Unbroken Read online

  But there was no number identifying the call she’d just had before Nate got home . . . from school, if that’s where he really had been, and there was no indication he’d called, either.

  How can there be no number? she wondered. Even if the caller blocked the ID, there should have been a message reading Blocked Call or Private Number.

  But there was nothing.

  “You all right?” Nate asked. “You look a little shaky.”

  The light from the kitchen window lit him from behind, so she couldn’t see his expression. What she imagined was bad enough. But with the light shining directly onto her, she knew Nate could see the worry and doubt she was feeling.

  “Sorry I’m so late. You eat supper yet?” Nate asked.

  Kiera wasn’t sure if she was angry or relieved that he didn’t even try to pry out of her what was bothering her. She sighed and let her shoulders droop, and even though she was still convinced someone was close by, watching her every move, she told herself to ignore it.

  “I hope you’re all right with sandwiches,” she said tiredly as she walked into the kitchen and replaced the phone. “I’m not really up for cooking anything.”

  “How ’bout we go out to eat?” Nate asked, but Kiera shook her head.

  “I’m too tired,” she said. “Sandwiches will have to do.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Going Down

  1

  “Can’t sleep, huh?”

  Kiera jumped and spun around in her chair to see Nate standing in the doorway that led into the family room. The glow of the computer screen—the only light in the room—illuminated his face with a soft blue light that made him look almost ghostly.

  “You scared me.” Kiera took a quick breath and listened to the blood rushing in her ears. “I didn’t hear you come down the stairs. What time is it, anyway? Is Trista home yet?”

  Nate shook his head as he took a few steps closer. “I didn’t hear her come in, but I don’t know.”

  Kiera glanced at the clock at the bottom of the computer screen. “It’s almost one o’clock.”

  “You want me to check her room?” Nate asked.

  Biting her lower lip, Kiera shook her head.

  “What do you want me to do then?” Nate had an edge in his voice as he gave her a helpless shrug. “Try calling her cell if you’re worried.”

  “I did. She’s not answering.” Kiera took a deep breath. “This is getting way out of hand. We have to come up with some kind of solution.” She knew she had said all of this before, but her frustration with Trista—and Nate, for that matter—was reaching a breaking point, and it wasn’t just because of her medical problems.

  “Come on,” Nate said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Summer vacation’s about over. She’s probably partying with her friends. I’m sure she’s all right.”

  “She’s with Townsend, and you know it, and you and I both know what kind of partying they’re probably doing.”

  Nate started to say something but caught himself and remained silent. Kiera stared at him and prayed he would do or say something because she was coming up with nothing.

  “Look, you and I know Trista’s got a good head on her shoulders,” Nate finally said. “I’m sure she’s being sensible. We raised her that way, right? So we have to trust her judgment.”

  “Not when she’s with people like Townsend.” Kiera sniffed with thinly veiled disgust and then sighed and shook her head, thinking, What’s the use?

  “I’m just saying this is getting way out of hand, and I can guarantee it won’t continue once school starts.”

  “I agree,” Nate said, holding his hand out and shaking it impatiently. “Give me the phone. I’ll call her right now.”

  Before Kiera could do what he asked, the back door opened and then shut quietly.

  “See?” Nate said, smiling at her with smug satisfaction. All Kiera could think was that this didn’t prove anything, and it certainly didn’t solve the problem.

  “Trista. Come in here right now,” Kiera called out when they heard footsteps moving stealthily down the hallway.

  “Oh . . . You’re up . . . Both of you,” Trista said, blinking with surprise as she entered the family room. Her eyes flicked back and forth between her mother and father. Her hair was disheveled, and her clothes looked rumpled.

  “We’d like to talk to you,” Kiera said.

  “About what?”

  “For one, we’d like to know where you’ve been.” Kiera put as much iron into her voice as she could, but she wasn’t convinced it was working.

  “Out,” Trista said with a shrug. Her expression looked pinched.

  “We know you were out.” Kiera didn’t have a whole lot of patience for her daughter’s usual dodges. “We want to know where you were and who you were with.”

  “Friends,” Trista said.

  “I want names,” Kiera said as her anger spiked. She wanted to ask Trista why, whenever they questioned her, she answered in single words, but she wasn’t ready for the you’re the one who’s defensive argument.

  She glanced at Nate for support, but he was hanging back, looking like he wanted to get between mother and daughter about as much as he wanted to step into an alligator pit.

  “You know . . .” Trista said. “Just friends.”

  “Names,” Kiera insisted, and then, before Trista could answer, “Have you been drinking or taking drugs?”

  “Christ, why the third degree?” Trista asked, looking wounded.

  “Watch the language,” Kiera snapped.

  “I was just out with my friends and—no, we weren’t drinking or doing drugs. You want to give me a urine test or something?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Kiera said, “but I don’t appreciate your sarcasm.” She was getting angrier by the second, and again she looked to Nate for support, but he just stood there silently watching.

  “Can we talk tomorrow, Mom?” Trista made a little half turn to leave. “I’m really not up for this right now.”

