Last Requests by KB
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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 9
“Catherine was my half-sister.”
Kim’s gaze had been directed at the fire, but now she turned to look at the woman opposite, her blue eyes soft.
“You’re my niece, and also my namesake.”
Andrea felt her eyebrows lift in astonishment. She had been expecting some sort of connection, considering what had been said the previous night, but that it was such a close bond was surprising.
Standing, Kim went over to the mantel and took down a framed photo, which she handed to her niece. Looking at it, Andrea saw that it was the same image she and Jarod had received of their mothers together.
“That was taken just before she started working for the Centre,” Kim explained as she sat down again. “It was the day we decided that if we ever had children, our first daughters would be named for each other.”
“But I thought Jarod’s sister was named Emily.”
A sad expression crossed Kim’s face. “Yes, she is,” she agreed. “But my first pregnancy was twins. Jarod's twin sister was stillborn at 35 weeks. Her name was going to be Catherine.”
The redhead crossed to the mantel again and took down another framed picture, which she gave to her niece, who saw that it was a small baby, wrapped in a thin pink rug. Her closed eyes were framed by dark eyebrows, and a tuft of dark brown hair poked out from beneath the rug. Her skin had a dull, waxy appearance and was pale, with blue-gray lips.
“That’s my older daughter,” Kim murmured. “My Catherine Jane.”
She sighed deeply, while Andrea remained silent. It had always seemed to her that her life was full of tragedy, but this woman seemed to have suffered even more, having lost three children, as well as being forced to separate from her husband to keep their other child safe.
“Catherine and I shared the same father,” Kim went on, when she could speak again. “Your aunt Dorothy was Catherine’s full sister.”
“So do you have the inner sense, too?” Andrea asked eagerly.
“No.” Kim shook her head. “That ability came through her mother. But I often talked to her about it, and she told me what it was like.”
Andrea nodded, somewhat disappointed by this news, but still hopeful that this woman could help her make sense of what she had been told the previous night.
“Catherine quickly worked out what kind of a place the Centre would be,” Kim explained. “She knew what kind of a man she had married, and something, possibly one of her voices, convinced her not to ever mention me to her husband. But she didn’t expect them to go as far as to kidnap children. When that happened, and she saw what had really been started, she did everything she could to protect the children, including trying to get them out.” Kim’s expression became one of disappointment. “From what Catherine told Eth – Tyler, she was hoping to get him out and bring him to me before rescuing my children and hers, but she never got that chance.”
At this juncture, Jason got up off the floor and scrambled up onto Kim’s lap, snuggling against her chest, kissing her cheek.
“Don’ be sad, Gamma,” he said mournfully. “Daddy don’ want dat you be sad.”
Kim cuddled him close for a moment before looking down into the boy’s dark eyes, an expression of delight in her own.
“Can you hear your Daddy, Jason?”
“Uh huh.” He nodded enthusiastically. “He talks to me, an’ when I’s asleep at night, den he comes an’ gives me big hugs an’ fings.”
“You lucky boy,” Kim murmured, kissing his rosy round cheek.
“I… maybe I hear him, too,” Andrea put in, a little shyly. She told the woman about the dream she had had the previous night. Then she asked the question that had been irritating her since Jason had woken her. “Do you think it was real?”
“There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be,” the older woman replied, as her grandson snuggled down in her lap. “Before your mother learned properly how to listen to them, she could only make sense of them when she was asleep.” Kim smiled. “We shared a room for several weeks, and I’d hear her replying to things they’d said to her. It was a little freaky at first,” she admitted. “I tried to ask her about it, but she’d say she’d been told not to discuss it with anyone. Finally, though, she was willing to tell me about it.”
“She said to me last night that she found a place where she felt comfortable and learned to listen to the voices. Where was that?“
“It was when she went to the St. Catherine of the Hills convent. During the hours of prayer and contemplation, she learned to focus enough that the voices became clear.”
Andrea nodded and then looked up. “Does E – Tyler hear him, too?”
Kim looked thoughtful, and then her eyes widened in obvious realization. “Of course! That’s why he’s been having such a hard time with them lately! Jarod's trying to talk to him, but I taught him to block out every other voice except for Catherine’s. He’s concentrating so hard on not listening to them that he probably doesn’t even recognize his brother.”
“I suppose Ryan can’t hear him?” Andrea suggested somewhat hopefully, remembering the youth’s woebegone face from the previous evening.
“How could he?” Kim asked reasonably. “Jarod couldn’t have heard your mother when he was alive. Neither he nor Ryan have inherited the inner sense.”
“I’d forgotten that,” the young woman confessed. “It would have made things easier for him if he’d been able to.”
