He waited five minutes, composing himself, composing his words, and then called back. As he half expected, this time her AIP answered over the simple blue and black identifier screen.
“I’d like to leave a message,” he said resignedly.
“Ready.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Christopher said. “It looks like you’re just as good at avoiding the past as I am, Annie. I thought you stayed out there because you didn’t like us. I never thought it was because you were afraid of us.
“We were a family once, on B Street. You were part of it. I was part of it. Maybe it didn’t last very long, but it was important. You’re a witness to my life. I need your memories to help me sort it out and put it in order. And if there’s some grudge you’re holding because of something I don’t even remember, I need to know that, too.
“You used to tell me stories about our mother, and that was important to me. You knew her. I never had that chance. Buck and Annie didn’t even consider me a relative. But I needed to know what part of her is in me. I needed her to be real—”
Unexpectedly, the display brightened, and Lynn-Anne’s face appeared. “You don’t have any right to call Sharron ‘Mother,’ ” she said, her eyes flashing angrily.
“You thought I did then.”
“I’ve learned things since then,” she said. “Hard things.”
“I know that in most ways Deryn was to me what Sharron was to you. But Sharron gave me life. She made half of me. I’ve always felt that I had a father and two mothers.”
“Wrong,” Lynn-Anne said curtly. “You had a father and a keeper. That’s all.”
“Look—”
“You really don’t know your own history very well, do you, brother dear? I ran away the day you were born. I spent five weeks on the coast, Cannon Beach, Nehalem, Tillamook, before they found me.”
“Why?” Christopher asked, brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
“Hurt feelings. While Deryn was pregnant with you, it seemed like I didn’t exist. William fussed and fretted and hovered and dictated every detail of what she did, so you’d be healthy. You were such a big production it was pretty obvious that he wanted you because I wasn’t good enough, that he wanted you a lot more than he wanted me. So guess what—I was rooting for you to die. Then Deryn would go away and everything would be the way it was.”
Christopher blinked. “I never heard anything about that.”
“Who would tell you?” she asked. “But you went and survived, even came two weeks early. As far as I could see, it was only going to get worse once you were actually born, so I left. I was just two months short of majority when they dragged me back.”
“But then you stayed for five years.”
“Yes,” she said, and glanced down at her folded hands. “And you even lived through them.” She looked up. “Does that shock you? That I thought about killing you?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Just remember, this was your idea,” she said, and settled back in her chair. “I had never been around a baby. I didn’t expect you to be cute. Deryn let me hold you, and I felt—protective. You were so tiny, so helpless. And then Deryn told me that I was the closest connection you had to your mother— to Sharron—and that you needed me. That Sharron—that my mother would have expected me to help.” Lynn-Anne fought off a tear with an angry shake of the head. “Stupid me, I believed her.”
“She wasn’t wrong,” said Christopher. “I looked up to you. I loved you.”
She was silent for a moment. “Past tense,” she said finally. “Or didn’t you notice?”
“I do love you—”
“Don’t rush to judgment on that,” she said. “Deryn was wrong. She was told a lie and passed it right along. All part of the plan.” She shook her head. “He started working on you as soon as you could talk. I finally left because I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t stand to stay around and watch it anymore.”
“Working on me?”
“Pushing, pulling, twisting, programming. The sculptor at work, creating a self-portrait.” She studied him with a critical gaze. “For a piece of statuary, you actually do a fair imitation of a person.”
So sharp the scalpel, so deep the wound. She was an artist. He gaped, amazed. “Why do you want to hurt me?”
“Why do you care what I think?” She pulled a yellow-wrapped cigarette from a sleeve pocket and lit it. “I was eight when Mom died. You notice things at eight that you wouldn’t notice at five, even if you don’t understand them.” A deep, breathy drag. “They had a fight, the night before, and then she came and held me.”
“I remember you telling me.”
“She knew I didn’t like it when he yelled at her. Usually, I was the one crying. This time she was. She said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. So sorry. I won’t make the same mistake again.’ It was the last time I saw her.”
“It happened in the lab the next day,” he supplied.
She smiled faintly. “Yes. The toxicity lab. A lovely irony. Grandmom Anne came and got me from the city school, took me to the hospital. I remember how pale she was, how frightened. By the time we got there, my mother was dead. William was arguing with the doctors and barely noticed us. So Anne took me in to say good-bye.”
Lynn-Anne’s eyes were unfocused and bright with tears. “I touched her hand, and it felt so wrong that I ran out of the room crying that it wasn’t her. I didn’t know until later that it was the hand where she’d injected herself.” She looked hard at him. “You know she did it on purpose, don’t you? You don’t still believe it was an accident.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I still wonder why she would do it. A moment of weakness, because they had a fight? That doesn’t explain it. There were better choices. If she was unhappy, she could have left, moved out, even divorced him.”
Lynn-Anne was shaking her head in dissent. “You don’t leave William McCutcheon until he’s ready to let you go. Sharron Aldritch was a very bright woman, but not a very strong one,” she said. “She killed herself in a moment of clarity and strength, because she knew that it was the only way that she could escape him—the only way she could deny him. I’m as sure of it as I am of anything in this world. And I hate him for it.”
Tight-lipped, Christopher nodded. “I guess if I believed that, I would have to hate him, too. But I don’t see him that way.”
“You can’t,” she said with a sad smile. “Please don’t pretend on my account.”
“I’m serious. Sharron gave me something precious—a piece of herself. I love her for that, even though I never knew her.”
“She gave you nothing,” his sister said harshly.
“I am what I am partly because of her—”
“What makes you think she wanted you born?”
He stared. “They harvested her eggs when they knew she was dying—she wanted—”
“No,” Lynn-Anne said sharply. “I saw them take her to surgery. I remember, because I thought it meant she might be okay. They harvested the eggs after she was dead.”
A deep frown creased Christopher’s face. “So I was confused,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it was before or after. The point is the same. She gave us a gift—”
“What makes you think that she knew?”
“Deryn told me—” He stopped short. “Was that the lie? Is that what you meant?”
Lynn-Anne showed a smugly satisfied smile. “The light dawns. Yes, that was the lie. The fight was about you, Christopher.”
Though he heard the words, the meaning eluded him. “What are you saying?”