Express Male (10 page)

T
RUE TO HIS WORD
,
Agent Tennant returned to Marnie’s house at precisely nine Wednesday morning when she was enjoying her second cup of coffee on the porch swing and miring herself in denial that her life hadn’t become a big, reeking pile of offal. Since she’d gotten almost no sleep for a second night in a row, she’d dressed to complement the circles under her eyes, in a pair of softly worn blue jeans and a lavender turtleneck sweater, her hair gathered at her nape in a loose braid.

When he unfolded himself from the same nondescript black sedan he’d driven away in the day before, she saw that he was wearing nondescript black sunglasses and was dressed in what looked like the same nondescript black suit he’d had on then. Briefly, she wondered if he’d even gone home since yesterday morning. Then she noticed that his necktie today was a discreet dark blue, and she recalled the one from the day before being a discreet dark red. She envisioned him standing in front of an open closet filled with wall-to-wall black suits and white dress shirts, and one of those rotating tie holders containing two ties, turning with a laconical hum while he decided what mood he was in that day.

The blandness of his wardrobe belied the rest of him, however. Marnie had to bite back a sigh as she watched him make his way up the front walk to her porch. He had some way of walking, she’d grant him that, all hips and swagger and purposeful stride. His entire body seemed to get into the action, his long arms swaying, his broad shoulders rolling, his brawny hands flexing, his powerful thighs scissoring, his…

Well. Suffice it to say Marnie just liked the way he walked, that was all. She sipped her coffee and battled an uncharacteristic wave of nervousness—where was that coming from?—as he strode up the steps, and somehow she kept her focus trained on his face.

“Good morning,” he said as he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Good morning,” she echoed. Knowing it was a lie. And she could tell by the look on his face that he’d been lying when he greeted her, too. Whatever news he had, it wasn’t going to be good.

For a moment, he said nothing more, only studied her much as he had yesterday, as if he were taking a thorough inventory of her with those incredibly blue eyes that made her insides turn to warm pudding. Finally, “You and I need to…talk,” he said.

She wasn’t sure she liked the way he’d said
talk.
Because he made the word
talk
sound more like
discuss something that’s going to stuff your life even deeper into the garbage disposal and give it another good whirl.

“Talk?” she repeated.

Only then did she notice he was carrying a manila envelope in one hand—well, it hadn’t been moving when he walked, so what was the point in noticing it?—and it seemed to be pretty full. Not the way the curious little man in the parking lot had stuffed his manila envelope to near bursting, but Marnie was beginning to experience a fear of manila that bordered on psychosis. Manilaphobia. That must be what she had.

“Talk,” he reiterated in that same ominous way.

“About what?”

He inhaled a deep breath, as if needing the extra oxygen for what he was about to say. Marnie’s heart plummeted.

“I get the impression, Ms. Lundy, that you’re made of pretty stern stuff, so I’d like to dispense with the niceties and just say what I have to say. Will that be all right?”

Marnie had always thought she was made of pretty stern stuff, too, and she’d never been one for niceties, either. Until that moment. But suddenly, she felt like a quivering mass of goo, and she had the strangest urge to go inside and bake some petits fours and make a pot of tea and serve it all on doilies. Nevertheless, she said, “All right.”

Agent Tennant flipped open the flap of the envelope and reached inside. “Ms. Lundy,” he began.

“Marnie,” she corrected him. “If you’re about to tell me something that’s going to shatter my world, you might as well call me by my first name.”

“Marnie, then,” he said. Thereby confirming that he was indeed about to flick the switch over the sink.

She closed her eyes.

“You weren’t born in Cleveland,” he told her.

She snapped her eyes open. “I beg your pardon?”

“You weren’t born in Cleveland,” he said again. “You were born in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

“What?” she exclaimed, the word coming out louder than she had intended. She gentled her tone some as she continued. “No, I wasn’t. You saw my birth certificate. I was born right here in Cleveland.”

“No. You weren’t,” he told her. “Your father lied to you about that, Marnie. He lied to you about a lot of things.”

He might as well have slapped her, so acute was her response to what he said. She’d always felt so confident in the knowledge that she and her father had been able to speak frankly about everything. She’d always found comfort in having a parent who was completely honest with her. Now she closed her eyes as she waited to hear the rest of what Agent Tennant had to say.

“You didn’t move to Cleveland until you were almost a year old,” he continued. “And you came here from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—where you still have some extended family, by the way—which was where you moved when you were three months old, immediately after leaving Las Vegas.”

She was shaking her head before he finished. No. He was wrong. She had no family besides her father. Her father had told her that. Why would he lie about such a thing, when he’d spent his life being such a strong family for her?

“No,” she said aloud, opening her eyes. “That’s impossible. My birth certificate says…My father
told
me—”

“And your mother’s name wasn’t Lucie Lundy,” he interrupted.

“No,” she said again. “You’re wrong. That can’t be true.” Then another thought struck her. Oh, God. Oh, no. No, please. He couldn’t possibly be telling her…“My father,” she managed to say. “I mean, he
was
my father. You’re not going to tell me he—” She halted before finishing because she simply could not bring herself to doubt her paternity. The thought that the man she’d grown up loving as her father wasn’t the man who’d deserved that love was too terrible to bear.

“Your father was Elliott Lundy,” Agent Tennant said gently.

She expelled a long sigh of relief, not realizing until she did so that she had been holding her breath.

“But he lied to you about a lot of other things.”

Oh, God…

Tennant withdrew a piece of paper from the envelope and, without asking for her okay, joined her on the swing. Automatically, she scooted all the way to one side to allow him room. And, automatically, she pulled her legs up before her, scrunching her entire body into a ball, as if that might protect her from whatever else he had to say.

