CHAPTER TWENTY

Jarod did not recognized Zoe at first, all those tubes going into her arm, the machines, the inhalator, and the constant drip from the intravenous going into her arm.

"Zoe?"

Weakly she raised her head. "Jarod? You've come." And then she fell back.

"Take it easy." He came closer and held her arm.

"I can't. I have so much to do. The children. I want you to take them."

"But your parents."

"You're the father. And Miss Parker'll be a good stepmother for them."

"But what about your parents? Your grandparents? My father?"

She coughed and raised her hand. It was so limp, almost like a feather. She still had her beautiful red hair, but the illness had faded it and her skin was so fragile, it would have broken in Jarod's strong hands. And all around were the futile effects of the machines trying to keep her alive for just one moment. The feeding tube and the intravenous were the only things keeping her strong.

The nurse, who was in the room, came over and touched Jarod's shoulders. He left Zoe and spoke to her.

"Are you doing everything?"

"She doesn't want heroic measures. We're increasing the morphine. It'll shorten her life, but at least the pain has subsided. But the alternative is so much worse." She fingered the large crucifix she wore around her neck.

Jarod knew the alternative. He had read the paper, that woman in Florida.

The nun left, leaving Jarod, alone with his former love whose head moved towards the bed stand and the metal drawer. In it was an eight by ten brown envelope.

He opened it, and read the contents.

"I made it out when my cancer started returning, before I started to have second thoughts, before I started going crazy." Suddenly she frayed her arms, disturbing the intravenous. "Jarod? Are you there?"

"Yes I am."

She startled. "Who are you? Where am I?"

He had read about this type of cancer, that just before one died, one lost their sight, and finally their recognition of people and events. Before that, the patient had brief periods of lucidity, like Zoe had a few minutes ago.

The lawyer had made things clear. Custody of the children, namely Francesco Alberto, Gabriella Maria, and Luigi Piero was to go to Jarod, the man in the photograph, no one knowing his last name at the time. She had dated the will shortly after their birth when she once again had to take the treatment. There was the name of a trust company and a stipulation that the children were to receive the balance of their accounts when they reached the age of sixteen rather than the normal twenty-one or twenty-five years. This the lawyer on Zoe's insistent had changed it few months ago, when Major Charles found that he, his wife, and his two remaining children, plus his grandchildren were Homo Dominants.

The children would be comfortable but no wealthy. Zoe had seen to it.

Jarod turned to the bed, hearing the death rattle. In a last moment of lucidity, Zoe whispered. "Good-bye Jarod." And then her head dropped back on the pillow, her hand stiffened, the attendants brought in the cart, made an attempt to bring her back to life with the paddles, but it was all for naught.

She was gone.

Jarod watched them pull the sheet over her head and call in the rest of the family for the last good-byes. There was a lot of recriminations as to why he, a stranger to all except the sister and the grandmother, was allowed to see Zoe on her death bed, but Zoe had insisted. She had stayed alive particularly for this.

The family would arrange for the funeral, but Jarod's job was clear. His children, those and Zoe's could go to Italy, see that village where the great grandparents had left from. He could when Rachel and her kids arrive, perhaps go to Israel, or to that country in Europe where her great great-great grandparents had left, before the Holcaust. They could even go to Scotland and then to Normandy where the Parker's had come from and point out the actual district and the small town where Miss Parker's grandmother, Margo's father had his shop.. They might wind up in Dublin, Ireland, where Catherine Parker's parents had left, or to the village in Norway where a young Jamieson had left to go to Dublin and marry a young Irish girl, and eventually immigrate to America. But. as for him, Jarod did not know where he came from. Not even his father and mother knew, only that they were probably part Dutch and German and who knows whether they were really that or emigrants from some other country, for his grandparents had been murdered when they were young.

Why even adopted children knew non-identifying parts of their history, but he, a Homo Dominant, a Pretender, knew nothing except the small bits of information he had gleamed over the years of pursuit.

It was as if he never existed.