This is my father. This is not my father.
He’s middle-aged now, pushing forty, and as he passes under a tree into a patch of shade, he moves with a bowlegged, loose gait that’s achingly familiar. He lifts his hand in a cautious wave, but I’m too overwhelmed to respond. His movements match my frayed, threadbare memories of my father, but he also has a tidy, European appearance, with a gray, short-sleeved shirt tucked into belted, tailored pants. His loafers are the real anomaly. My father would never wear those.
My mind flips, adjusting perspectives, because I’m not a little kid anymore, adoring a giant. His hair is shockingly black still, and unruly. A flash of memory brings me back to the moment when he pounded the nail into the wall of my bedroom to hang the photo of us. I can hear the sharp tap.
As Orson steps into the sunlight again, he lifts his fist to his nose, hesitates, and then sneezes exactly as my father always did. I have to laugh from sheer amazement.
“Excuse me,” Orson says, for the sneeze.
“Bless you!” I say automatically.
He smiles, trots up the steps to the porch, and offers his other hand. “You must be Rosie. How do you do?”
His voice perfectly echoes the resonance in my memory bank, but as I stare at his outstretched hand, the lightness from his sneeze evaporates, and all I can think is that every precious, fatherly thing that I remember is about to be destroyed. My mind backs off a cliff of emotional confusion. I long wildly to reach for him, but rage and terror hold me back.
“Why didn’t you call us, me and Ma?” I ask, ignoring his outstretched hand.
We missed you. I missed you. Even after Ma gave up hope, even after she married Larry, I believed you were coming back.
Orson lowers his hand, and his expression goes grave and polite. “I apologize,” he says. “I only meant to spare you additional distress. You know, of course, that I am not Robert Sinclair, but I owe him the debt of my life.”
I’m having trouble reconciling this guy’s frank, unassuming manner with the evil genius I believe him to be. “You used my dreams without my consent,” I say. “Where was your concern for my distress then?”
“I’m sorry about that, too,” he says. “I wasn’t in charge of acquisitions. My colleague Huma Fallon always handles that end of things. When I realized some of our dreams came from Forge students, I was appalled. But wasting them would have been even more unconscionable at that point. Don’t you agree?”
He sounds less and less like my father with every word he utters.
“I don’t know what to believe,” I say. He paints himself as blameless, but he’s at the heart of the dream research. He collaborated with Berg.
“You’ve come from the vault at Grisly, haven’t you?” Orson says. “Do you know if anyone made it out? We’ve had nothing but silence.”
“The dreamers, you mean?” I ask, deliberately misunderstanding him. “No. Nobody made it out.”
He slides his hands slowly into his pockets. “I can see you have little sympathy for me. I don’t blame you. But I’m here to try to help Thea. Years of my work went into her awakening at Chimera. She’s one of a kind. She only exists because of you and me both. Isn’t that worth valuing?”
I try to weigh what he’s saying, but it’s complicated by the way he looks just like my father. It feels wrong to be in conflict with this man, like I’m betraying my love for my dad. Yet how can I forgive the person who profited from the way Berg stole my dreams?
Behind me, there’s a flurry of noise, and the door slams open.
“Robert?” my mother says.
Ma’s face is pale, and she’s perfectly still, as if she’s afraid to breathe and dispel a dream. Freshly showered and dressed in a new, beige sundress, she looks like an updated, vacation version of herself. Her eyes are locked on Orson, and her fist is pressed to her chest.
“Robert,” she whispers. She takes a halting step forward. “Oh, Robert!”
She flings herself forward into his arms. Orson hugs her back for one long, silent moment. Then he gently withdraws, extricating himself from her embrace until he has her at arm’s length.
“No,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m not Robert. My name’s Orson Toomey.” He gives his old, self-effacing smile. “I’m just the doctor who’s borrowing your husband’s body.”
Ma searches his face. I feel horrible for her, but jealous, too, that she got one good hug out of him. She lifts a trembling hand and fits her palm to Orson’s jaw. She smooths her hand lower, to his collar, and carefully, deliberately, she pats the front of his shirt.
“No, of course,” she says. “My Robert’s gone.” She backs away, still facing him, and reaches back blindly for my hand.
I grip her fingers and pull her beside me.
“So is Larry,” Ma adds simply. “Both of my husbands. Gone.”
“Please accept my condolences,” Orson says.
Ma lets out a brief, shrill laugh. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment,” she says.
Orson looks startled. He glances toward me briefly, and I nod toward the door.
“Madeline’s with Thea,” I say.
“Of course,” he says. “I’ll be inside.”
Ma keeps gripping my hand until he’s out of sight, and then she slips slowly to the nearest chair. A soft breeze comes in from the yard and skims my cheeks. Ma gives my hand another squeeze, and then lets me go.
“He’s really nothing like Robert, is he?” she asks.
I’m not sure how to answer. He looks just like him, and I’m too thrown to be fair. I was so angry when Thea told me about Orson, but now that I’ve seen him, I’m just torn. He’s like a magician’s trick, an imposter. If he would simply sit in a chair and never say a word, I could experience him as my father back from the dead, but he’s a different person.
I shake my head. “It’s a lot to take in. When he sneezed, he was just the same.” I try again. “He’s Dad and he’s not Dad, but mostly not. I don’t know why, but I feel like my real dad is more dead than ever.” That’s what it is. The finality is different. And that’s not all. “I can’t believe I’m missing Larry. I feel so bad about him.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ma says, leaning forward with her knees pressed together. She shakes her head for a moment, and when she looks at me again, her lashes are damp. “You know what I keep thinking about? The way Larry would hold his finger up when he was reading if he didn’t want me to interrupt him. You know? One finger. Just wait ’til I finish this page.” She tilts her head, smiling at me.
I do the wait signal at her, one finger up.
“Yes, exactly,” she says, and her smile fades. “I feel like I’m waiting again, like I did for your father. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
I get a faint whiff of her shampoo and notice again her soft, new dress. Her entire life is changing, I realize. Mine, too.
“It doesn’t have to,” I say.
“No,” Ma agrees sadly.
The door opens behind us and I turn to see Tom holding his baby.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says.
“That’s all right,” Ma says.