  “You are aware what time it is?” Kiera said, so mad she couldn’t stop herself. “How many times do we have to tell you to call if you’re going to be out past eleven?”

  “Sorry . . . I forgot.” Trista shrugged and looked like she was ready to bolt as soon as she could.

  Kiera had no idea what to say next, and Nate was useless, so she finally waved her off and said, “You’re right. We will talk about this in the morning. And there will be consequences.”

  “Whatever,” Trista said, and without another word, she turned and darted away. Her footsteps stomped a little louder than necessary on the stairs.

  “Thanks for all the help,” Kiera said, turning back to Nate and glaring at him.

  Nate shrugged. “It’s not in our control anymore. I think we raised her right, and we just have to trust her.”

  “We need to set and enforce limits.”

  “Come on. Remember what it was like when you were her age?”

  Kiera froze, her mind instantly flashing on what had happened to Billy Carroll.

  “I do,” she said shakily. “That’s what worries me.”

  “She’s got to figure things out on her own. You know, we’re not always gonna be around to help her.”

  Although Kiera knew he hadn’t meant it to, his words cut her like a razor. Everything she had been through today came rushing back, almost overwhelming her. She shivered at the thought that she had gotten a death sentence with the doctor’s diagnosis.

  “So why can’t you sleep?” Nate asked. He took a few steps closer to her but didn’t reach out to touch her. His gaze was fixed on the computer screen, not her. Kiera realized he was trying to see what she’d been reading, so she clicked the window shut, closing the site so quickly Nate jumped back.

  “What don’t you want me to see?” he asked. “You checking out porn sites or something?”

  His feeble attempt at a joke didn’t go over well. Kiera scowled, her lower lip trembling as she looked at him.
r />   “I was just . . . checking out some . . . ahh . . . medical sites.” It took effort to keep her voice from cracking.

  Nate softened his attitude and knelt down beside her. Taking her hand in his, he gave it a tight squeeze. Kiera knew he was trying to reassure her, but it didn’t help. She felt such a distance between them, she wasn’t sure anything he could say or do would help.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Kiera said, fighting back tears. “You didn’t know.” She took a breath to steady her nerves. “I was just looking over what—” Her voice broke again, and she had to swallow before she could continue. “—looking over what might be going on . . . you know? . . . inside my head.”

  “You think that’s a good idea? If you read that stuff, you’re gonna start thinking worst-case scenario.”

  “Like I’m not already?” Tears began to fill her eyes, and when she looked at her husband, she was filled with anguish because of the immense gulf between them.

  Nate looked at her, his eyes glowing softly in the blue light from the computer screen.

  “What can I say?” he asked, and Kiera saw the desperation in his eyes. “You have to believe the doctor knows what he’s doing and that everything will be all right.”

  “I know. It’s just so scary, some of this stuff.”

  Nate nodded but said nothing.

  Kiera swallowed hard, hesitating for a moment. She was desperate to talk to someone about what she was going through. Left to her own devices, her imagination got much too carried away.

  “I was researching vestigial twins.”

  “Vestigial twins?” Nate shook his head. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  Kiera eased back in her chair and let out her breath. Just minutes ago, she had been absolutely convinced that’s what was going on inside her head, but saying it out loud made her think how foolish she was. She wanted to dismiss it all as just late-night worries, but the expression on Nate’s face urged her on.

  “It happens more than you’d think. They think it might even happen one out of every five or six pregnancies.”

  “What happens?”

  Kiera took a deep breath, hoping to clear her mind and wishing she could detach herself from all of this. “What happens is, when a woman gets pregnant, twins often develop. Before long, though, one of them will absorb the other.”

  “Absorb?” Nate didn’t look convinced.

  “There are thousands of cases of people who have tumors removed later in life, and the doctors find fingernails and teeth growing inside the tumor.”

  The disbelief on Nate’s face told her he wasn’t buying any of this, and she had to admit that saying it out loud made it sound ridiculous.

  “It’s been medically proven,” she said. “Some researchers think people who develop multiple personalities and serious psychological disorders like schizophrenia might really be expressing the thoughts and feelings of their absorbed twin who is still alive, in a way, and still has its own thoughts.”

  Nate was silent for a few seconds as he let this sink in, but she could tell by the expression on his face that he still didn’t believe her.

  “And you’re saying—what? This growth in your brain is a twin that was never born?” He shook his head and rubbed his face with the flats of his hands. “Come on, Kiera. That’s just . . . bullshit. What you need is a good night’s sleep, not sitting up so late, worrying. Let’s go to bed.”

  Kiera started to get up but hesitated. Her gaze shifted to the computer monitor, and she considered doing a bit more research. Instead, she shut the computer down. Her bare feet scuffed the carpet as she and Nate went upstairs, but after the lights were out, and she was tucked into bed, she still couldn’t stop the flood of worries and fears that swirled through her mind.

  It was a long time before she finally drifted off to sleep, and even then, her sleep was thin and disturbed by vivid dreams and a faint voice that kept asking her—

  “Where’s Billy . . . ? Where’s Billy Carroll . . . ?”

