CHAPTER NINE

Chloe felt a little better about everything when she woke up the next day. After she went for her run with the Hulk a few steps behind, she took her shower and thought about her plans for the day. She had two new text messages from Derek, pleading with her to talk to him. After all that had taken place the past couple of days, she wondered if she was ready. She knew that she didn’t want him showing up and seeing the guy who was watching her and asking questions about that. She definitely wasn’t ready to tell him about Jesse. Was she ready to face whatever it was he’d found about her and his late wife? She wasn’t sure about that either, but she was coming to realize that as long as she put it off, it was just going to eat away at her and become bigger than life. With a resigned sigh, she went out first to talk to the big guy.

He was in his usual spot. He still looked a little winded from their run. She hadn’t spoken to him at all so far, and she found it slightly amusing that he looked a little bit nervous as she approached him.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Chloe.” He stood up and took off his glasses. She could see now that he had really pretty blue eyes. His were probably real. She’d have to tell Lexi about them, which would make her friend’s day.

“I’m Brock,” he said. His name and his voice matched the rest of him— all male.

“Brock, I know that Roxi sent you to look after me. I have something that I need to do today though, and I need to do it alone. I can assure you that I will be safe where I’m going and that if you check it with Roxi as I’m sure you will, she’ll tell you to let me go without following me. I appreciate you watching the house. That way, I don’t have to worry about coming home to any surprises. My roommate is there, and she’ll probably be home until she has to go to work this evening. I’ll bet she wouldn’t even mind if you joined her for a bite to eat.”

He was looking at her warily. She knew Roxi and Roxi instilled fear in the biggest of men for some reason. It was just a quality she had. Something she exuded without even trying. “Um…okay, but I will have to check with Roxi first…”

“That’s fine,” she told him. “Thanks for your diligence.”

He smiled and said, “Chloe…”

“Yes?”

“Roxi didn’t tell me what your story was, but if I’m on the look-out for a guy who enjoys hurting women, I can guarantee you that he won’t get anywhere near you on my watch.”

The look on his face restored a tiny bit of her faith in the male species. He was definitely one of the good guys. She might just push this fantasy of Lexi’s along. Lexi deserved a good one in her life, and maybe it would take her mind off the nonsense of wanting to starve herself skinny and strip. “Thanks,” she said again.

When she got back inside, she texted Derek. “Are you on the yacht?” His reply was almost instantaneous, “No, but I will be. When?” She would have to take a cab, and in the middle of the day it would take almost an hour to get there, so she texted back, “A little over an hour?”

“I’ll be there,” was his quick reply.

Chloe finished getting ready, and before she left, she told Lexi, “The Hulk’s name is Brock. He seems nice, and I told him you might feed him later. Keep it on the porch outside just in case.” Lexi’s face was suddenly glowing. She grabbed Chloe in a hug and Chloe tried not to stiffen up.

“Thank you! I have to get in the shower.” Chloe watched her scurry off down the hall with a smile. She called her cab and headed out to find out what Derek knew about her past. It was all so surreal, but this was her life.

**

Derek sat on the deck waiting for Chloe. The past week and a half had been torture. He’d stopped himself from going to the condo or the club to see her at least a dozen times. She’d told him not to, and he had to respect that. He was worried about her though. The realization that she was probably his late wife’s twin had knocked him for a loop; he couldn’t even imagine what it must feel like to her.

He had been busy the past week in spite of the time he’d spent worrying. The doctor that delivered the babies was retired and in a nursing home in New Hampshire. Derek had taken the helicopter and gone to see him. The old man’s brain was riddled with Alzheimer’s or something, and he thought Derek was his brother. He didn’t seem to recall any of his life after the age of twenty-one. He’d become a doctor when he was twenty-eight, Derek knew. When the girls had been born, he was already in his mid-fifties. Derek had been tempted to throttle the old man, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Next, he had tracked down the mid-wife. She was living in New York in a tiny little walk-up in the Bronx. When he first contacted her, she’d been hesitant to meet with him, telling him she didn’t remember Samantha or the twins. He’d been persistent and had finally alluded to the possibility that he would be willing to compensate her for her help. She agreed, but only if he would agree to meet at her home. He’d arrived on time, and after knocking several times, loudly, he had begun to leave, thinking she’d flaked on him. Just before he reached the stairwell, he heard the creak of a door behind him. He turned and saw gray hair and an eye looking out at him through a chain on the door.

“Miss Brower?”

“Are you Derek Stark?” the eyeball asked.

“Yes, Miss Edith Brower, I presume?” She closed the door, and he heard her fumble with the chain. When she pulled the door inward, he saw that the eyeball belonged to a woman of about sixty with gray hair that hung to her shoulders and light brown eyes. She was of medium height and build and on first impression he found her to be one of those kinds of people that were so ordinary, they could blend into the woodwork of a place like New York City.

“Come in,” she’d told him. He’d stepped in, and she had chained the door behind him. She led him to a small table next to the dusty window. They sat, and she said, “I don’t know what I can tell you about something that happened twenty-four years ago.”

“That’s okay,” Derek said, “Why don’t we start with you telling me what you remember about Dr. Hayward?”

She scrunched up her face. It was not an improvement to her features that was for certain. Derek waited patiently, and at last, she said, “I didn’t know him all that well. I was only involved in a few of his cases. He liked having a midwife there when the birth involved multiples.”

