The Bloodwater Mysteries: Doppelganger (8 page)

“Here? You mean like here in Bloodwater?”

“No, the Samuelses lived in Cannon Falls, twenty miles away.”

“What happened to them? Why did they give me up?” Brian felt his eyes getting wet. He didn’t care.

“Son, there was an accident. A car accident. Both Owen and Janice were killed. You were at home with a babysitter the night of the accident. You were only three.”

Nobody spoke for several long seconds.

“What about Sniffer? Did I really have a dog?”

Now his mom started crying. Brian looked at his dad. If his dad started crying, too, he was afraid the world would end. But Mr. Bain maintained his usual slightly distracted, slightly puzzled demeanor.

“You did have a dog, son. He went to live with another family.”

“So how did I end up with you?”

“We knew the Samuelses,” said Brian’s mother, suppressing a sob. “Janice was a school friend of mine. We knew you, too. You were such a sweet child. Janice and Owen were so happy when you came into their lives. They told us
that if anything ever happened to them, they hoped we would adopt you. So when…when they died, we did.”

“Because you told them you would?”

“Because we wanted to.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You were so unhappy, son,” his father said. “You missed the Samuelses terribly, and you didn’t understand why you couldn’t see them.”

“You looked for that little dog every day for weeks on end,” his mother added. “Wandering through the house calling, ‘
Sniffer? Sniiiiffer?
’ Over and over again. It about broke my heart.”

“Eventually you seemed to forget about them, and we just didn’t want to remind you. We decided to wait until you were older…and now I guess you are.”

Brian wiped his sleeve across his eyes. He hadn’t even realized he had been crying.

Mrs. Bain said, “I’m sorry we kept this from you, Brian. You deserve to know about your past. It was just so easy to put off telling you. We didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” Brian asked.

His mother sat back in her chair. “What else do you want to know?”

“How come my Korean mom gave me away?”

“We don’t really know, Brian. You were a foundling. You were left on the steps of a police station in Taegu City, South Korea.”

“I was
dumped
?”

“Most likely your mother was very poor, son,” his dad said. “She probably left you because she hoped you would be adopted by a family that could give you a chance for a better life.”

“She must not have been a very good person,” Brian said. “What kind of mother would dump her own kid at the police station?”

“Not a bad place to leave a kid,” said his mother, who was very proud of her chosen profession.

“Yeah, but…so even if I wanted to, I could never find out who my real mother is?”

“I’m afraid not,” his dad said.

Brian nodded, trying to accept the cold, hard facts, when something hit him like a fist to the gut.

“So we don’t even know for sure what day I was born!” he said. “I don’t even have a real birthday?”

“Of course you do,” his mother said.

“We just don’t know exactly when it is,” his father added.

the art of the whine

Roni usually got along pretty well with her mother. Except when Nick was being unreasonable.

“Mom, it’s only three dollars each to download articles from the
Star Tribune,
and I only need to order a few—but I have to give them a credit card number. I’ll pay you back.”

“I don’t know, Roni. I’m just not comfortable letting you use my credit card online. Besides, you already owe me forty dollars for that motorcycle tire.”

“It’s not a motorcycle. It’s a motor
scooter
. And this isn’t for Hillary, it’s for
research
.”

“Nevertheless—”

“How will I learn fiscal responsibility if you don’t give me a chance?”

Roni whined all during breakfast. She whined as she washed the dishes. She whined as she watched her mother pack her briefcase to drive downtown to the mayor’s office. She was following her mother out to her car, still whining, when Nick Delicata made a sputtering sound with her lips, pulled her wallet out of her purse, and held out her Visa card.

“Not one penny more than twenty dollars goes on this card or I’ll have your hide.”

“Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!” Roni said. “You’re the best mom in the world.”

“You have to promise me one more thing.”

“Anything!”

“I want two solid weeks without once having to listen to you whine. About
anything.
I don’t know how you can stand to listen to yourself sometimes.”

Roni snatched the card. “Deal.” She ran back into the house, thinking that there was a very good reason why kids whine.

