Parker Lowell
"Her name," I urged her softly. "What was her name?"
It was the one detail I felt that I needed to know above them all. Ever since I had found out that my twin brother's name was Jordan(though now I wasn't so sure...), the only important thing to me was that I knew her name.
"Andrea," Gina said. The sound of the name was like a beautiful melody, though I had never particularly liked the name Andrea before. "Andrea Whitney."
"Was she pretty?" It seemed to be the standard second question after finding out the name. It was certainly the most natural for me.
"Mostly," she replied. "For the first few years I knew her, she was very pretty. Her real hair color was the debate of the school. That's probably the way she wanted it. In fact, I think that's how we met. We were both in the hair color aisle at the store at the same time. I was looking for my mother, as strange as that sounds, and she was looking for herself. She had really really beautiful eyes, too. Blue. Crystal blue. Just like yours. Both of you."
Taylor and I instinctively looked at each other. I had noticed his eyes the night before, but now I was being given the perfect opportunity to really take a good look at him. I shuddered imperceptively. It was an eerie feeling of looking into a mirror that wasn't there.
"She was smart, too. Usually. She made really good grades. Always interested in writing. She wanted to be a journalist or something of the kind. She worked for the school newspaper and was one of the more vocal members of the student council. Her class--the one below mine--always elected her the class president because it was always fun to see what she would do next. She once told me that all she was trying to do was get the student council to actually do something for the school and not just sit there and scratch themselves just so they could impress the people who decided whether or not to let them into a particular college."
"She was very rebellious," Mrs. Hanson intervened. "Her favorite game, as she put it, was to disobey her parents and see what colors their faces would turn. Sometimes she would do funny things like buy a t-shirt that her parents would think obscene or a record that her parents didn't approve of. Sometimes she did some not-so-funny things like take drugs just to make them mad. I think that she honestly thought that she could only do them once. But, like anyone who's tried those, she couldn't and she became addicted."
"Her grades plummeted. She lost a ton of weight and skipped school on a regular basis. It wasn't long before she dropped out and her parents finally had to kick her out of the house because they couldn't live with her anymore. She was bad," Gina said, taking the story up again. "I didn't see her for a good two years or so and was more than sure that she was dead. Everyone was. Her parents were a mess. We were all a mess because we had all been good friends of hers and didn't like to think of her murdered or over dosed somewhere out there.
"I saved up enough money to buy my own apartment when I was eighteen. It was my alternative to college. One day someone knocked on the door and when I answered it, she was standing there. She didn't need to say that she needed to help, it was pretty obvious. So I let her in. It was really hard the first month or two. I couldn't let her out of the apartment and I couldn't leave her alone because I had to make her go cold turkey off drugs, seeing as how neither of us could afford a rehab center and she made me swear not to tell anyone that she was there. I had to leave her alone sometime though, if I was going to keep my apartment. So I left for a job interview one day and when I came back, she was gone and so was all the money that I had hidden in the apartment.
"I didn't really see her again after that. I found out about you guys when I found a note taped to the door of my apartment. It told me where you were and that she wanted me to adopt you if I could. To this day, I have no idea how she arranged it or if it was even legal the way we did it, but I went to the foster home she indicated in the letter to go and get you guys. When I got there, only Parker was there. They didn't tell me, but I kind of knew it was Lawrence, Andrea's boyfriend-best friend from school, who had taken Taylor. He would do anything for her, even lay down in traffic. I imagine that he heard about it somehow and didn't know that there were twins. So he only picked up Taylor. We never meant to separate you guys, it just sort of happened."
"If this Lawrence person took me....how did I end up with...?" Taylor began.
"Not long after Gina picked Parker up from the foster home and left for Rochester, Lawrence called us. He told us about what had happened--that Andrea had had twins and that he had accidentally only taken one of them from the foster home only to find out that he didn't have the ability to take care of Andrea, a baby, and himself all at the same time. He asked us to take you in...take care of you. We agreed and they brought you to us. Andrea was there. She said that she want any contact," Mr. Hanson told Taylor.
"How old was I?" Taylor asked.
"Two, I think. And you absolutely adored Andrea," he said. "You loved her. I believe that the feeling was very much mutual."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"We didn't want to make you feel any less than your brothers or sisters," Mrs. Hanson said. "And besides, Andrea basically told us that she wanted nothing to do with you--for your own good. We figured that it was just better that you not know about her in the first place."
I watched him, not quite sure if he understood their reasoning, not quite sure if I understood it myself. Gina had never kept it a secret from me that she was not my mother, though until I was about seven she mostly told me that she was my aunt. I hadn't ended up screwed up just becasue I kenw that. But then, I guess I didn't have siblings to consider competitors for the love of parents that, though they were theirs, were not my own.
He opened his mouth, now seeming to visibly overflow with questions, but closed it when a commotion could be heard coming from the hallways of the otherwise silent hotel. Running feet, a cry of "I win!" followed by a bit of bickering and after that, a soft cautious knock on the door.
Mr. Hanson sighed. He looked longingly at Taylor, whose stare was totally blank by that time, wishing he could make Taylor understand why he had done the things the way he had done them. Why it couldn't be the way they they had always accepted it to be.
"Mom? Dad?" Isaac's voice was very quiet, muffled to a much lower volume by the door standing between it and us.
Mr. Hanson threw a sideways look at his wife. She nodded.
"Come in."
It took a moment for the door to open. Isaac popped his head in curiously.
"Just wanted to let you know we're back from the zoo," he said, though it was plain to see that that was not his only motive for knocking on the door.
"How was it?"
"Same as any zoo," he said, daring to come into the rom a little bit more. "It smelled bad and all the animals were asleep."
Mr. Hanson nodded.
"Well, just thought I'd let you know." He began to disappear but Mr. Hanson was quick to call him back.
"Wait," he said. "I think we need to talk to you. You and your brothers and sisters. Why don't you bring them in here?"
"You two should probably go," Mrs. Hanson instructed us quietly. I didn't understand her logic, but didn't feel like questioning it either. Both Taylor and I obeyed and got up to leave.
I closed the door behind us and we walked our separate ways to the doors to rooms that were right next to each other. I looked over to him as he struggled with the key card to his room.
"Hey," I said, my voice coming out reluctant. Again, it surprised me that I had spoken. I wondered if my voice was tyring to take over. I waited for him to look at me before I went on. "Um, you want to come in here?"
I didn't expect him to say yes. In fact, at first, I didn't think he would. He struggled with his key card a bit more(it amazed me that this guy practically lived in hotels and couldn't get the door to his hotel room open) before givng up and, seeing no other alternative, nodded.
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Index
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eighteen