Two Much Alike. Pamela Bauer
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radio but found the static was so bad that it was impossible to hear. With an impatient sigh, she turned it off again.
“The sky’s a funny color, too,” Alex observed. Frannie wondered how he could even see the sky through the heavy foliage.
“I see something,” Alex called out. “I think it’s a house.”
It was a house, Frannie discovered as she pulled into a clearing. A beautiful log home sitting on the shore of a lake. She parked the car next to the SUV they’d seen in town. As she turned off the engine, she found herself short of breath, her uneasiness creeping into her throat. She didn’t want to let go of the steering wheel for fear her hands would tremble. She looked toward the house, wondering if anyone had heard their arrival. If they had, they weren’t in any hurry to come out and greet them.
The sudden buzzing of a chain saw starting up told her why.
“He’s over there,” she heard Alex say, then she looked behind them toward a shed where a man was sawing a fallen tree into logs.
In the blink of an eye, Alex was out of the car and sprinting toward him. “Stay with your brother,” Frannie barked at Emma, then went after Alex.
She was no match for her son’s youthful speed. She watched him run up to the man, who wore a denim shirt and jeans. The chain saw stopped.
With his back to her, Frannie couldn’t see whether the man was Dennis Harper. He appeared to be the same height, and he had the same dark brown hair as her ex-husband. But when he turned and looked in Frannie’s direction, she felt as if someone had delivered a swift blow to her stomach. He did look like Dennis, even with the plastic goggles over his eyes. She paused, suddenly feeling as if her knees might buckle beneath her.
It can’t be him. She stared at the man, not wanting to believe she could be looking at her ex-husband. It can’t be, she repeated to herself.
“Are you lost?” he asked, the question directed more at her than at her son.
Not only did he look like Dennis, but he sounded like him, too. Frannie’s limbs shook so much, she thought she might fall to the ground. With great difficulty, she swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and walked toward him. This time she moved slowly, but her mind raced. How could it be him? Why would he be here?
When he removed the protective goggles and let them dangle around his neck, she saw that his eyes were brown—the same as Dennis’s—yet these eyes were looking at her as if she were a perfect stranger.
Again he spoke, “Do you need directions?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. All she could do was stare at him.
Alex, however, had no trouble finding his voice. “You thought we wouldn’t find you, didn’t you?”
“I think there’s been some mistake,” he began, only to have Alex cut him off.
Like a preacher in a pulpit, the boy wagged his finger to emphasize his words. “Yeah. You’re the big mistake. Mom never should have married you. You’re a deadbeat. It’s bad enough that you didn’t want to stay married to Mom and be our dad, but you don’t even have the decency to be any kind of dad at all—not even a rotten one. You just hid so you didn’t have to pay anything.”
Frannie found her voice. “Alex, that’s enough.”
“No, it’s not.” He defied her, continuing on with his sermon. “He needs to know that you had to work two jobs most of the time to pay the bills. When Luke was sick, we had to go to the food bank to get stuff to eat. But Dad didn’t care. All he wanted was to forget about us.” He turned back to the man who looked so much like his father. “Well, I’m not going to let you forget. I’m going to go to the police and tell them who you really are, and they’ll make you pay.”
Alex’s cheeks were red and his chest was heaving by the time he’d finished his tirade. Frannie knew he was close to tears, yet he stoically stood his ground, his head held high. Frannie thought it was strange that not even a bird chirped or an insect buzzed. All she could hear was Alex’s breathing. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and squeeze away all his heartache. She knew she couldn’t.
Alex finally broke the silence. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”
The man looked at Frannie, and she knew what his next words were going to be. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “I’m not your father.”
“YOU LOOK LIKE HIM.” A female version of the boy who’d just verbally blistered him approached Joe with curiosity in her eyes, but not hostility.
“Emma, I told you to wait in the car,” the woman said to the girl. “Where’s Luke?”
“He fell asleep. I left the windows down.”
That information had the woman hurrying back to the battered old station wagon parked next to his SUV. “Are you two brother and sister?” he asked the pair now standing before him, gazing at him as if he were the villain in a horror film.
“As if you don’t know,” the boy said with derision.
“We’re twins,” the girl said.
“Do you think we wouldn’t recognize our own dad when we saw him?” the boy continued.
“I may look like him, but I’m not him,” he replied, as the pair continued to scrutinize him. “My name is Joe Smith.”
“That sounds like a made-up name to me,” the boy said.
“It’s not. If you wait just a minute, I’ll go inside and get my wallet. It has my driver’s license in it,” he told them.
“It’s probably a fake,” the boy countered.
“If you’re not going to take my driver’s license as proof, what will satisfy you?”
The little girl whispered something to her brother, who then said, “Take off your shirt.”
“What?” Joe almost chuckled at the absurdity of the request.
“I said, take off your shirt,” the boy repeated.
“Look, I told you I’m not your father,” Joe said, trying not to lose patience with the kids.
“Then take off your shirt and prove it,” the boy challenged him. “Or are you chicken?”
Joe could hardly believe what was happening. He was being confronted by two kids who were accusing him of being their deadbeat dad and demanding that he take off his shirt. “No, I’m not chicken, but I’m not your father, either,” he said evenly.
“Then, why won’t you take off your shirt?” the boy persisted.
Joe decided to humor the kids rather than stand there arguing with them. If it took revealing his bare chest to convince these two that he wasn’t their father, he’d do it. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, leaving him bare-chested and the object of their wide-eyed stares.
“Oh my gosh! It is him!” The little girl stared at him as if she’d seen a ghost, then went running back to the car.
“And you said you weren’t him!” the boy accused him before racing after his sister. They met their mother, who was coming toward them with an even younger child in tow. The two jumped up and down excitedly and pointed in Joe’s direction. Joe couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was enough to stiffen their mother’s shoulders and put a frown on her face.
She approached him cautiously, carrying a sleepy child in her arms. She looked like a mother hen about to do battle for her chicks.
He put his shirt back on, unsure what it was that had triggered such a response in the kids. “If these are your biological children, you must know that I’m not their father.”
From her expression, he could see that she didn’t.
“Dennis,