Collinsport -- 28
From: DSRules

Julia sat silently for a moment, staring at Sally. {Sarah?!? It couldn't be! Could it?}

She decided to find out. "Why did you say that to Maggie?"

Sally looked confused. "I don't know."

"I want you to think way, way back. What's the earliest memory you have?"

"I'm in a white room. It's bright in here. Very bright. It hurts my eyes. And it's noisy. Why is everything so *loud*?"

"Look around you. What do you see?"

"I see people. They're looking at me and talking. They're all dressed so strangely. I'm scared, and I just want to go home."

{Bright lights? Strangely dressed people? It *could* be a hospital.} Julia saw that Sally was becoming agitated. "We're going to leave that place. I want you to go back even farther. Can you remember anything before that?"

"Yes."

"Can you describe it? Where are you?"

"It's dark. I can't see."

"Where are you?"

"I don't know."

"Are you indoors or outdoors?"

"I don't *know*!"

She was becoming agitated again, so Julia decided to take a different tactic. "What does the ground feel like? You may have to crouch down."

"I am crouching down. I'm hiding from something. Someone," she paused. "The ground is covered in grass. And it's wet. It's raining."

"You said that you were hiding from someone. Where are you hiding?"

"I'm hiding behind Josette's gravestone."

{Oh, my God!} Julia thought. {Could she possibly be remembering the night that Sarah got sick?}

She was brought back by the sound of Sally panicking. She was breathing heavily, and thrashing back and forth in the chair.

"It's all right. Nothing can hurt you now. You're safe," Julia said soothingly. "Try to go a little further back. Can you remember anything else?"

Sally shook her head. "It's like there's a wall in front of me, or a big window. It's smooth, and shiny, and I can't get through it."

Julia couldn't take Sally any farther back, apparently, and she was torn about what she should do with the few memories that she had dug up. Should she allow her to keep them, or should she repress them again? Based on how panic-stricken Sally had become by the one memory she had been able to find, Julia decided to repress the memories.

"Sally, I'm going to wake you up now. When you awake, you'll feel refreshed, and you will remember only that you said hello to Maggie."

Julia then counted backward from three, and brought Sally out of the trance.

"How do you feel, Sally?"

"I feel fine!" Sally said. "I remember now. I *did* say hello to Maggie, and that's all I said to her. Thank you Dr. Hoffman."

"Now, Sally. I thought I told you to call me Julia," the psychiatrist smiled at the young woman, but the smile never touched her eyes.

"All right. Thank you, Julia."

* * * * *

When Julia returned home that night, there was a strange car in front of the house and all of the lights were out, save one. The light in Barnabas' study.

She walked into her husband's study, and found him seated in his recliner, holding forth on family history to two people sitting on the piano bench, a beautiful young woman with dark hair and - "Adam?" she asked, amazed.

As one, the three looked up at her. "Julia!" Adam said, rising to his feet and giving her a hug.

"Wh - What are you doing here?" she asked.

Adam indicated the young woman. "I've brought my daughter to meet her grandparents. Julia, this is my daughter, Azura."

{Grandparents?!?} Julia tried to keep the surprise from her face. "How nice to meet you," she said as the two women shook hands.

Adam looked around. "Where's Zoe?"

"Zoe?" Julia asked.

"I'm a governess. Zoe's my student," she answered Julia's question first, then she answered Adam's. "She found Tori's room. Apparently, my aunt," she needed to practice saying that, "is a big reader, and Barnabas . . . Grandfather . . . said that she could stay up there and read one of Tori's old books."

Barnabas smiled when he heard Azura call him {Grandfather.} "I was just thinking that we've had enough family history for one day," he said. "How about if we all go out and get some dinner?"

* * * * *

Over dinner, something that had been bothering Azura came to the fore. "Grandfather?" she addressed Barnabas. "Why do you have pictures of Ben and Tori when they were children, but not of my father?"

She realized that she had asked the wrong question by the uncomfortable silence that descended on the other three adults. She and Zoe looked at each other, sharing their concern over the sudden silence.

"Azura," her father said, "this really isn't an appropriate place to discuss this." He gave her a look that clearly said that he wouldn't argue this point with her. "We can talk about it later, all right?"

"Sure," she responded. "Later."

* * * * *

Sally returned home feeling more energetic than she had in days. She popped a CD in her CD player, and set to work removing the varnish from the walls of the drawing room. {My God!} she thought as the grain of the wood was revealed for the first time in nearly 200 years, {this wood is beautiful! What will the room look like with all of the varnish removed?}

Spurred forward by that thought, she continued working on through the night.

* * * * *

Zoe had fallen asleep in the back seat of the car by the time that they returned to the lighthouse keeper's quarters.

Adam opened the back door of the car and carefully lifted his daughter's charge in his arms. At Azura's direction, he carried her up the stairs and laid her on the bed, then left the room as Azura changed the little girl into her pajamas.

Then she joined her father downstairs in the living room of the house.

"This is a nice place," he said. "I see that your boss is into impressionist art."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"Ah, there's my bean-counter," Adam said affectionately. "If you want to get away from the accounting side of your nature, this would be a good place to start."

He pointed at the painting he was examining. "All of these paintings are originals. Your Mr. Chance must be quite well-off."

"I guess so. I mean, this house can't have been cheap. Especially since he paid to have the foghorns relocated to the end of the peninsula, so that they don't deafen him and Zoe."

She sat down on the sofa and indicated for her father to do the same. "So, I take it that you're not just hanging around to talk about Mr. Chance's art collection. I take it you want to talk to me about something?"

"Yes. Well, I just thought that this would be as good a time as any to discuss why my parents don't have any pictures of me as a child. You see, they gave me life, but not in the way parents normally do."

"All right," Azura encouraged her father to continue with his explanation.

"Well, I wasn't really born, as such. Parts of me were, but *I* wasn't, if you follow me." He saw that she didn't. "Before I married your mother, I had extensive plastic surgery."

"OK. . . "

"Because I had a lot of scars."

"And . . ."

"Some of them were here," he wrapped his hands around his wrists, one at a time, and," he closed his eyes, waiting for the strength go continue to come to him. "Here," he drew a line from one temple down across his jawline, then back up the other side, and around the top to the first temple again.

Azura was beginning to become concerned.

"You see, I had three parents. Barnabas, Julia, and a man by the name of Eric Lang." He paused and closed his eyes. "Eric Lang put my body together. From spare parts."

"What? You honestly expect me to believe that you were sewn together like the monster in that old movie version of Frankenstein?"

"Azura," his quiet tone got her attention in a way that yelling would never have. "That's where I got our last name from."

"What?"

Adam sighed. "Baron von Frankenstein. Drop the {Baron} and the {Franken} and what do you get?"

Azura's eyes went wide. "Von Stein. Oh, my God! This really did happen?"

He nodded, "You're the only person I've ever told. I'm not even your real biological father."

"You aren't? Then who is?"

"A good friend from my college days. He and I were both tall, with dark hair, and so when your mother wanted a baby, I told her that I was sterile. Which was true," he added, "I had a vasectomy at the same time as the plastic surgery. I didn't know where my . . . ."

"Genitals?"

"Thank you. I didn't know where Dr. Lang had gotten them from, so I didn't want to take any chances. Anyway, I told your mother that I was sterile, so Oliver is your real biological father. I've kept in touch with him through the years, just in case you ever want to meet him. He's living in California now."

Azura gave her father a hug. "I love you, Dad. I couldn't have asked for a better father, you know that?"

Adam smiled, relieved that his only child didn't resent him for keeping such an important secret from her. "I love you, too, Azura."