He extended the paper toward her. “This is a copy of your actual birth certificate that was faxed to us yesterday,” he said. “The original is on its way via courier to our Cleveland office. It should be here this afternoon.”

Reluctantly, Marnie glanced down at the document without touching it, noting what looked like a state seal but was different from the one on her Ohio birth certificate. But she couldn’t discern much else, because the words were too blurry. Must be a lousy copy. Then she felt dampness on her cheeks and realized the words weren’t blurry because of the lousy quality of the printing. It was because of the lousy quality of her emotions.

“My mother,” she managed to say as she swiped away the uncharacteristic tears. Honestly, she almost never cried. “If she wasn’t Lucie Lundy, then who was she?”

“Her name was Susan Townsend,” Tennant said.

Marnie shook her head slowly. “I’ve never heard of her.”

“Maybe not. But you’ve heard of her other daughter.”

“Her other daughter?” Marnie echoed. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a sister. That proves this woman isn’t my mother.”

Agent Tennant hesitated for a moment before saying, “Susan Townsend had another daughter besides you who eventually became Lila Moreau.”

“What?” Marnie exclaimed. Confusion swamped her, making her head feel like it was full of cobwebs.

“Lila Moreau is your sister,” he said again.

“What?”

“Your twin sister.”

“What?”

“Your identical twin sister.”

“What?”

“Look down here,” he told her, pointing his finger at one area of the birth certificate. “Where it says ‘multiple birth.’ The box for twin is checked. And up here,” he added, moving his finger to the top of the page, “is where your parents’ names are listed. And here’s your name,” he added, indicating the first line.

Marnie directed her gaze to that part of the document and saw that what he had told her was true. Her father was identified as Elliott Cameron Lundy. Her mother was Susan Gloria Townsend. And Marnie was, as she had always been—

“Marnie Catherine Lundy,” Agent Tennant read when he saw where her gaze had settled. “Your sister is Lisa Ann Townsend.”

Now Marnie was really confused. “But you said my sister was Lila Moreau.”

“That’s the name OPUS gave her when she became an agent. No one keeps their real name when they become active as agents in order to protect their identity and the identities of their loved ones.”

“Then your name isn’t really Noah Tennant?” she asked.

And of all the questions that should be plaguing Marnie at the moment, why was that the one she asked?

“No, my name is Noah Tennant,” he said. “But I’m not an agent anymore. When I was, I went by a different name.”

“So Lisa Townsend became Lila Moreau,” Marnie said.

Agent Tennant nodded.

“And she’s my twin sister,” Marnie added, the words sounding strange—and feeling stranger—on her tongue.

“I don’t understand. Why would my father not tell me the truth about my mother or where I was born? Why would he not tell me I have relatives in Pittsburgh? And why on earth would he not tell me I had…I mean,
have…
a…”

She couldn’t say it again. She couldn’t say the word
sister.
Ironically, the more real it became, the less she was able to put voice to it. Marnie had spent her entire life as the only child of a widowed father. The sudden discovery that she had a sister out there somewhere…that she’d had a sister out there her entire life…a sister who looked exactly like her, no less, without her knowing about any of it…It was just too much to take in.

“What did your father tell you about your mother?” Agent Tennant asked.

Oh, God, where to begin? Marnie wondered. Lucie Lundy, according to her father, would have been as close to perfect as she could be as a mother, had she lived long enough to be one to Marnie. A woman so wonderful, so ideal, that her father never met another who came close, and had remained single until his death.

“He always made her sound so romantic whenever he talked about her,” she began. “He said he met her when he was doing a fellowship at Oxford. But she was French. She moved to England to go to college. Her father was a doctor in France, but her parents died when she was young. Dad said she was just incredibly kind, sweet, decent…He always said how just plain
good
she was.”

She smiled as she continued. “He used to love to tell this story about how he and another guy, a lawyer named Sydney, were both in love with her, but she chose my father to marry. Apparently a lot of guys were in love with my mom, but my dad was the one who won her.”

When she looked at Agent Tennant again, his expression was troubled, as if she’d just told him something alarming.

“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

He arched his dark blond brows philosophically. “Well, I’m just thinking your father’s description of your mother sounds a lot like a character in a book I read.”

Now Marnie felt a little alarmed, too. “What book?”

“
A Tale of Two Cities.
Your father’s description of your mother makes her sound like Lucie Manette.”

A sliver of cold slid down her spine at hearing the literary analysis. Her father, the English professor, had loved books so much that Marnie had sometimes wondered if he didn’t live more of his life inside them than outside them. So often, he would compare one of life’s little setbacks to some episode from a classic novel. So often, he’d describe people or situations as Shakespearean or Byronic or Orwellian or—

Dickensian.

Agent Tennant added, “And your father did for you what Lucie’s mother did for her, telling you your mother was dead when she really wasn’t. The same way Lucie’s mother told Lucie her father was dead, to avoid telling her the truth about him having disappeared into the Bastille. Not that your mother went into the Bastille, but…Knowing what I do of Lila’s mother, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t been on the wrong side of the bars at some point.”

Something cold and hard had settled in Marnie’s stomach, and two fat tears tumbled down her cheeks before she could stop them. She reached for the birth certificate, reading over all the information recorded there. Her name, birth date, time of birth, weight, length, eye and hair color were all identical to the information on her Ohio birth certificate. She told herself not to believe anything Agent Tennant was telling her, that the Nevada document was the fake. Who knew what these people were capable of?