His eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped sideways, his forehead thumping against the arm of his prisoner’s chair. He fell to the floor on his side and then staggered to his feet, stumbling blindly toward the shell of a kitchen, trying desperately to maintain consciousness as a vivid image invaded his skull. It was a vision similar to the ones he had been cursed with his entire life but much, much stronger.
More lifelike.
More real.
A young woman and a man roughly the same age sat at a table in the kitchen of a small house talking with an older woman. The house was near here but not too near; it was definitely farther away than was typical for his visions. He knew this because through the kitchen window he could see none of the tall buildings or warehouses or city hustle and bustle that he should see at any location in Boston. The scene was more pastoral; still bleak and run-down, as if the area—wherever it was—had seen its best days decades ago and had been sinking into a state of neglect ever since.
At the table, the conversation revolved around a painful shared personal history. The two women were related. They were discussing details of a baby given up for adoption. The younger woman was the baby and the older woman her mother. The younger woman was asking questions; she could not understand why she had been abandoned so long ago.
Milo chuckled, lost in the vision blasting through his head. He leaned against the wall in a state of semiconsciousness. He could tell the young woman a thing or two about abandonment and loss. The older woman struggled to explain her rationale for giving up her child but the daughter seemed skeptical of the explanation.
As he watched the scene unfold, Milo felt a sense of rage begin to envelop him, a blackness of spirit much stronger even than he normally felt. He wouldn’t have imagined it possible. The sensation was directed at the young woman. He wanted to reach through the vision and strangle the stupid little bitch with his bare hands, to choke the life out of her and cut her up into tiny slivers of bone and flesh and then throw the pieces around the room.
He hated her.
He more than hated her. He wanted to destroy her.
The vision wavered in his mind and then faded as his rage increased, becoming all-encompassing. He could no longer make out the conversation at the table, not that he cared. All he wanted was to get at the young woman, to make her suffer. It wasn’t a sexual thing or even a power thing, like the sensation he felt toward Rae Ann and the other girls he had tortured and killed over the years. This was something deeper, more elemental, originating in the depths of his soulless existence. The intensity was frightening, even to Milo Cain, who had long ago reached the conclusion he was incapable of feeling anything.
Then the vision was gone, disappearing from his skull as quickly and unexpectedly as it had come. Milo moaned and dropped to his knees. His head ached uncomfortably and he could feel an egg rising on his forehead where it had impacted the chair. He looked across the room to see Rae Ann staring back at him fearfully. He ignored her.
He was confused and even a little scared. This was a vision totally different than anything he had ever experienced. In the normal ones, he observed random slices of other people’s lives, scenes with no emotions or value judgments attached to them. He had no feelings about them, they just were.
But in this vision, Milo had wanted nothing more than to destroy the young woman, to rip and rend and kill. And it was just the younger woman. The other two people who had appeared in the vision he couldn’t give a shit less about. He walked unsteadily into the bathroom, leaning over the hole where the toilet used to be, feeling like he was going to puke, but nothing came up. He rested his head lightly on the dirty floor.
Finally he stood again, exhausted. He had been extremely lucky in one way. If the vision had invaded—and that’s exactly what it felt like, an invasion—his brain a couple of minutes earlier, while his guest had been alone in the bathroom, she might have been able to rush past him and out the door as he struggled to avoid blacking out. She could have been down the stairs in seconds, screaming at the top of her lungs as soon as she hit the street. Even in this neighborhood, that scenario would have spelled the end for Milo Cain.
He looked at the bathroom wall, bare where a mirror used to be. Instead of his face staring back at him, Milo saw faded plaster with a hairline crack spidering diagonally toward the ceiling. That was probably for the best. He doubted he was looking too steady at the moment. He certainly didn’t feel steady.
Milo straightened slowly and returned to the living room. Rae Ann was watching him closely, the terror written on her features even more intensely now than at any time since he had brought her here.
Milo didn’t care. He continued to ignore her for the time being. She wasn’t going anywhere. He dragged himself to his air mattress and tumbled onto it. He was exhausted. He fell asleep and didn’t dream.
CHAPTER 19
Cait’s question hung in the air like an accusation. She supposed it probably was. Of all the things she had expected to hear from the woman who gave her up in an illegal adoption three decades ago, “You have a twin” had never even entered her mind. Yet there it was.
For a brief moment, she thought maybe she hadn’t heard the woman correctly. Maybe her mother had said something like, “Separating you from us was a sin,” not, “We had to separate you from your twin.” But that was patently ridiculous. The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and Virginia Ayers was sitting less than three feet away at the same table. Of course she had heard her mother correctly.
“I have a twin?” she repeated for the third time.
The woman sighed deeply, the sound filled with longing and regret and, it seemed to Cait, perhaps a touch of fear. “This is a mistake,” Virginia said, but before Cait could say a word in response, she disregarded her own statement and began telling the story Cait had waited her entire life to hear.
“As you’ve undoubtedly concluded, your family history is more than a little unusual. And yes,” she added hastily, sensing Cait’s impatience, “you heard me correctly. You have a twin. A brother, actually. He was born minutes after you.”
“A brother,” Cait said wonderingly. “Where is he?”
Virginia shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You gave him up, too? Why in God’s name would you do that?”
Tears welled in Virginia’s eyes and Kevin laid his hand gently on Cait’s arm. “Maybe you should let her tell the story in her own way,” he suggested. “I’m sure she’ll get to that when she’s ready.” Cait looked the distraught woman in the eyes and she nodded gratefully.
“Thank you,” she said. She took a shuddering breath and continued. “Incidences of twin births run throughout our family’s genealogy, as far back as can be traced. Lots of twins, twins born roughly two of every three generations; a statistically impossible number of twins. For many families, twin births are a burden due to the fact that they require twice as much food, twice as much clothing, twice as much attention, twice as much of everything. For a young family without a lot of money, having twins can be stressful and difficult—”
“You gave up your children because it might be difficult?” Cait interrupted. Kevin stroked her arm and she closed her mouth reluctantly. She could feel her face flush and her mouth was set in an angry line.
“No,” Virginia answered simply. “That’s not why we gave you up. I mention these issues as examples of the many problems faced by the typical family with twins. To provide a little perspective. For your father and me, the problem was a far different one.” She gazed into Cait’s eyes and Cait felt her mother reaching into her very soul.