Chapter 4

Randy's comment about their close relationship, and the inference that that was what caused the miscarriage, made me curious. I didn't know that much about incestuous relationships, but I knew from my Sociology studies that incest wasn't nearly as rare as most people thought it was. I also knew that there had been a lot of babies born from such joinings over thousands of years.

So I did a little research.

There isn't that much information out there about incest. Not only is it taboo in the majority of all societies on earth, it isn't even studied very often. To study it would mean you have to agree that it exists, and nobody much wants to do that.

But there are estimates, and our forefathers wrote down a whole lot more about the product of incest, in terms of people born from incestuous couples, than they probably realized they were writing down.

It is estimated that twenty percent of siblings engage in incest routinely. Routinely means consensualy, in this case, and repeatedly. There is much more incest that is the result of experimentation, or curiosity, and a darker side associated with rape. All these statistics are interwoven with each other. The estimates are based on the known episodes of each kind of relationship. They don't break down estimates along what the familial relationship is, IE father/daughter, or brother/sister, or cousins, and even less is known when the female is the elder of the two, such as in a mother/son, or aunt/nephew kind of thing.

But the point is, that consensual, loving incest is much more prevalent in almost all societies than the average person might think. And a lot more happy, healthy babies are born from such relationships than is reported in official files. It's kind of like the masturbation thing. People used to make all kinds of dire warnings about the ill effects of masturbation, when, in fact, there aren't any. People warned each other not to have their brother's babies for much the same reason. Scientifically, the only reason not to have your brother's baby is because of the slim chance that the genetics will conflict. Usually this means an extra set of chromosomes is donated to the baby, which can cause admittedly terrible consequences. What they don't tell you is that the instance of such complications is only a teensy bit more common between closely related persons than it is between unrelated couples. In fact, it is pretty safe to project that Downs Syndrome, for example, is MORE often the result when the parents are NOT related, than it is when they ARE related.

As I say, the research on this is slim, but if you look at the total population of humans with Downs Syndrome, only an idiot would assume that the majority of their parents were incestuous. Common sense has a place in looking at things, in addition to science.

Information on miscarriages is a bit more common. Literally dozens of things can cause a miscarriage, from physical trauma, all the way down, according to some researchers, to simple stress.

I wasn't involved in medical research - I admit that up front - but I also didn't find any strong scientific indications that it was unlikely that Randy and Kathy couldn't produce a healthy baby. I also couldn't tell them they WOULD have a healthy baby, if they tried, but, then again, you can't promise that to ANYBODY.

I didn't talk about that right away, though, the next time I went over. Instead, I asked them how they managed the marriage license, and getting married when everybody knew they were brother and sister.

"That was easy," said Randy, flipping through the channels to find a game to watch. "We already had different last names. When we went to college, nobody knew we were related."

"Really," I commented.

"Yes, really," he confirmed. "When we were adopted my last name was different than Kathy's. I guess we were actually half-brother and sister. Our fathers must have been different men."

"Really," I commented again. "And your adoptive parents didn't have you take their name?"

"No," he said as Kathy came into the room. "I asked Mom about that once upon a time, and she said that they thought we should retain our given names... to have something from our past."

"They talked to you about your past?" I asked.

"Not really," said Kathy, sinking into a chair. "They wouldn't tell us anything about our previous life. Mom always said it was too sad to talk about. By the time we grew up and were capable of dealing with 'sad', she said it was too much in the past, and not to dwell on it. All she'd tell us was that our parents were dead."

"But nothing about how that happened?" I prodded.

"I got the impression she didn't really know that much about it, or maybe that she was just saying that to keep us from trying to find our birth parents." said Randy.

"Where were you raised?" I asked.

"Templeton, Iowa," said Randy, finally deciding on a match between the Colts and the Redskins.

"And that's where you were born?" I asked.

"No, the town was different when we got adopted," he said. "Templeton was where mom and dad lived, and we went there to live with them."

Kathy asked me why I wanted to know about that.

"I don't know, I was just thinking about things," I said. "I haven't thought about being adopted for a long time. Now I'm curious. I've thought about going back to see if I could find out anything about my own parents, and my brother and sister."

"How would you do that?" she asked curiously.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I guess I'd start with newspapers... in the library."

"Where were you born?" asked Kathy.

"I think it must have been Jackson," I said. "I can still remember my address. I had to have it memorized when I went to school the first day."

"Really?" asked Kathy. "You can still remember that from way back then?"

"Sixteen-nineteen Wall street, Jackson, Iowa, one-one-six-three-two." I was surprised at how smoothly it slipped off my lips. "My telephone number was Skyline six-six-nine-four."

"Skyline?" asked Kathy.

"That was back when people had a word that identified the first three numbers of a phone number. You dialed S, K and Y... for Skyline, and then the rest of the numbers." I suddenly felt old. Micky and Susan had made fun of me for being a quarter of a century old. Now I felt like it for some reason.

"It's funny how you remember things like that," said Kathy. This time of year, as I anticipate Christmas, I remember a building from the first place we lived, before we were adopted. Besides Ange, it's about the only thing I can remember from back then. It was across the street from a candy store that I used to stand in front of and stare into the window. There was all this candy and it looked so delicious. The building across the street was really tall, and it had lights all along its outline. I can remember it like it was yesterday, with its round dome roof... and all those beautiful lights."

I felt a chill run up my spine.

"With red clay tiles on the roof?" I asked, not believing that her answer could possibly confirm what I was suddenly thinking.

Her eyes had gone to that place where you see things that aren't there, but the snapped back to mine.

"Red squares... yes! How did you know that?" she asked, her voice tight.

"And the candy store," I drove onward, the chill now running both down and up my spine. "It had a gingerbread house in the window that looked like it could feed ten kids."

"YES!" she squealed. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I remember the same thing," I said, my voice just above a whisper.

She sat there, eyes wide for a few seconds. Then she got up suddenly and went to the china cabinet, which had drawers in the lower part. She opened a drawer and pulled out an atlas. She sat back down and opened it up. Her finger traced down a list on the side of the page... a list of cities and towns... and then went to find the number and letter that would locate the town she had stopped at. She gasped.

"Jackson is only thirty miles from Templeton!" she said. "You came from a town only thirty miles from where Randy and I grew up!"

I felt something that was a mix of dread and insane hope clutch at my heart.

"You had a cap... it was pink... with bunny ears on it... and it tied under your chin..."

Randy muted the television. Both of them were staring at me now, mouths slack.

"You couldn't possibly know that!" gasped Kathy.

"Unless..." I let that hang out there, unable to give voice to the rest of it.

"You can't be serious," whispered Kathy. "That's beyond all possibility. It's been twenty YEARS since I wore that hat.