Page 3 of Mirror Image

“And is it true that you got married?”

“I did.”

“How wonderful! Any little ones?”

“Dr. Braithwaite, why are you calling me?” I grit out.

There’s a sigh of resignation from the man who was my attending once upon a time. The man who was supposed to mentor me, guide me, and support me. The man who tried to end my career before it ever began.

I hate him.

I know it.

He knows it.

It is what it is.

“Jennifer, I know the way we left things—it wasn’t exactly . . . ideal—”

“Pfft.” My scoff feels both childish and satisfying—though definitely more the latter than the former. “I won’t ask you again, Dr. Braithwaite. So, if you don’t want me to hang up this phone right now, you’d better tell me why it is, exactly, that you are calling me.”

There’s a long pause, and for just a second, I think maybe he’s regained his sanity and disconnected. But then he clears his throat and tries again.

“Jennifer, an interesting case has come to me at the hospital. One that made me think of you.”

I shift in my seat, crossing an arm over my chest and allowing myself to drop back against the rear of the chair. “Uh-huh.”

When I refuse to give him any more than the two syllables, he continues tentatively. “Well, I-I was rather hoping I might persuade you to come down here. As a consultant. You’d be well compensated, of course.”

I don’t know where the chuckle comes from, but it’s someplace dark and deep, and even I find it mildly disturbing. Maybe it’s time to revisit therapy.

“There are upwards of fifty thousand psychiatrists practicing in this country. What on earth would ever make you think to contact me before any one of them?”

“Because this could, potentially, become a criminal matter, and not one of those fifty thousand other doctors has the life experience necessary to truly understand this patient and give her a fair clinical assessment.”

Well, damn it! Now he’s got me curious.

“Who?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, you never did beg my pardon. That’s part of the problem between you and me, Dr. Braithwaite,” I hiss. “, Who is this person and what’s so special about my life experience? Did someone she trusted and adored throw her under the bus to save his own ass too?”

If I thought this would get a rise out of him, I was wrong. And his next question stops me in my tracks.

“Jennifer, are you familiar with a woman called Mary Langston?”

The name releases a torrent of unbidden images in my mind—newspaper articles, People magazine covers, Dateline NBC, 60 Minutes. She was the quintessential “girl next door”—if you happened to live in a neighborhood where the girl next door was a golden-haired beauty with cornflower blue eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Five years ago, Mary went off to college as a freshman, where she came face-to-face with the twin she hadn’t known she had—another student by the name of Samantha Kinski. Almost overnight, the world was entranced by the story of the twins who had obviously been separated at birth, unbeknownst to either of their families, only to stumble upon each other in a small private college in Central Florida eighteen years later.

Of course I followed this story—everyone did.

I ignore his question and ask one of my own. “What is she charged with?”

“Nothing yet . . .”

“Okay, what might they charge her with, then?” I rephrase.