Palindrome by Stuart Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

“Couldn’t that warp them in some way? Screw up their individuality?”
    “Some twins we’ve talked to resisted dressing alike as children,” Anna Hamilton said, “while others chose to do so. Some of them go on dressing alike for all their lives. Twins have a bond that lasts until they die—in fact, a significant percentage choose not to marry, so that they can remain with each other, although this phenomenon seems more pronounced among females.”
    “Can a mother always tell her twins apart?” Liz asked.
    “Usually, at least after infancy, but not always. It’s very common for parents to put ID bracelets on twins so they can tell them apart. Usually, as they get older, enough differences develop that it gets to be easier. One child may have some minor injury and have a scar; one may gain more weight—something like that.”
    Germaine leaned close to Liz. “Did you notice that, when Hamish arrived tonight, I didn’t introduce him, that he introduced himself? That’s a habit I got into when Hamish and Keir were growing up—I was wrong so often.” She turned to the doctor. “Twins are palindromic,” she said.
    “That’s very good,” the doctor agreed. “A palindrome is the perfect metaphor for identical twins.”
    “What’s that?” Jimmy asked. “That word?”
    Germaine spoke up. “A palindrome is a literary device—a word, or a sentence, or even a poem, that reads the same forward and backward. Exactly the same.”
    The group gathered around and watched. Some had flashlights, others used flash cameras, but the mother was not disturbed. The female loggerhead turtle lay over the hole she had dug with her flippers and dropped her eggs into it, dozens of them, each like a slippery Ping-Pong ball.
    “We have an egg patrol,” Germaine said to Liz. “We go down the beach, look for signs of a nest, then obliterate the signs. Otherwise the raccoons get at the eggs and eat them.”
    The loggerhead finished her work, pushed sand over the eggs, and, exhausted, began struggling back toward the sea. The moon lit the little band of watchers as they followed her painful progress across the beach. Then, finally, she reached the surf line and disappeared into the water. The group cheered.
    Walking back to the Jeep, Liz fell into step with Germaine. Their bare feet left moonlit tracks on the damp sand. “Tell me, Germaine, why did Hamish excuse himself at dinner when Jimmy mentioned his twin?” Liz asked. “Ah,” said Germaine, “I’m afraid that Hamish and Keir might shake the good doctor’s theories about the closeness of twins.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, the boys were much the way he described when they were children, even as teenagers. Nobody could tell them apart—well, nobody but Grandpapa, anyway. They could fool me any time they wanted to. They were always together—always. If they were apart, they were nervous, unhappy. Once, I remember, Keir was ill with the flu when they were supposed to go to camp in the North Georgia Mountains, and Grandpapa forced Hamish to go without him. After he left, Keir couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk. A couple of days later, Grandpapa got a call from the director of the camp; Hamish had disappeared. He turned up that night. He had hitchhiked to St. Marys; he walked to the mouth of the river and
swam
across Cumberland Sound. At night. He was twelve.”
    “Jesus, he’s lucky to be alive.”
    “I think if he had died in the attempt, Keir would have died, too.”
    “Did something happen to change the relationship?”
    “Yes. The summer they were almost eighteen, when they were both about to go off to Princeton, something happened.”
    “What?”
    “Nobody knows. But since that summer, it’s more than twenty years ago, they haven’t spoken to each other and haven’t spoken about each other to anyone else.”
    They trudged along the beach in silence for a time.
    “What about Keir?” Liz asked finally. “Where is he?”
    “Nobody knows,”