anyway. But the sight of my open laptop in the middle of the bed stops me short. The Winterhaven Chamber of Commerce site is up on the screen. Not again. Did I pull up the site earlier today? Did Iris do it?
Don’t leave. Look for Jake first, she pleads.
A crash of thunder rattles the windows and rain taps the roof as I settle in front of the computer. A search for “Jake Milano, Winterhaven, Massachusetts” produces a link to a store called Milano Lawn & Garden Center. The contact information doesn’t include any names, only a phone number and an email address.
The rain falls harder, transforming the windowpanes into wavering dark pools. I place my fingers on the keyboard, ready to send an email, but I don’t know what to say. So instead, I type Iris Winston into the search box, realizing that if my sister was a child prodigy violinist, articles might’ve been written about her. Nothing relevant appears, so I type: child prodigy violinists in the 1990s. Links fill the screen about child prodigies in general, about savants and extreme precocity in children, but nothing specific to Iris. I skim past a Wikipedia entry about a little boy in France, and another about an American girl I once saw featured on the news. I’m about to give up when, at the very bottom of the screen, the name Iris jumps out at me in a link to a YouTube video.
EXTRAORDINARY 6-YEAR-OLD VIOLINIST IRIS MARSHALL.
Marshall, not Winston. Disappointment swells in my chest, but curiosity makes me move the mouse over the link and click.
A still image of Iris—my Iris—standing on a stage backed by a blue velvet curtain appears. Her violin is poised beneath her chin, the bow touching the strings, her face the definition of concentration. My pulse rushes to catch up with my stampeding thoughts as I start the video and Iris begins to play. And when the performance ends, I can hardly sit still.
Iris is bursting with excitement, too. That was me, she says.
I stare at the screen. But our last name isn’t Marshall, it’s Winston.
It wasn’t then.
The sound of water running in the bathroom downstairs drifts up to me. I could feel Mom’s fear when she insisted I stay away from Ty. What does he know about her past that she doesn’t want me to find out?
Determined to get some answers, I type “Adam Marshall” into the computer. The links containing that name fill two screens. The mouse shakes as I position it over the first link and click. A photograph of a sprawling campus of one-story buildings in a landscaped setting appears. The sign at the entrance reads CELL RESEARCH TECHNOLOGY. A scan of the text beneath the picture explains that the place is some sort of lab in Boston—a bio-tech firm. Adam Marshall is listed as a lead research scientist, on staff from 1986 until 1994.
Iris shudders. There were animals in cages, and a man. The animals didn’t like him.
An uneasy feeling drifts over me, light as a cobweb, tangling me in its delicate snare. What man, Iris?
I can’t remember his name. . . . He scared me.
Sitting straighter, I look for photographs of the scientists and staff, hoping Iris will be able to identify the man she mentioned, but there aren’t any pictures. Closing out the site, I open the next link to an article in a scientific journal written in 1987 by Adam Marshall, Ph.D. When I catch sight of a small picture of the author to the right of the text, a cold fist squeezes my throat. Thick, dark hair without a speck of gray. Pale skin, unlined. No beard. Only the dark brown eyes are the same. They’re the gentle, curious eyes that belonged to the father I loved and trusted.
I shift to the text:
Studies involving specialized DNA technology . . . in my attempts to produce multiple exact genetic duplicates of endangered species . . . the benefits of taking the next step would need to be weighed against possible moral and ethical consequences. . . .
I start again at the beginning, trying to comprehend the meaning of what I’m reading. It seems impossible that Dad headed up a team of scientists at that Boston lab before I was born. That he oversaw a project to try to save animals from extinction by reproducing them genetically. But as I study the picture again, I know without a doubt it’s Dad. The same man who couldn’t stand to pull