“Oh geez, we’ve been going nuts trying to figure this out, and it’s been her family all along.” Jillian gave a scream and waved her hands over her head. “What the hell? Why didn’t she just put their names on the photos?”
“Because Edmond Desmarais isn’t Ming’s real name any more than Ming is.” Louise paced as her stomach churned. “We know Tristan is the baby of the family, and Esme left eighteen years ago. She might have assumed he would grow up. If we hadn’t recognized him from his photo, we certainly wouldn’t be able to identify him by the name he gave us. The obviously fake name of Flying Monkey Five forced us to do an extensive search.”
Jillian growled. “I still say it was a stupid way of warning us! Her way didn’t do any good at all. He’s in our class! He followed us home! He knows where we live now.”
“He knew before he got on the train,” Louise said. “Remember? He knew we were going to Astoria. And he knows what our birthday is.”
Jillian eyes went wide. “Really?”
Louise bit her bottom lip while trying to remember everything their mother ever told them about Anna Desmarais. In the light of this new information, things looked strangely different. “Oh. Oh. Oh shit.”
“What?”
“Anna kept going on and on about Mom stealing something from her. She tore Mom’s offices apart trying to find what Mom took from her. What Mom stole was us! Anna knows, and she wants us back.”
“How could she know?” Jillian cried. “We erased all the records.”
Louise squinted as she watched Joy stuff handfuls of smelly cat food into her mouth. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. They’d been missing pieces and hadn’t been able to put anything together. Now they had lots of pieces, but it didn’t make sense. Were they still missing too much? They had erased all the information connecting Esme to all her children: Alexander, themselves, and Nikola. They hadn’t been able to remove Esme’s billing records without raising certain data flags in the system. So anyone checking could see that Esme had been a customer, and that she’d been paying for storage for eighteen years, but there wouldn’t be information on any of the genetic material she’d deposited. Their parents were never billed, not for the twins’ embryos or Nikola’s, so there wouldn’t be any records of what was taken. The company could have done a manual inventory, but their father would have mentioned that. What had the twins missed? And how did this fit with Yves wanting Alexander, Dufae’s box, and Joy?
Joy finished eating by sticking her whole head into the can and licking it clean. They’d learned that they couldn’t stop this ritual. Joy added a new twist by flinging the empty can over her shoulder. It bounced off the upper cabinet and, either by luck or design, landed in the trashcan.
“Joy! You broke the cabinet!” Jillian pointed to a section of bare wood in the frame.
“No, that’s a bullet hole from the robbers that—” Louise gasped as she realized what they’d missed. “We didn’t erase all the records! Mom and Dad would have copied everything they could get their hands on about our donors. Family history of illnesses. Genetic disorders. They would have records here at the house.”
“And the robbers took everything.” Jillian swore. “That bitch! Anna Desmarais wasn’t burying the hatchet by giving Mom those gala tickets, she was making sure we were all out of the house so she could have our home robbed!”
Louise nodded slowly as she double-checked her twin’s logic. “If she hadn’t insisted that Mom and Dad bring us along, they might have hired a babysitter to come to the house. Any random day, someone could be home sick or waiting for a delivery or have a doctor’s appointment. The only way she could be sure no one was home was to make a big stink about how she was being noble by giving Mom enough tickets for the whole family. Once she knew we were at the gala, she kept Mom busy so we couldn’t leave.”
Jillian growled more curses while making sure that the cat food can was buried deep within the trash. Louise turned on the sink’s faucet and washed Joy with hand soap. By now the baby dragon loved the combination of warm water and attention. She purred like a kitty, rubbing against Louise’s hands.
Jillian made a small sound of discovery and pulled their old toothbrushes out of the trash. Their mother hadn’t wanted the twins using them just in case the robbers had touched them. “DNA! That’s why the thieves took the toothbrushes: they have Mom and Dad’s DNA on them. With these, Desmarais could prove that we’re her — wait — no — the robbers didn’t take ours. So why did they just take Mom and Dad’s?”
Louise considered as she wrapped Joy in a clean dishtowel. “It could be that they wanted DNA to confirm Mom and Dad’s identities, in case they were using fake ID.”
