The Memory of All That (21 page)

Chapter 43

David got to his feet, and taking both of Martie’s hands, he drew her up out of her chair and into his arms. Her tears dampened his shirt as she wept silently. After a couple of minutes, Martie put distance between them. “Let me finish telling you,” she said. She squeezed his hands then released them and sat back down in her seat. David went back to his chair.

“When I woke up in the hospital, I found out I had been unconscious for two months. My husband and child were dead and buried. I had no one and nothing. The bank had foreclosed on the house. With me not able to cooperate, the bankruptcy couldn’t proceed. Finally, everything was sold—all the furniture and paintings and everything else Greg and I had bought during our marriage.

“I was able to collect my clothes and personal items. All of Tommy’s furniture and toys were sold at auction along with the rest of the furnishings. I was able to keep some of his books and a couple of toys. Those few things and the pictures of him are all that I have.” She thought about the fact she no longer had a right to Jonathan, either, and her eyes filled with tears once again.

“During that last day, when everything was being auctioned, the two men, the ‘goons’, showed up again.”

“What did they want? With Greg dead you’d think they’d have given up.”

“Not a chance. They were convinced Greg must have had some life insurance that would come to me. They made it plain I still owed Greg’s debt. That’s when I really got scared.”

“Did you tell the police about it?”

“Yes, I did, but they didn’t sound like they could do anything about it.”

David swore under his breath. “What did you do?”

“For all intents and purposes, I disappeared. I took back my maiden name, Kelley, and started using my real first name, Martha, instead of Martie, for any official business. The bankruptcy went through under my married name, so when that was over, I was free of debt. I had nothing, but I owed nothing.”

“That’s something, I guess. Lots of people have to start over from the beginning,” David said.

“Yes, that’s what I thought, too. I got a new job. My old company held mine as long as they could but finally hired someone else to take my place. I scraped up enough money for a month’s rent and found the apartment at Mrs. Oberle’s house. I found a new job quick enough—I was good at what I did and had excellent references. I was a rep for a big firm that sold hotel supplies all over the country. You name it, I sold it. It kept me on the road, or on an airplane, but I didn’t mind.

“I was doing well enough. I kept busy with my work so I wouldn’t have to think about the past. I had no friends and didn’t want any. They might ask me about my life, and I couldn’t talk about it. You’re the first person I’ve been able to tell all this to.”

“So how do Marnie and Ray come into the story?” David asked.

Martie sighed. “I’ll get to them in a minute.

“I hadn’t been living at Mrs. Oberle’s very long when my father died. That was something else I added to my list of things to put out of my mind. If I didn’t, I would be overwhelmed with grief. I went through his funeral closed off from the world.

“Luckily, he had made all the plans years before when he found out the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, so I didn’t have to deal with that. A few weeks later I received a letter from his attorney. In it was a letter my father had written to me before his memory got too bad. It told me about my mother and Marnie.”

David leaned forward, fascinated with the story.

“He told me my mother’s name was Pamela, something I hadn’t known before then, and he told me about my identical twin sister. He said although the marriage was a disaster, I was a blessing to him and that he loved me dearly.” She touched a tissue to her eyes before continuing.

“There was a big age difference between him and Pamela, he said, and he ought to have thought it over more before marrying her. They were thrilled to have twin daughters, and each named one after an aunt of theirs. I was named Martha after an aunt of his, and my sister was named Marnetta for one of my mother’s aunts, but we immediately became Martie and Marnie.

“We weren’t very old when they divorced, maybe three or so. When they split up, neither of them wanted to see the other one again, so they split us up, too. That was a terrible plan,” she said angrily, “separating us that way. Terrible not to know your identical twin all your life.”

“Yes, yes it was,” David murmured.

“David, what was Marnie’s maiden name? Pamela’s name? Was it Kelley?”

“No, Kelley would have rung a bell with me when I heard your name if that had been it.” He closed his eyes and thought a minute. “Caldwell. Pamela and Marnie Caldwell.”

“My father’s letter said Pamela left him for another man, and a few months later he gave permission for her new husband to adopt Marnie. I guess he did.

“I don’t know what happened then, because Doctor Means said Marnie was about six when he first started seeing her, and Alice said she was about that age when they moved in across the hall.” Martie smiled for the first time that day. “You don’t know how hard it is not to say I and me instead of she and her, since I was sort of Marnie when they told me all that.”

David chuckled.

“Anyway, Dad’s letter said he wanted me to know I had a mother and an identical twin sister somewhere in the country, although he had no idea where they had gone. I guess Caldwell died, or they got a divorce, too.”

“I guess so. I never heard anything about a husband or ex-husband in connection with Pamela,” David said.

“So now we are coming to the part about Marnie and Ray,” Martie said.

“Yes, I want to know how they found you and what they wanted from you.”

