Page 38 of Mirror Image

But then, if you can bring in someone else to do it for you . . . someone you think you can manage . . .

I shake my head slightly as if I can pry the thought loose. It’s entirely possible I’m overthinking this. Before he failed to support me against Kellogg, I, too, thought the world of Julian. Just because our relationship soured doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person. Or a bad doctor. Before I can give this any more consideration, Terry continues with the story.

“Julian made sure Lloyd—my father-in-law—knew he had a granddaughter, and that she’d been named for Doug’s mother, Mary Louise,” she explained, tears brimming behind her lashes. “The first time Lloyd laid eyes on her . . . he just wept.”

“Dr. Flores, my father had liver cancer and wasn’t expected to live long. So we moved in to help with his care and so he could spend as much time with the baby as possible. But then . . . it was amazing—he didn’t die!”

I shift in my chair so I’m leaning in closer to the couple. “Really?”

“Really! Tough old bird went on to live another six years!” Doug exclaims. “I swear it was that little girl. It was Mary. She’s always had a way of bringing sunshine with her wherever she goes.”

At this comment Terry chokes back a sob, placing a hand over her mouth. “But now . . .”

“But now . . . what?” I coax.

Doug sighs heavily as he pats his wife on the arm. “She’s totally cut us out of her life. We haven’t spoken to her in nearly two years. She won’t see us. Not even now . . . now that all this has happened. But we’re praying that she’ll talk to you.”

I offer them my warmest smile. The one that—hopefully—conveys my empathy and concern, the latter of which I suddenly have a lot of as I take in their haggard appearances. Her forehead is permanently creased where the brows pull it down into a frown, while his mouth is set in a perpetual pucker of concern. It’s the kind of wear and tear that comes from years of protracted worrying.

“Well, I’ll be meeting her later this afternoon, and I promise you I’ll broach the subject with her,” I assure them. “From there, though, it’s totally up to her.”

Terry grabs onto my comment like it’s a life raft.

“So she’s well enough to speak with you?” She starts wiping her damp face with the back of her hands. “Do you know—can you at least tell us how she’s doing? Physically, I mean? Is she terribly hurt? Should we be contacting larger hospitals with more resources or a specialist of some sort?”

Time to inch my way out onto the tightrope. Julian was right about this much: Their intentions are so sincere that I can’t help but be affected by their love and concern. Still, I have to be careful with how much I disclose.

“As I said, I have yet to meet her personally, but, from what I’ve been told, she’s stable.”

Theresa Langston presses a hand to her chest and closes her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you,” she murmurs, crossing herself with a trembling hand.

Before they can ask for more details than I’m able to give them, I lean forward in my seat slightly, both hands wrapped around my paper cup on the table. “I wonder . . . would you be comfortable telling me what happened? Why it is, exactly, there’s this rift between all of you?”

Doug doesn’t let an entire second tick by before spitting his response. “It was her.”

The three words are a pronouncement, a condemnation. And it takes me a second to figure out who he’s talking about.

“You mean . . . Samantha?”

They nod in somber agreement, unquestionably united in their belief that Mary’s twin is responsible for the breakdown of their relationship with their daughter.

“We were always so close,” Terry tells me insistently. “I know it’s hard to believe, but we never had any of that tween or teen drama. She shared everything with us—wanted us to know every little thing that was going on in her life! We were just that kind of family. Then she went off to college . . .”

Doug smirks, running a hand through his hair as he shakes his head, conveying total and complete disbelief. “It was a total fluke. One in a million, maybe. I mean, Mary got into Vassar, NYU, and UC Berkeley!” he says, pointing his index finger at me as he rattles off the colleges. “If she’d gone to any one of those—hell, if she’d gone anywhere else . . .” He lets himself fall back against the chair with a sigh that’s brimming with regret. “If any one of a thousand tiny things had been different, then they never would have crossed paths, and none of this would have ever happened.”

Terry picks up the narrative here. It’s like watching a relay race with participants handing off the verbal baton between laps. “It was the first time she’d really been away from home—from us,” she explains. “And she was only there a few days when”—she makes a circular gesture with her hand as if to encompass something floating in the ether around us—“when that girl turned up out of nowhere. That’s when all hell broke loose.”

This is a decidedly darker spin than the one that was peddled in the news and across social media—the miraculous reunion of identical twins separated at birth.

“May I ask—I can’t recall ever having seen a comment or quote from either of you. No interviews or talk show appearances. Nothing like that.”

“Because we had nothing good to say about this situation,” Doug tells me flatly.

“Okay, I get that. I guess maybe I’m surprised you didn’t say that publicly.”

He scoffs. “Oh, we wanted to, believe me. But we couldn’t. Not if we wanted to maintain any sort of relationship with our daughter.”

“I’m not sure I understand . . .”