Because it works.

Brian remembered his dreams. He had dreamed about the big laughing man, and the smiling woman with the red hair, and the little dog—but now he knew they weren’t just dreams. The Samuelses were real. It made him feel more real, too.

He waited until after noon to call Roni—she could be cranky in the morning. When she answered the phone, he said, “Guess who I am.”

“Tiger Woods.”

“Why Tiger Woods?”

“I think he’s cute.”

“Actually, I’m Brian Samuels. At least that’s who I used to be.”

Roni didn’t say anything for several heartbeats. “That sounds portentous.”

“What’s
portentous
?”

“It means, like, ominous and full of meaning.”

“Meet at the marina? End of the pier?” Brian said.

“Give me half an hour,” Roni said. “I’m reduced to travel by foot.”

“Ah, yes. Poor Hillary.”

“Poor Roni, you mean.”

Roni preferred it when she was the one to deliver earth-shattering news to Brian, not the other way around, so before leaving, she printed out three of the articles she had found in the
Star Tribune
archives. First was an article about the abduction, showing a photo of the three-and-a-half-year-old Bryce Doblemun. The second article, dated a few weeks later, was a short human-interest piece about the Doblemuns’ house burning down. Lawrence Doblemun was portrayed as a tragic figure who had lost his wife, his child, and now his home. The article included a photo of a younger, beardless Lawrence Doblemun standing in front of the burned-down house.

The third article, several months later, said that Lawrence Doblemun had been charged with burning down his own house to collect the insurance money.

pebbles

“So, you see, there’s no mystery,” Brian said after telling Roni what he had learned from his parents.

Roni stared at him. “No mystery? Are you crazy?”

“Nope. Perfectly sane.” They were sitting on the endmost dock at Bloodwater Marina, looking out across the Mississippi. Brian threw a pebble into the water. A gull sailed low over the widening ripples. Sometimes people threw pieces of bread, or fish guts, or some other delicacy. This time, the gull was disappointed.

“You don’t even know who you are!” Roni said.

“I am Brian Bain, formerly Brian Samuels.”

“Yeah, and you were found on the steps of a Korean police station. Who were you then? And why did your parents
lie
to you?”

“I guess I was pretty messed up after the Samuelses died. They just thought it would be better for me to forget. It’s not like there’s some huge conspiracy.” He tossed out another pebble. The gull returned, once again hoping for a scrap of food. “It’s kinda sad. I mean, I
knew
them, but I didn’t
know
them, if you know what I mean.” He threw another pebble. This time, the gull ignored the splash.

“Give me a pebble,” Roni said.

“Why?”

“So I can have fun teasing the seagull, too.”

“I told you to pick some up as we were crossing the parking lot, but no, you couldn’t be bothered, and now you can just sit there and watch as I toss my pebbles and watch the ripples move out from them in perfect concentric circles.”

Roni held out her hand. Brian made her wait a couple of seconds, then slowly counted out two pebbles and placed them in her hand as if they were gold coins.

Roni tossed out both pebbles at once, but even the double splash did not entice the gull to return. The ripples faded into the river.

“So I guess that’s that,” Brian said.

“What’s what?”

“The great doppelganger mystery is over.”

“Not by half. We still don’t know what happened to Bryce Doblemun—”

“Vera Doblemun abducted him to get him away from her creepy husband. Besides, the police have had the case for ten years and gotten nowhere.”

“—or why he looks so much like you. And what about the orange-haired lady?”

“What orange-haired lady?”

“Darwin said there was an orange-haired lady asking where you lived.”

“There was?”

“I didn’t tell you,” Roni said.

“Why not?”

“I forgot. Oh, and I might have seen her. I mean, I saw this orange-haired lady at the library a couple of days ago.”

“And she was asking about
me
?”

“I don’t know. She was talking really loud, and Ms. Paige sort of ignored her, so she took off in a huff.”

“Why would she be looking for me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s something to do with the paper-airplane article.”

