“And is yours Joshua or Cassandra?” she asked.
“Cassandra was correct when she made her prophecies of doom and destruction,” Joshua said, “but time after time everyone refused to believe her.”
“If no one believes you,” Hilary said, “then what good is it to be right?”
“Oh, I’ve given up trying to convince other people that the government is the only enemy and that Big Brother will get us all. I’ve stopped trying to convince them of a hundred other things that seem to be obvious truths to me but which they don’t get at all. Too many of them are fools who’ll never understand. But it gives me enormous satisfaction just to know I’m right and to see the ever-increasing proof of it in the daily papers. I know. And that’s enough.”
“Ah,” Hilary said. “In other words, you don’t care if the world falls apart beneath us, just so you can have the selfish pleasure of saying, ‘I told you so.'”
“Ouch,” Joshua said.
Tony laughed. “Beware of her, Joshua. Remember, she makes her living being clever with words.”
For three-quarters of an hour, they spoke of many things, but then, somehow, in spite of their pledge, they found themselves talking about Bruno Frye once more, long before they were finished with the wine or ready for coffee and brandy.
At one point, Hilary said, “What could Katherine have done to him to make him fear her and hate her as much as he apparently does?”
“That’s the same question I asked Latham Hawthorne,” Joshua said.
“What’d he say?”
“He had no idea,” Joshua said. “I still find it difficult to believe that there could have been such black hatred between them without it being visible even once in all the years I knew them. Katherine always seemed to dote on him. And Bruno seemed to worship her. Of course, everyone in town thought she was something of a saint for having taken in the boy in the first place, but now it looks as if she might have been less saint than devil.”
“Wait a minute,” Tony said. “She took him in? What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. She could have let the child go to an orphanage, but she didn’t. She opened her heart and her home to him.”
“But,” Hilary said, “we thought he was her son.”
“Adopted,” Joshua said.
“That wasn’t in the newspapers,” Tony said.
“It was done a long, long time ago,” Joshua said. “Bruno had lived all but a few months of his life as a Frye. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was more like a Frye than Katherine’s own child might have been if she’d had one. His eyes were the same color as Katherine’s. And he certainly had the same cold, introverted, brooding personality that Katherine had–and that people say Leo had, too.”
“If he was adopted,” Hilary said, “there’s a chance he does have a brother.”
“No,” Joshua said. “He didn’t.”
“How can you be so sure? Maybe he even has a twin!” Hilary said, excited by the thought.
Joshua frowned, “You think Katherine adopted one of a pair of twins without being aware of it?”
“That would explain the sudden appearance of a dead ringer,” Tony said.
Joshua’s frown grew deeper, “But where has this mysterious twin brother been all these years?”
“He was probably raised by another family,” Hilary said, eagerly fleshing out her theory. “In another town, another part of the state.”
“Or maybe even another part of the country,” Tony said.
“Are you trying to tell me that, somehow, Bruno and his long-lost brother eventually found each other?”
“It could happen,” Hilary said.
Joshua shook his head. “Perhaps it could, but in this case it didn’t. Bruno was an only child.”
“You’re positive?”
“There’s no doubt about it,” Joshua said. “The circumstances of his birth aren’t secret.”
“But twins…. It’s such a lovely theory,” Hilary said.
Joshua nodded. “I know. It’s an easy answer, and I’d like to find an easy answer so we can wrap this thing up fast. Believe me, I hate to punch holes in your theory.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Hilary said.
“I can.”
“Try,” Tony said. “Tell us where Bruno came from, who his real mother was. Maybe we’ll punch holes in your story. Maybe it’s not as open and shut as you think it is.”