  2

  “It’s really weird,” Kiera said. “And I’m really scared.”

  Worried that Nate or Trista would overhear her, she cupped the phone close to her mouth. She was in the living room with early morning sunlight filtering through the front windows. The rest of the family was still in bed, hopefully asleep. From the sound of his voice, Kiera was certain she had awakened Jon, even though he insisted he was already up because he was leaving for the airport soon. In the background, she could hear Liz going on about something. Kiera wasn’t sure if she was on her cell phone talking to someone else or complaining to Jon about taking a call so early in the morning. She heard something that sounded like “the crack of dawn.”

  “You have every right to be concerned.” Jon’s voice was low and mild in spite of Liz’s jabbering, which continued nonstop. “I’m just saying . . . I wish you had said something to me before now.”

  “I would have,” Kiera said, “but I didn’t want you to worry. I figured I had to deal with this on my own.”

  “Oh, really? And what do you think friends are for? And how about Nate? You certainly told him about this.”

  The back of Kiera’s neck prickled, and she looked at the living room doorway, expecting to see Nate—or someone else—standing there, but the doorway was empty.

  Who did you expect to see? she asked herself.

  She had described vestigial twins to Jon, and he had listened patiently while she explained how she was now convinced that’s what was happening to her.

  “You’re filling your head with ideas that are really out there because you’re scared,” Jon said mildly.

  Kiera hadn’t dared to tell Jon about the phone call she’d gotten yesterday, where the voice—she was convinced it was a woman’s—had asked her what had happened to Billy.

  “I’m going to be in Boston for the next five days at a real estate conference, but I want you to promise me one—no, two things, all right?”

  “What’s that?” Kiera asked, cringing at the tightness in her voice.

  “First. Stop worrying. I know it’s easy for me to say, and if the situation was reversed, I’d probably be freaking out like you are. But you have to trust that your doctor has got everything under control. Even if it’s your worst fear—even if the growth is cancerous, he said it was small and because of the location, relatively easy to remove.”

  “Brain surgery is always dangerous,” Kiera replied. “That’s what he said.”

  “Of course. I’m just saying you can’t stay up all night, losing sleep surfing the Web and getting all worked up about this . . . this bullshit you’re reading.”

  “It’s not—”

  “How valid are these reports? For all you know, they could be some whack-job, writing fiction.”

  Kiera exhaled softly through her teeth as she looked around the living room. It was brightening steadily, but—like last night—she had a creepy feeling that she was being watched.

  “Yeah . . . Okay,” she said, “I’ll try to stop worrying.”

  “There is no try. There is do and do not,” Jon said, using a voice that she assumed was supposed to sound like Yoda.

  Kiera didn’t laugh as she said, “All right. What’s the second thing?”

  “Easy. Call me,” Jon said. “I don’t care what time, day or night, if you’re upset or freaking out, call.”

  “Okay.”

  “And after the surgery, as soon as you can, call and tell me how it went.”

  “That’s really three things.” Kiera said, but what she was thinking was, after the surgery, I might not be able to call anyone because I might be in a coma . . . or dead.

  “Okay, so even when you’re worried, you’re still a pain in the ass.”

  They both chuckled at that, but Kiera didn’t really feel like laughing. Again, she considered mentioning the phone call from yesterday, but she decided not to. If Jon was on her case so much for worrying abou
t her upcoming surgery, what would he say about that . . . especially since, besides her, he was the only person who did know what had happened to Billy Carroll?

  And the more she thought about it, the more that whole event had taken on the cast of a half-remembered dream that didn’t really happen. No matter how hard she tried to recall the tone and timbre of the voice, she no longer had a clear memory of it. There had been so much static, the voice had been distorted. Now, she wasn’t even sure if it had been a man or a woman. She began to wonder if, like the visual effects she was getting with the migraine, it had been an auditory hallucination.

  If so, she didn’t feel reassured. She was all the more frightened, and she had every right to be worried no matter what Jon or her doctor or anyone else said.

  “Promise me?” Jon asked.

  Kiera had been so distracted by her thoughts it took her a moment to remember what they’d been talking about.

  “Umm—yeah . . . yeah. I promise.”

  The instant the words left her mouth, she told herself it didn’t matter anyway, because tomorrow, after the surgery, she wasn’t even going to be alive . . . and even if she was, she wouldn’t be the same person she was now.

  3

  The palms of Kiera’s hands were slick with sweat as she listened to Dr. Martindale describe the procedure he would perform on her tomorrow morning. He explained that they would put her under general anesthesia and then drill a small hole into her head, what was called a “burr hole,” so they could extract a small piece of brain tissue for analysis. After they got the results, cancerous or not, Dr. Martindale would then operate to remove the mass.

  The first step, twenty-four hours before the actual operation, he would either cut or clamp the blood supply to the growth to make it wither, so when he removed it, it would come out more easily.

  “Hopefully, that’s all we find, and we’ll suction it out through the same burr hole,” Dr. Martindale said. “Of course, because it’s so close to your optic nerve, we have to be extremely careful—”