“But if he knows Jarod’s still around, if Tyler can talk to him and tell Ryan things, that would have to help,” Kim suggested, before enlarging on the feelings of her son’s clone. “When Ryan found out who – what – he was, he resented it fiercely. After he was rescued from the airstrip, my husband brought him to me, the same way he would with Tyler later. I’ll confess that I thought of him as a younger version of my son. I even called him ‘Jarod’ one time, by accident. Of course, I could understand why he was angry, but every time I looked at him, I saw the boy who had been taken from me, and it was almost impossible, at first, to see him as his own person.”
Andrea nodded silently. She could understand why Kim would feel that way. It had been almost impossible, when she had seen the boy in the room at the Centre, to see him as anything except a young Jarod. And for someone who had spent years waiting to find her son, it would have only exacerbated the difficulty.
“I think it was Jarod who finally made him realize that, despite being genetically identical, they’re still two different people,” Kim continued. “He made me understand it in many conversations we had at the hospital. And I know he talked to Ryan about it, making sure he knew that, although people who had known Jarod would unavoidably think of him every time they saw his clone, he could still be his own person.” She smiled fondly at the fire. “I know that, towards the end, Ryan absolutely idolized Jarod. Although he knew it was inevitable, Jarod's death was probably harder on him than the rest of us. He’s lost a role model, the one who could have led him through his life and shown him the man he has the potential to become. I think Ryan’s going to feel lost for a long time without him.”
“Could I help?” Andrea offered, after a long moment of silence. “After all, I knew Jarod at the time of life Ryan’s going through now, and I don’t have the negative connotations S – Patrick does. He and I only met once – when I was trying to get him out of the Centre.”
Kim’s blue eyes met those of her niece, a startled expression in them. “You did that?”
“I tried to.” Andrea sighed. “I tried to imagine him being trapped in the Centre for another twenty years – or the rest of his life. The idea made me feel sick. I felt like I couldn’t do anything except try to get him out. Of course, I failed, but only because Patrick had his own plan, which was more likely to succeed than mine, so he came in time to stop me putting both of us in a potentially fatal situation.”
“He did?” Kim’s expression was full of wonder. “Of course, Ryan can only ever see that time from his perspective, and it seemed to him like Patrick was trying to keep him in the Centre, not help him escape. He can’t forgive Patrick for that.”
“I wondered about that myself, at the time,” the younger woman put in. “I thought that was what he was trying, too – to replace Jarod with a younger version, and secure his own place at the Centre. After all, every day Jarod was in the outside world, our positions were more tenuous. If Patrick had had Ryan, it would have given him more certainty of staying alive. But when I heard what had happened, then I knew he’d planned out the safest way for Jarod to be able to take him away somewhere safe.”
“I’ll tell him,” Kim vowed softly. “We try not to talk about the Centre too much, but that’s something he should know.”
“How did Jarod think of Ryan?” Andrea asked suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, is he Jarod's brother, his son, or what?”
“Oh, I see.” Kim looked down at the baby on her lap. “Ryan calls me ‘Mom’, but I think he looked up to Jarod as a father.”
“Then he should be able to see Jason as a brother,” Andrea responded firmly. “It will be another link to Jarod.”
Kim smiled. “I was definitely wrong about you,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have believed that you could have thought about any of us like that.”
“Before I left Blue Cove, you would have been right,” her niece informed her.
“That’s not strictly true,” a quiet male voice from behind them stated. “You worried about me.”
Both women turned to find Tyler in the doorway. He smiled and then came over to lightly kiss his sister’s cheek before tickling Jason’s tummy. The boy giggled, reaching out both chubby hands for his uncle, who picked him up and then sat down on the sofa, looking from one woman to the other.
“What were you talking about?”
“Us,” Kim told him. “And we need to talk. I think I might know why things have become so difficult for you lately.”
“And I need to get Jason home for a nap,” Andrea put in, starting to pack away her son’s toys into his bag. Strapping the boy into his stroller, she and Tyler lifted it down the few stairs to the ground, before her brother and aunt went back inside and she pushed her son over the path that had been cleared between their houses, seeing from the gray clouds hanging threateningly in the sky that more snow was likely.
Although Patrick had gone out, the fire was still glowing and throwing out warmth. Andrea felt her son’s hands and face, before lifting the boy out. He cuddled close to her as she removed his outer layer of clothing.
“Mama,” he murmured drowsily, and she smiled at him.
“What is it, baby?”
“Daddy says ‘fank you’,” he said, and then snuggled up against her neck.
Andrea smiled at her son and then at the empty room, which already felt like home, as she picked up his bag. “You’re welcome, Jarod.”
