gallery. A quick
glance around noted other cast-offs that gave an air of sophistication to the
stark living environment: a large canvas print in an ornate gold-leaf frame, an
exquisite blown-glass sculpture with one crippling chipped point, a bone china
vase rendered useless by a crack down its side, a finely carved side table
currently serving as a pantry of sorts.

Determined
not to let her father -or herself- get sidetracked, Kenzie cleared her throat
and started to speak. Before she could utter her rebuke, Joseph surprised her
by speaking first.

“We
thought we were protecting you.”

Kenzie
frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“We
knew we were in danger. It was just a matter of time before they came after us.
We decided-”

“Before
who came after you?”

“People
with secrets to keep.” It was a flimsy answer, brushed aside with a dismissive
wave. His mind was following another path. “We had to protect our girls the
best way we knew how. We mapped out a plan, a safety net should the worst
happen.” Oddly enough, they understood his cryptic tale, even when his voice
faltered and he added, “And then one day, it did.”

“Why
was I left behind?” Makenna finally came out of her shocked stupor. She could
no longer keep the tortured question inside. She had to know the truth. “Why
did you abandon me in a church in San Antonio?”

The
surprise was evident in his eyes. When Joseph stared at his auburn haired
daughter with unblinking eyes, she could see the gears churning in his mind. He
finally shuttered his eyes and let out a long, weary sigh filled with sadness.
He mumbled something that sounded like ‘My poor Maggie’ but neither daughter
could be certain of what he said. They waited for him to compose himself and
continue.

“When
we found out they were closing in on us, we left immediately. We went to San
Antonio, the first stop on our planned route. After two weeks, we thought it
was safe to move forward. We were certain no one had followed us.” A deep frown
burrowed into his forehead. “Lady, you and I went on to Louisiana. Maggie and
Tamara would wait two more weeks and follow.” His voice broke as he faltered
with his story. “But they never came.” The words were pure heartache. “I waited
and waited. I thought… maybe she would come later. Maybe she would meet up with
me in Denver. Or maybe in Wyoming. By Utah, I knew she wasn’t coming.”

Joseph’s
voice was filled with such intense misery, such sadness, there was no doubting
his sincerity. But it really explained nothing.

“But
why-”

“I
don’t know.” He cut Makenna off before she could finish. “I don’t know why your
mother left you. She must have known she was being followed. She must have
thought leaving you at a church was the only way to keep you safe.”

“She
was right,” Kenzie said quietly. “She was killed in a car accident there in San
Antonio. Orchestrated, I’m sure, by Bernard Franks.”

Joseph
flinched, as if the very words stabbed into his soul. Sorrow etched his weary
face and filled his eyes with tears. “My poor, dear Maggie,” he whimpered. Lost
to grief, he dropped his head into his hands once again, absorbing the
irrefutable fact that his beloved wife was dead. Even after all these years,
even after knowing it in his heart, the news was hard to hear.

After
a moment he lifted his head and looked at Makenna. “But you were safe,” he said
with conviction. “She protected you.”

Tears
streamed down Makenna’s cheeks as she nodded. “Yes.”

“She
loved you both so,” Joseph insisted. “We both did.”

Why,
then, was it the first time Kenzie could remember hearing the words fall from
his lips? In spite of the tears wetting her own cheeks, in spite of the rush of
warmth she felt at his proclamation, a chunk of ice remained frozen in her
heart. In a cold voice, Kenzie asked flatly, “Who was she, Dad? Who was
that
woman
that raised me? And why did you let me believe she was my mother?”

He
had the grace to look ashamed. He even hung his head, unable to look her in the
eye. Eyes that looked so much like Maggie’s.

“Her
name was Ellen, and she was my assistant. She was as innocent as you were, as
innocent as your mother, but she was caught up in the madness just the same.”
He exhaled wearily, his entire body deflating along with the air pushing from
his chest.  

After
a long pause, goaded on by Kenzie’s furious glare, he elaborated. “She came to
the house that evening, warning us of a conversation she overheard. They were
coming for us… they had guns… We had no choice but to take her with us. She was
young and scared and in as much danger as we were.”

“Fine,
so you had to bring her along to keep her safe. You didn’t have to take her as
a substitute wife!”

Her
father did not even look guilty. He merely looked sad. “That’s not what
happened. Not, at least, until many years later. By then, I knew for certain
your mother was gone. And Ellen… Ellen had been through the worst of times with
me, she had cared for my daughter when I was in no shape to… I never loved
Ellen, but I depended on her. She was a good mother to you.”

Kenzie
jumped to her feet, staring at her father incredulously. “What! You thought
that
woman
was a good mother to me? She was cold and indifferent to me. She was
verbally and emotionally abusive and she made me wish I had never been born!”

Joseph
raised startled eyes to his ranting daughter, clearly surprised by not only her
outburst, but by her very words. In that instant, Kenzie realized her father -
her absent-minded, scatter-brained, genius father- had never even noticed the
relationship between the two females in his life. Lost in his own world of pain
and brilliance, he had been oblivious to what happened around him. And why
should she be surprised? In so many ways, he was isolated by his own
intelligence.

“Oh,
my little Ladybug, I never knew,” he said sorrowfully.

“No,
you always had your head buried in your books, or your computer, or your long
string of numbers.”

“I’ve
always been absorbed in my work. When I lost your mother and your sister, I was
devastated. My work was my therapy. It was the only way I could deal with the
pain. But I suppose I never even noticed what was happening right under my
nose,” Joseph admitted, realizing that fact twenty-odd years too late.

“Is
that why you forgot Christmas when I was eight?” All these years later, the
pain should have been gone, sealed over by the passage of time. It wasn’t.

“I’m
sorry, Lady Girl,” he said sadly.

“We
actually decorated a tree that year. She even helped me. On Christmas Eve, we
made hot chocolate and we waited for you to come home so we could drive around
town and look at the Christmas lights. But you didn’t come home that night, or
the next one.” There was accusation in her voice. “It was the day after
Christmas before I got to open my one and only gift. A coat.”

As
she listened to her sister’s sad tale, tears streamed down Makenna’s face.
Growing up in the Reagan household, ‘Christmas’ was an entire season, not just
one day, and was filled with more gifts than any one person could ever need.

“Odd
tradition, that,” Joseph murmured. As a far-away light came into his eyes and
he began to ramble, Kenzie knew his intelligence had stolen him away again.
“For thousands of years, evergreens have been used in winter festivals, both pagan
and Christian. Early Romans used fir trees to decorate their temples during
solstice at the feast of Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, the god of
agriculture. As early as the 16th century, the Christmas tree -similar to what
we know today- was introduced in Germany. Protestant reformer Martin Luther is
credited with adding the tradition of candles, or lights, to the tree. It was
said one evening he-”

“Dad.”
With a firm voice and a touch of her hand on his knee, Kenzie drew him back
into the conversation. “Why are you living in a basement?”