“About six months ago, I had been working on a big sale to a hotel in Los Angeles, and I was hurrying across the lobby. I needed to catch a plane, and I was in a rush when a man called to me. He said, ‘Hey there. What are you doing in Los Angeles? You didn’t mention it the other night.’

“I told him he must have the wrong person, that I didn’t know him. He stared at me like I was crazy, so I pulled out a business card and gave it to him and told him I had to catch a plane and left. After I got settled on the plane, I was disappointed I hadn’t taken the time to question him. I thought then that he might have known my sister. I kicked myself for passing up the opportunity.”

“Was it . . .?”

She nodded. “Yes, it was Ray.”

Chapter 44

“And he went back home and told Marnie he saw someone who looked just like her,” David surmised.

“Yes, and she might have known already she had a twin sister,” Martie said.

“If she didn’t, the fact that someone out there looked enough like her to be her twin fit into their plans, whatever they were. What happened next?” David asked. “When did they get in touch with you? And what did they want you to do?”

“A few weeks later, Marnie called me. We talked a while. I was so happy to have been contacted by my twin. I had been thinking about my father’s letter and wondering how in the world I would go about finding her, and here she was calling me. She said her friend saw me and told her about it. I’m pretty sure I’m the one who mentioned knowing I had an identical twin sister somewhere, so I don’t know for sure if she knew about having a twin before that conversation or not. We talked for a few minutes, and she said she would call me back so we could talk some more.
She called back a week or two later. She said she had a plan. She wondered if I’d like to switch places, like the girls in the movie did, to see if people could tell the difference. She said it would be fun.”

“Huh,” David said.

“I didn’t think it was a very ‘fun’ sounding thing to do, but I didn’t tell her just like that. I said I was busy working but that I hoped we could meet some day just to visit and compare notes about our lives.

“She said she would tell me all about her life, that it would make it easier for me to pretend to be her. That’s when I told her I didn’t think I wanted to do that. She said for me to think about it, and she kept insisting it would be a fun thing to do. I took down her name and phone number so I could call her, ‘if you change your mind,’ she said.”

“So they were planning something involving switching places,” David mused. “That must have been the paper the Phoenix police said they found when they called me. But by that time, Marnie’s cell phone had been turned off, probably so we couldn’t track her with it. The police traced who the phone number belonged to and that led to me, since I paid the bill for the phone. That’s how they found me.”

Martie continued her story. “By then I had come down with the flu and was very sick. I was in bed for days, and I was just getting back on my feet when Marnie and Ray showed up. At first I was absolutely thrilled to meet my sister. I would never have believed the two of us could look so much alike, especially not having been raised together.”

“You certainly are. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t recognize you weren’t my wife.”

Martie looked down at her lap, picking some imaginary lint, when she spoke. “Well, I gather you and Marnie hadn’t shared a bedroom in some months. Maybe the memories faded somewhat.”

“That’s true, but still . . .” David looked discomfited with the idea he had thought this woman was his wife.

“If you had no idea there was a twin in the picture, how could you have guessed it wasn’t Marnie who came to your door?” Martie reasoned.

“So when they showed up at
your
door, what did they say their plan was?” David asked, changing the focus off his wrong assumption.

“At first we just visited. I told her I had been married but that my husband had been killed in a car wreck. I didn’t—couldn’t—go into details. She told me she was married and had a son. She didn’t go into detail either. She said it was important she be absent from her family for a few days, but it was equally important that people believe she was still there. It was a business matter, she said.”

“They offered me ten thousand dollars to pretend to be her. When I said no, they raised it to twenty thousand. She told me you didn’t share a bedroom, so I didn’t have to worry about that, and she said a nanny cared for her son, so I wouldn’t have anything to do but lie around. I could use her car and her credit cards to get anything I wanted, plus the money they’d pay me. I still said no.

“And then Ray said, ‘We’re going to have to insist,’ and he grabbed me. I struggled. That’s when the chair got turned over and the papers scattered. He held me, and Marnie pulled a hypodermic needle out of her purse and gave me a shot of something. Everything was fading to black when Ray carried me to their car. I think I remember the lamp hitting the floor as he carried me out the door.”

“My God, they were not only serious, they had planned it so thoroughly they came prepared with something to put you out,” David marveled. “Do you remember anything after that?”

“Just vague memories, ones that may not be accurate. I remember sort of waking up and being in a small airplane. Ray and Marnie were discussing what they were going to do, and Ray was saying, ‘We’ll just put her out there. She can see town from there, and she’ll find her way down. It isn’t hard, for heaven’s sake. Stop worrying about her.’ When they saw I was awake, Marnie gave me another shot.

“The next thing I remember was being in some sort of vehicle, driving on a bumpy road. I woke up in a grove of trees in the park, and you know the story from there.”

