Christopher's Song (Indefinite Hiatus)

Chapter 2

After her boys left the room, Jennifer sat down at the kitchen table. Hard. Her look of concern from earlier returned to her features full force, and she sighed heavily. Her children weren't mistaken. Something had been wrong. Something was wrong. Only some of her worry stemmed from her sons' startling lack of judgment in letting themselves get so out of control the previous evening. Boys would be boys, after all.

That bit of melody Daniel had been unconsciously humming, though, truly had her heart racing. He hummed enough for her to recognize it. The boys' father had sung it to them in the womb and then when they were just babies. From what Daniel said, his dream was probably an unconscious recollection of his father's tune.

Not that Jennifer hadn't helped them to remember their father; far from it, in fact. Jennifer raised her sons alone, but they knew their father, or felt like they did. Christopher Patten was a wonderful man, and the twins had been told so all their lives. When they were barely a month old, he perished in a fiery automobile accident. The heat was so intense that there had been nothing left afterward to identify him, but it was his car that collided with the tanker truck, causing the explosion that took his life. He had always told Jennifer with that enigmatic smile of his that the boys would remember him singing to them during their gestation.

Jennifer had built a family heritage for the boys, telling them how she and Chris met, how they fell instantly in love. She showed them pictures of their father holding them as newborns, with the goofy look of joy and fear that every new father has. She recounted how much their father had loved them and her, but she always left some things out. For one thing, she had never sung this song to them. It looked like their father had been right. They did remember, and Jennifer was very, very worried that they might somehow be privy to more than just the song.

Perhaps it was time that she told them the complete truth about their father and his ancestry. She had repressed the little she knew for a long, long time. She remembered Christopher telling her on their last morning together, "If anything happens to me, look beyond the obvious. They will make it appear that I've suffered an accidental death. But there will be more, Jennifer; with them there is always more."

She had only a vague understanding of who them was. Chris had revealed only what he felt necessary about his past. He said he wanted to protect her and the boys. He was afraid that if they ever discovered the existence of the twins and her, no safe haven would be found. When she tried to get him to tell her more that morning almost 18 years ago, he looked distracted and uneasy. He simply said, "I stopped in the boys room and sang to them. They are so angelic looking when they sleep, that dark head nestled next to the blond one. They're going to remember me singing to them when they're older. I have prepared something for them, a surprise for their day of majority. Even if I don't make it, Jen, the boys will always have the song. I composed it just for them, and they'll remember it even when I'm gone, just wait and see," he said with the return of his impish grin and the playful twinkle in his eye.

Then with a peck on her nose, he told her they would talk more that evening after the boys were asleep. He walked jauntily out the door, waving to her and mouthing, "I love you." But he never came home, and they never had that conversation, and she never found out where he'd hidden the boys' surprise.

The police assured her Christopher's demise had been the result of a horrible accident; a homicide was not even in the realm of possibility. She finally chose to accept the obvious. She had two boys to raise and no idea of where to look, even if she had the resources. She quelled her disquieting feeling that Christopher had some kind of premonition of his death. She repressed her knowledge of what made Christopher, and possibly her sons, different.

Yesterday had been the boys' 18th birthday. She held her breath, waiting for some ghostly apparition reminiscent of Christopher to mar the day. She remembered Christopher's parting words and waited, half-fearing that Chris himself would appear to show them the surprise he hadn't a chance to give them himself. When the boys were dragged in during the wee hours of the morning too inebriated to know where they were or what they were doing, she actually breathed a sigh of relief. She could handle them tying one on better than she could deal with the memories evoked by their father's death. When the day of their majority was over, she felt unaccountably better. Her sons were normal with decidedly human foibles; she didn't have to fear whatever their father's past held.