Australian school-children don’t take long summer breaks. That’s an American peculiarity.”
I scrutinized his features as I jammed the plastic bag and bloomers back into my shoulder bag. Was it my imagination, or did he resemble Heath through the eyes and mouth? My notion was completely absurd, and yet—“Did your parents take a lot of pictures when you were a baby?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you have an album with a lock of your hair, and a christening photo, and all the statistics people mark down for newborns? You know. Baby’s first year?”
“Is that a polite way of asking if I’m adopted?”
My heart pumped double time. “Are you?”
“No, I’m not adopted! And if I don’t have a baby album, it’s because parents in the forties didn’t bother with things like that, especially during wartime.”
“A lot of parents never told their children the truth.”
“Sorry, Emily, but you’re way out of line. If you’re trying to prove that Nora Acres and I had some connection because we have the same birthday, you’re going to end up looking very foolish.”
Spoken like a man without an ounce of female intuition. “Do you remember the photo Nora showed you in Port Campbell?”
“Vaguely. What I remember most was that it was about to disintegrate.”
“It showed Nora posing with her sister, Beverley, and their mother. The twins were in pinafores and had Shirley Temple banana curls.”
Guy lifted his brows. “And?”
“Okay, you might think I’m really grasping at straws, but what if the reason you never had a baby album was because your parents never saw you as a baby? What if Nora’s photo is actually a picture of her mother…and another child who was born in England on March 17, 1943?”
He struggled to keep a straight face even as laughter exploded from his chest. “You think the other child is me? Why would I be posing with Nora Acres? Better yet, do I look like a Beverley to you?”
“No! But you were born in England. The English have been known to stick their male offspring with girls’ names—Evelyn, Marian, Carol, Beverley.”
“Are they also guilty of dressing little boys in pinafores?”
“I’ve seen some of my grandmother’s family photos where you couldn’t distinguish the girls from the boys because they were all in dresses and pipe curls. People did that back then. Little boys didn’t get into trousers or have their hair cut until they went off to school.”
“And they all ended up in therapy.”
“Seriously, I think I’m onto something. The twins were placed in different orphanages during the war and never saw each other again, so the only link Nora had to her past was that photo. She assumed the other child in the photo was her sister, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was her brother? What if the children weren’t identical twins? What if they were fraternal twins?”
“I’m not adopted!”
“Oh, my God, Guy! You may have found a sister you never knew you had! Don’t you believe in serendipity?”
“I believe in good fortune happening by accident. I don’t believe in pipe dreams. Now, will you drop it?”
“But think what this could mean to Heath! You could provide the closure he and his mother had been looking for for so many years, and that would be so meaningful to him. You look like him, you know. I didn’t see it before because I wasn’t looking for it, but you have the same full lips, the same blue eyes. You even have the same physique! You could have DNA testing done to eliminate all doubt. You have to talk to him, Guy. This is so amazing! You come to Australia to meet the relatives, and you end up with one more than you expected. A nephew! We need to speak to Henry. Heath is supposed to call him later, and when he does, maybe you can—”
“I told you to drop it!”
“But don’t you want—”
“NO! I don’t want! Kee-REIST, what the hell is wrong with you? You couldn’t leave well enough alone. You had to keep picking and picking. And that’s a damn shame, because I liked you, Emily. I really did.”
Liked? Uh-oh. Past tense wasn’t a good sign. “I’m sorry, Guy. I’ve been acting like an unfeeling, insensitive clod. I just get so excited when I start connecting the dots. This has to be a huge shock, and I haven’t allowed you any time for it to sink in. Why don’t we go back to the café and—”
“What a lousy way to learn you’re not who you think