Free Strong 03 - Twice by Lisa Unger Page A

hand.
    The cab came to a halt in front of an attractive brownstone offof Central Park West. Jeffrey paid the cabdriver through the small flip tray in the glass and tipped, even though the guy had practically killed them all. But they had made good time, and he couldn’t complain about that. He did make a mental note of his name and ID number—Abdul Abdullah, number 689GHT2—for what purpose he didn’t know. The driver never acknowledged them at all except to take the money.
    Lydia slid out of the cab behind Jeffrey and looked at the door to the ob/gyn office with trepidation.
    “Maybe that test was wrong,” she said, hesitating at the sidewalk.
    “Maybe,” answered Jeffrey, reaching out his hand. “That’s why we’re here.”
    But he hoped that it wasn’t wrong. He wanted this and he knew in his heart that she did, too. She was just afraid. But he was sure that everything was just as it should be and that they were going to be fine … all three of them.

chapter six
    T he past was immortal. Maybe it slept, but it never died. It had been creeping up upon them all this time. Without sound and without odor, like the most skilled predator, it had stalked them and suddenly it was upon them. In her two-bedroom suite at the Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue, Eleanor Ross poured hot water from a hand-painted porcelain pot into a matching teacup. The scent of oolong tea rose potent and savory as she put the lid in place with a delicate clink, and replaced the pot on the tray. She sat on the plush sofa and drummed her long fingernails on the dark oak surface of the coffee table.
    She regarded her hands for a moment with their long manicured fingers, their loose white skin and veins like ropes beneath the nearly translucent surface. They were the hands of an old woman. She brought a hand to her hair and touched the rough, brittle strands that were pulled back tightly into a bun. The hair of an old woman. It was funny how the external changed so dramatically but the internal remained much the same. Her perceptions, her concept of herself had not changed all that much since she was a young mother. Even though the shell of her was virtually unrecognizable. She’d been beautiful once, so beautiful. Tall and voluptuous, with long, thick red hair, almond-shaped eyes that blazed green, perfect breasts, magnificent white unblemished skin. But that was all in the past now … the only part of the past that was dead and gone. Beauty had faded, but the horror lived and breathed.
    It seemed so silly now that she had imagined they could all escape their legacy. She thought of her daughter in that awful place, the twins sleeping in the bedroom across the suite. They were still innocent, but she saw it in them, too. In their too-old eyes, in the way they looked at each other, in the way they communicated without speech. She had tried to ignore it, but she had seen it too many times. Eleanor still missed her own brother, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that he’d been dead now nearly twenty years. There was a connection there that no one and nothing could sunder. Not even time. Not even murder.
    She looked into the facets of the magnificent emerald in its antique platinum setting on her left hand. Her engagement ring, given to her by the only man she had ever loved enough to marry. Gone now, too. Before she could stop it a tear traveled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. She got up and walked to the window, looked down to the street, where people hustled about their ordinary lives. Steam billowed from a manhole cover, its plumes rising into the air and dissipating in the cold before they reached the sky. The day was gray and felt like snow. The people, coming home from work, or running to do some shopping for Christmas, or meeting friends for dinner, filled Eleanor with envy. What must it be like not to live under the shadow her family lived under? But then she imagined, maybe just to make herself feel better,