“We’re a mess, aren’t we?” I sighed and stared up into his eyes, feeling close to tears. “I feel numb, Jakob. A part of me feels so numb inside. I don’t even know what to think or feel anymore.”
“Let me be your warmth and strength, Bianca. Let me help to make you whole.” He gripped my shoulders. “This is bigger than both of us. There are things we—”
“Jakob,” I hissed at him, cutting him off. “Don’t turn around yet, but I want you to look at the beggar lady across the street.” I stared at her with her big Gucci sunglasses and old, shabby clothes. She was sitting almost directly across from us and she appeared to be staring in our direction. I studied her face as she smiled and thanked someone for giving her some money. My heart started racing as I saw the big, deep dimple in her right cheek. “Look at her face carefully,” I hissed at him, my words coming out fast.
“What am I looking for?” He frowned and I shook my head and stepped back. He turned around slowly and looked at the lady. She was looking away from us now, but I knew what I’d seen.
“Let’s go up to my apartment.” I grabbed his hand. “Hurry.” I ran toward the front door and got my keys out. “Come on.”
“What was I supposed to have seen?” He sounded confused, but I ignored him as we entered the building.
“Hold on.” I opened the door to my apartment and raced into the living room, then ran to grab my cell phone. I opened my text messages and scrambled to show him the photo he’d sent me. I stared at it for a few seconds and my heart started racing even faster. “Look at this.”
“What is it?” He grabbed my phone and looked down. “The photo of my dad and your mom?”
“That’s not my mom.” I was getting annoyed. “Are you slow? I just told you that. That isn’t my mom in the photograph, Jakob.” I took a deep breath to calm my irritation. “Look at the photo carefully.”
“What am I looking at, Bianca?” He sounded exasperated.
“Look.” I leaned forward and ran my fingers over the screen so I could enlarge the photo. “Look.” I pointed to the dimple in the woman’s right cheek.
“So she has a dimple, so what?”
“So does the lady in the street.” I sighed. “Didn’t you look? That woman in the photo is the same one who’s been begging in the streets.”
“You think so?” He frowned and then closed his eyes. “Let me think.” He stood there for a few seconds as he pictured the woman he’d just seen. His eyes popped open and he stared at me, staggered. “It’s the same lady.”
“I always wondered about her.” I ran to the window and looked down at the street. “She’s been there, in that spot, for the last year or so, and I always had a weird feeling about her. She’d always quote Bible verses at me, and she never really looked like someone that should have been in the street. There was one time I saw her and I noticed that she had perfectly even, straight, white teeth. I always wondered how her teeth were so white when it was unlikely that she brushed them twice a day and who knows how often she went to the dentist. I barely go every few years and . . .” I shook my head in disgust. “I can’t believe I didn’t suspect her before.”
“I mean, what would you have thought?” Jakob sat down on my couch. “What was there to think?”
“Why is someone that appears to have money begging in the streets?” I groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
“Should we go down and see who she is?” he asked me softly.
“Yes, let’s.” I nodded.
“What if she’s your mother?”
I rolled my eyes. “My mother is dead, Jakob. You need to get over this fixation you have about my mother and your father. Larry obviously lied. Why can’t you just accept that? My mother didn’t have an affair with your dad. The beggar in the street is not my mother. The lady in the photograph is not my mother. My mother’s dead. I don’t know that lady from Eve.” I was about to pull him up from the couch when my phone rang. I saw Rosie’s name and groaned.
“Don’t answer it.” He shook his head. “We don’t have time right now.”
“I’ll tell her I’m going to call her back.” I shook my head. “Hey, Rosie.”
“Bianca, where are you? I’ve been calling you.” She sounded frantic. “I was worried about you after our call. You never called me back.”
“I met up with Blake.”
“Blake, your history-nerd friend?”
“Yes, I told you the history department was calling me. We went and got a coffee.”
“Did you change your locks? How are you feeling? Do you want to come over and stay with me?” She kept rambling and I quickly interrupted her flow of words.
“Rosie, can I call you back?” I sighed. “You won’t even believe what I found out today.”
Her voice rose. “What did you find out?”
“There is no Mattias Bradley!” Jakob frowned at me and shook his head. I turned around and ignored him. “David created him.”
“What?” Rosie’s voice dropped. “He what?”
“Let me call you back, I have to go downstairs. There’s a lady following me.”
“What?”
“There’s a lady watching me.”