Chapter 45

They talked for hours. Marnie went over every step of her abduction several times, hoping to remember some detail, something she overheard, that might give David a clue about Marnie and Ray’s next step.

When she had repeated her story several times, she talked about her earlier life.

“I had a good childhood. Daddy was a good father, and although I wished I had a mother like most of my friends, I didn’t really suffer because I didn’t have one. Several of my schoolmates were divorced, so it didn’t seem unusual to have only one parent. My best friend’s parents were divorced, and she lived with her mother. She envied me because I had a father.”

They talked about her marriage to Greg and how different he turned out to be than the man she thought she had married.

“When I found out my parents were divorced, I spent a lot of time thinking about marriage, and I wondered if that was what had happened to my parents. Maybe they married thinking the other one was someone completely different than who they turned out to be.”

“After all I’ve been through, I can say I should never have married Marnie, although I am thankful for Jonathan. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

“And Marnie wasn’t all bad. She was kind and sympathetic when my father and uncle died and I was under so much stress trying to run the business.” He looked at Martie and smiled. “The way she was then reminds me of you, except she was only that way for a while, and you’re that way all the time. She was Marnie with a little touch of Martie in her personality. You are Martie with a little touch of Marnie from time to time.”

Martie shuddered. “I hope I’m not too much like her. From what I’ve heard, I’d rather be me, all Martie.”

“I’m glad you’re Martie, too,” Davie said, passion exuding from his voice.

They looked away from each other, both realizing the delicate situation they were in.

“I’m getting hungry,” David said, standing and stretching. “Let’s go to the coffee shop and get something to eat.”

Readily agreeing, Martie fixed her hair and makeup, and they went downstairs. After ordering, they sat silently, thinking about all that had occurred in the last twenty-four hours. So many questions were still unanswered, and their lives were even more scrambled than when they thought she was Marnie.

Finally, Martie asked, “So, where do we go from here?”

David started to reach for her hands and then withdrew his to his lap.

“I think you need to come back home with me.”

“But I have no place there. I’m not your wife.” Her voice almost caught at the thought. “And I need to get back to my own life. I need to see if I still have a job.”

“I’ll tell you two reasons you need to come back with me. One is those two goons could still be looking for you. I don’t like the idea of them finding you. I don’t like it at all.”

“They haven’t found me yet, and it’s been a while.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t still looking.”

Martie thought about that as she ate. “What’s the second reason?”

“Jonathan. Remember when I thought you were Marnie and I told you I wouldn’t let you hurt him again? Well, I still won’t. You can’t just drop out of his life . . . like his mother did.”

Martie put down her sandwich and wiped her mouth. The thought of leaving Jonathan was tearing at her heart.

“The thought of losing Jonathan is almost as bad as the hurt I felt when Tommy was killed.”

“You won’t lose him, I promise.”

“But he is Marnie’s child, not mine, and she will have something to say about how close I can be to him.”

“When I find Marnie, she is in so much hot water she will have no option but to do as I say about Jonathan or anything else.”

“Can you bear to put her in jail? Can you really send the mother of your child to jail?”

David pushed his plate away and crossed his arms on the table. “I don’t know. I thought I could . . . before you. I was filled with so much anger because of how she had treated her son and me. Her running away with Ray and them out to get rich on the downfall of Barrett’s Enterprises was just too much to ever forgive. Now, I feel . . . I don’t know . . . not forgiving, exactly, but not as filled with thoughts of revenge.”

“I think I’ve changed, too. All these months filled with sadness and pain, I couldn’t let go of the anger I felt for Greg. I blamed myself for so much . . . for not keeping Tommy safe and for marrying Greg in the first place . . . for not seeing what was happening long before I did.

“Now I feel as if it has all been released—all the crying and remorse I felt when I thought I was Marnie and all the emotion that ran through me when my memory came back. All those tears washed away the past. I feel stronger now. I feel new. I think the past is behind me at last.”

“Anything else for you folks?” the waitress asked as she placed their ticket on the table.

“No, thanks,” David replied. He looked around the room. “It looks like they are trying to close up. I guess it’s time to leave.” He placed some bills on the table, and they went back out into the lobby of the hotel.

“Are you going to want me to get another room?” he asked.

“Do you
want
to get another room?”

“No. I want to stay with you.”

Martie sighed. “I want you with me, but I keep thinking about the fact you are my sister’s husband.”

“I promise I won’t touch you. I’ll even sleep on the floor if you want me to.” David’s look was beseeching.

Martie laughed. “That won’t be necessary. That king-sized bed is big enough for two people.” Her expression was serious as they stepped from the elevator. “To be honest, I’m still kind of shaky from all this. I’d feel better knowing you are there.”

It’ll be the last night I’ll ever be this close to him
, she thought
. Even not touching, it’s better than being alone and him in another room.