“Weird.” Brian tossed out his last pebble, stood up, and picked up his skateboard. “If I see her, I’ll ask her what she wants. As far as Bryce Doblemun’s concerned, we don’t even know what he looks like now, or even if he’s still alive. That age-progressed picture is just somebody’s guess. In ten years he could have gotten fat or thin or have really bad acne or weird crooked teeth or who knows. But at least I know I’m not him.” He started to walk away.

“Wait, I didn’t show you what I found!” Roni jumped up and ran after him. She pulled the newspaper articles from her pocket and shoved them at him. “I found the article about the kidnapping. Here’s a picture of Lance Doblemun.”

Brian looked at the photo. “He looks better without the beard, but I still don’t know him.”

“Keep reading. The guy burned his own house down to collect the insurance.”

“How come he’s not in jail, then?”

“He got off on some technicality.”

Brian skimmed the articles and handed the papers back to Roni. “So what? We already knew he was a creep. None of this has anything to do with me.” He started walking away again.

Roni said, “Yeah, but—”

Brian spun around and faced her. “What’s your problem? None of this matters! I don’t want to know any more. Okay, so my parents were wrong not to tell me about my first parents, but now they have. Mystery solved.”

“You’re giving up? I spent my mom’s hard-earned cash to get these stories about what happened to Bryce. Aren’t you even interested?”

“What you don’t seem to get, Miss Shirley Holmes, is that this is my
life,
not some stupid newspaper article you want to write.” He walked away, skateboard under his arm.

“I’m not giving up,” Roni said.

“Fine.” Brian kept walking.

Roni followed Brian down the long dock to the parking lot, wishing she’d kept one of the pebbles—or a brick—to throw at him. She hoped Lance Doblemun would come running up and kidnap him and drag him off to some cave. Brian would want her on the case
then.
She watched him drop his skateboard when he reached the parking lot, put one foot on it, and push off. He thought he was so cool. He had no idea how dorky he looked.

What she was really mad about was that she had no idea how to go about finding Bryce Doblemun. He was just
a missing kid who happened to look like Brian. Maybe Brian was right—maybe it was over. Brian had learned everything there was to learn about his past, and without her help. Now she was at a dead end. P. Q. Delicata, teenage reporter, had reverted to Roni Delicata, teenage schlump.

It made her furious.

Brian, rolling across the none-too-smooth parking lot, looked as if he would topple at any moment. So far he was staying on his board, holding his arms out for balance, acting as if he were going a million miles an hour down a huge hill when he was only going as fast as most people could walk.

Just then, Roni noticed she wasn’t the only person watching Brian. A woman sitting in a little green car had her eyes fastened on him. Roni decided to try to get a little closer and see if she could get a good look at the woman.

She nonchalantly walked across the parking lot to get a better view. It definitely was not the old orange-haired woman. This woman had long black hair. She appeared to be Asian, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. The woman watched Brian until he reached the street and turned onto the sidewalk. As soon as he disappeared from view, she pulled out of her parking space and started after him.

Roni yelled, “Hey!” She ran toward the car.

The woman looked at Roni, startled, then tromped on her accelerator and roared out of the parking lot, tires spinning, barely checking to see if any other cars were coming.

Heart pounding, Roni pulled out her trusty notebook and pencil and scrawled down the woman’s license plate number.

ojinx-o teegim

The next day, Brian managed to avoid thinking about his adoption, about Lance Doblemun, or about Roni Delicata. He did this by designing two new paper airplanes, then spending a few hours at the skate park trying to learn the ollie kickflip, which looked easy but turned out to be—as near as Brian could tell—impossible. Instead of learning a cool new maneuver, he learned that repeated falls on a concrete surface could result in some truly spectacular bruises. He limped home defeated.

The next morning, he came downstairs with his skateboard ready to try again, but his mother intercepted him.

“Brian! Is that what you’re wearing?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“You have to leave for Korean class in ten minutes!”

“I was just there!”

“That was three days ago. The class meets twice a week.”

“But I—”

“Brian, this is not up for negotiation. Besides, your father has a surprise for you on the way home.”