Deadly Design - Emarsan Page 0,20
while she sobs. He cries too, but he’s sneakier about it. He cries when he’s mowing the backyard. He’ll walk back and forth, his shoulders shaking, his hand wiping his face every once in a while. I’m sure he cries other places, too. Sometimes when he comes home from work, his eyes are red and puffy. Allergies, he says. But I know better.
I cry, mostly when I’m driving Connor’s Jeep. Mom and Dad gave it to me, hence the need for a job to pay for the insurance. But sometimes when I’m driving, I look into the rearview mirror and see Connor. I think about how his hands should be on the steering wheel, how he should be the one picking music from his iPod to listen to. I keep mine on shuffle, and sometimes a song will play that reminds me of him, and the waterworks will start.
Mom turns her attention back to dinner, and I head for the living room, where Dad’s watching the local news.
Another “Hey, how was your day?”
I don’t answer, because the news is starting, and I know Dad wants to hear the leading stories. I’ll tell him about my boring day during the commercial break.
Two guys in a dark pickup truck tried to abduct a ten-year-old who was walking home from the park with her babysitter.
Another politician is being pressured to resign after having relations with prostitutes; he claims he was trying to reach a new class of constituents. Dad scoffs at that one.
“A girl collapsed during a youth soccer game. Seventeen-year-old Alexis Warren, a recent graduate of Bishop Carroll High School, was helping coach a team of twelve-year-olds 6 1
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
when she collapsed and was later pronounced dead at the scene. Heat is not considered to be a factor. Apparently Warren, who would have been eighteen tomorrow, died of cardiac arrest, but the cause of death will not be certain until an autopsy is performed.”
Dad and I are silent, then we notice Mom standing in the doorway. Her naturally pale face is bleached white; her mouth hangs open. She’s still holding the wooden spoon in her hand.
“Honey?” Dad stands. “Are you all right?”
“Did they say Alexis Warren?”
Dad looks at me and nods as if I can confirm that he’s right.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what they said. You know her?”
Mom leans her back against the wall and slides toward the floor. Dad rushes forward, catching her and helping her to the sofa. “Connor’s baby book. Get his baby book,” she says, waving her hand at the built-in bookshelves.
Dad gets the book and hands it to Mom, and she frantically looks through the pages of handwritten notes and snapshots.
“Here,” she says, taking out a photograph. It’s her and another woman, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. Mom is holding Connor, and the other woman, still in her hospital gown, is holding a baby wrapped in a pink blanket. She turns the picture over and looks at what’s written on the back: Bethany Warren and baby Alexis.
“How did you know her?” I ask.
“Bethany and her husband were carriers of cystic fibrosis.
They already had one child who was very ill. Like us, they’d 6 2
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
heard that Dr. Mueller at this new fertility clinic, Genesis Innovations, had a way of removing certain genes. That’s where we met. We were both having our eggs harvested, and we were so nervous, so hopeful.” Mom stares at the picture, at the two beaming mothers with their healthy babies. And now both babies are dead.
“Is that the doctor who ‘tweaked’ us?” I ask, seeing another photograph taken in the same hospital room, on the same day, only now there is a man in a gray suit standing beside them.
He’s medium height with broad shoulders and a long, narrow face. His beaming grin makes him appear to be as happy as the new mothers, maybe even happier.
“Yeah,” Mom says. “That’s Dr. Mueller. He made sure you’d be healthy. And then you, the fertilized egg, split.” She looks up at the television screen, a new sort of horror on her face.
“What did they say about her birthday?”
“She would have been eighteen tomorrow,” Dad says.
“That’s so weird,” I say. “What are the odds that those two babies would both die within a day of their eighteenth birthdays?”
“A weird coincidence,” Dad says, but there’s something in his eyes—his slight, dismissive smile doesn’t match the dark-ness