Mr. and Miss Anonymous. Fern Michaels
sit and rock in front of the fire she always had blazing because of her arthritis. Lily had sat in the rocker on many occasions herself, watching the flames and daydreaming. It had been a good decision on her part to repair and rebuild the old kitchen fireplace, since it was now the focal point of the big room. She looked upward, startled to see a lush philodendron climbing the bricks. She wondered when that had happened. Obviously, she needed to spend more time in her kitchen.
Her eye on the clock, Lily tidied up the breakfast things. With minutes to spare, she was on the front verandah waiting for the car service promptly at five thirty.
Please, please, she pleaded silently as she settled herself in the back of the Lincoln Town Car, let this be the right thing that I’m doing.
Chapter 3
Garment bag over his left shoulder, battered duffel on the other, Pete Kelly sailed through the security checkpoint, the shoelaces of his battered Nikes flapping in his own breeze. He headed straight for a kiosk, where he bought a bottle of iced tea and a paper. He settled himself on a blue hard-plastic chair and settled down to read the paper. He liked to brag that he read the paper cover to cover, line by line. Those people foolish enough to question a particular article or phrase usually ended up with sheepish smiles on their faces when they walked away after he snapped out the correct answer.
Settling his New York Mets cap more firmly on his head, Pete reached into his pocket for his reading glasses. He didn’t look up once for the next ninety minutes as he read the paper from beginning to end. If he had looked up just three short minutes before he closed and folded the paper, he would have seen the woman he was so desperate to find walk right by him.
The paper and iced tea finished, Pete got up to throw them in the trash just as the first boarding call was announced for the flight to San Francisco. He sprinted to the men’s room and was back within minutes. He looked around to see why the airport had suddenly gone quiet. Then he looked up at the television screen that everyone seemed to be looking at. As he fumbled for his boarding pass, he blinked, then blinked again as he tried to hear what an excited Anderson Cooper from CNN was saying. The second boarding call for seats at the back of the plane was announced. He knew he could have boarded at any point because he was flying first class, but his feet were rooted to the floor.
The crowd that had assembled at the base of the huge screen was beginning to thin out as passengers ran to board their flights. Pete didn’t move, and the woman standing in front of him didn’t move either.
A man standing next to Pete let out a string of profanity. “Poor kids. Where in the hell did the guy get that gun? Where the hell are his parents? Well, shit, they just said it was a group home for teenagers! Where are the teachers and counselors? Nowhere, that’s where. Someone is to blame for this. Look! Look! They look like the kids next door. Twelve dead! Two escaped. Well, good for them. Book deal! Movie deal!”
“Shut up!” Pete said through clenched teeth, as the man hurried off to board his flight.
Lily, hearing the tirade, looked up just as a picture of two young men appeared on the screen. Stunned at seeing Pak, she swiveled around to see his exact likeness on the screen. “Oh, my God!” Suddenly she felt her hat being removed. She turned again.
“Lily! Jesus, it really is you! I’ve been trying to find you. You weren’t in the yearbook.” All this was said with his eyes going to the screen above him. “Look!” he hissed.
“I saw it,” Lily hissed back. “I was in the hospital with an appendectomy when they did the yearbook pictures.” She reached for her hat and jammed it back on her head. “I called your company to find you, but they wouldn’t put me through.”
Pete reached for her arm and held it in a vise-like grip. “Are you going to the fund-raiser? Are you on the flight to San Francisco?”
“Yes, and that was the last boarding call. Come on, we can talk on the plane.”
Pete followed Lily blindly. His heart was beating too fast. “That kid looked just like me when I was his age,” he mumbled as he handed the woman gate agent his boarding pass.
“I know. That’s how I remember you, even if you were five years older.”
“What do you think are the chances of us meeting like this, then seeing…seeing what we just saw?”
Lily felt light-headed as she grappled for an answer. “One in a trillion! Two trillion! This is my seat,” she said as she extricated her arm to slide into her place.
Pete looked down at her. “How are we going to talk?” He sounded so anguished, Lily looked over at her seat companion, a corporate type with tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. “Sir, would you mind changing seats with…with my fiancé? We couldn’t get seats together. I would so appreciate it.”
The corporate type looked up, saw and recognized Pete. “Aren’t you…?”
“Yeah. Shhh. We’re running away. We’re trying to keep it a secret. No one knows,” Pete whispered.
“You mean I’m the first to hear?”
“Well, yeah,” Pete said as he stepped aside for the man to move to Pete’s seat. He settled down next to Lily and buckled up. He immediately turned the bill of his baseball cap backward so he could see Lily better.
“I like your hat.”
“I made it myself.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what you said that day we met. Do you know how many times I thought about you over the years? A lot. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hell of a time. I am so damn glad to see you. By the way, my name is Pete. Some of the guys back at Berkeley used to call me ‘Pak.’ ” He was babbling, the way Millie babbled when she did something wrong and he caught her at it.
“Pete, that boy looked like you. Exactly like you. Do you think…? Is it possible? They said it was a group home. Why would one of…? Why a group home? They said the one that looked like you got away. So did the other boy. That’s a good thing. At least I think it’s a good thing. God, I don’t know anything about anything these days. What does all this mean? This is so bizarre,” Lily said, running out of breath.
“Why were you looking for me?” Lily asked when she finally caught her breath.
Pete leaned in closer to Lily. “Because… I see kids that look like me everywhere I look. I can’t sleep. At first it wasn’t so bad. I was working, then I went off on my own. I was so tired I’d fall asleep standing up. But when things leveled off, it started all over again. Dreams, then nightmares. I wanted to talk to someone. I really did look for you. I thought…hoped you would understand, and maybe together we could get a handle on it. Assuming, of course, you were having similar problems. I know you said back then that it was no big deal, but…”
“I lied,” Lily whispered. “It was a big deal from the git-go. I’d give anything if I could turn the clock backward and go to those counseling sessions. I mean it.”
Pete leaned even closer. Lily could smell his aftershave. “I started seeing a shrink a while back. It really didn’t help because I didn’t open up until the session yesterday, when he threatened to dump me for wasting his time. He used to be my company’s softball coach, so he can talk to me like that. He said I had to go back to the beginning. That’s why I’m on this flight. I was going to hire a private detective to try to find you. Your turn.”
“My story is pretty much the same as yours. It was a big deal. I hated that I sold my eggs. I was so desperate I thought I didn’t have any other choice. I didn’t want to deal with what I’d done, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go to counseling sessions and talk about it. Unlike you, I didn’t go to a shrink, but I did think about it. I decided to go to the fund-raiser, hoping you’d be there. I didn’t think beyond getting there.”
“Do you…do you want to see the kids we…? Is that what you want?”
Lily bit down on her lower lip. “I have this business. I design