“Why is that?”

“It just seemed to help the mothers. Giving birth to more than one child at a time can be a long, trying experience. I was trained to make that experience more bearable.”

“Did the doctor deliver many stillborn babies?” Derek had already done his homework there and found out that Dr. Hayward had in fact, lost an astonishing number of babies in his career.

“Not that I recall.” she was looking thoughtful again and then she suddenly said, “I’d offer you some coffee, but I don’t get my state check for another week, and I was really too broke to buy any.”

Derek pulled out his wallet and laid a hundred dollar bill on the table. “Will that help?” he asked. Her eyes were wide as she looked at it, but greed got the better of her, and she said, “Maybe a bit. It’s been a long month, and my son usually sends me money, but he got laid off.”

Derek laid two more bills in front of her and said, “If you tell me anything that I don’t already know, I’ll leave those here. If not, they go with me.”

She nodded and smacked her lips together before saying, “Dr. Hayward was an evil man. I hope that being locked up in that crazy head of his is God’s punishment for the evil things he did in his life.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Do you work with the police?” she asked, looking out her window like she expected them to be at her three story window.

“No, I’m a real estate agent. I’m just trying to help out a friend. Edith, if you took part in any of Dr. Hayward’s “evil,” this might be a chance for you to redeem yourself.”

“I wasn’t any part of any of it. But I figured out what he was doing. He threatened me if I told anyone. My husband had cancer at the time. He was dying, and I had a son to support.”

“Did he buy your silence?” Derek asked her.

“He threatened me like I said. The money was a back-up plan, I guess. There wasn’t that much of it, and I refused to work with him again.”

“What did he do with the babies, Edith? They weren’t dead, were they?”

Derek was brought back to the present by the sound of footsteps on the deck. He looked up to see Chloe. Beautiful Chloe. He went back and forth in his head and his heart about what he was doing here. He knew she wasn’t Sarah. They looked exactly alike, but everything about them was different. Where Sarah had been all sweet and sunshine and goodness, Chloe was edgy and hard in places. Sarah’s mannerisms had always been cultured and lady-like, and she’d been a little shy with her sexuality even after they were married for two years. Chloe was a sexual being whether she wanted to admit it or not. Everything about her exuded sensuality, and it was hard for him to even look at her without getting turned on. But, he also knew the situation was strange, and it lent itself to more than one problem if he took things with her any further. He just couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Hi,” she said.

He stood up and went towards her. She took a step back. They were back to square one.

“Hi,” he said, stopping about a foot away. “I’m glad you came. Come on; I have some coffee made downstairs.” He led, and she followed. He offered her a seat, and she perched herself on the edge of it like she was about to take flight. He poured their coffee and sat down. “How are you?” he asked her.

“I’m okay,” she said. She was clutching the cup, and he noticed the bandage across her knuckles.

“What happened to your hand?”

She glanced down like she’d forgotten it was there and said, “Some guy got fresh.”

Derek tried not to laugh out loud, but he couldn’t help but smile. He’d be willing to bet that guy didn’t get fresh with anyone else for a very long time. He took a sip of his coffee and said, “I found out some things if you want to hear them.”

She was staring into her coffee cup as she nodded. He could tell that this was hard on her and his heart hurt as he said, “The first thing you need to know is that Trevor and Samantha thought that one of their children died. I saw the death certificate. They were told that she strangled on the cord in utero and was dead at birth. The doctor who delivered the twins was not Samantha’s regular doctor. He was out of town, and this doctor told her she needed to have a cesarean section.”

“They didn’t ask for proof? They didn’t want to hold their dead baby, or at least see her?”

“You have to remember a couple of things, Chloe. This was twenty-four years ago. They did things differently then. The doctor was still the master of his domain back them. Then you also have to take into account that this was not a natural birth. Samantha was put under anesthesia and by the time she woke up, they’d taken both of the babies. They just brought Sarah back, and that’s when they told her the other twin had died. They still grieve for her, Chloe. When I was asking questions, and they had to remember the specifics of that day, their hearts were breaking.” He waited a few beats, and when she didn’t say anything, he went on, “The doctor who did the delivery has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember shit, but the midwife— she was a wealth of information.”

“Like what?” Chloe asked.

“She admitted to knowing that the doctor was “selling” babies. She said that he “stood in” for the regular OB/GYN when he knew multiple births were involved. Out of fifty-six deliveries in a five year period, fifteen babies were born stillborn. They were all children of multiple births.”

“No one questioned it?”

“I found evidence that the good doctor was relieved of his privileges at St. Peter’s about two years after Trevor and Samantha’s children were born. The records of that incident are all sealed however so I cannot find out the reason. He went into private practice after that, General Medicine. He developed Alzheimer’s at a fairly young age.”

“Good,” she said, almost so quietly that he couldn’t hear. Those were his sentiments as well. They were both quiet for a while and then she said, “So the odds are pretty good that these people are my relatives?”

“Yes, better than good,” he said. “What about your adoptive parents?”

She jerked her head up and looked at him sharply. “What about them?”

“I was just wondering if they were still living. Maybe we could get some information from them about the adoption.”

“No!”

He waited for her to expound on that, but she didn’t, and the “No” was final.

“Okay, I have another question.”

“What’s that?”

“Can I tell Trevor and Samantha?”