The three adults left the two teenagers alone in the living room to get acquainted while the others talked in private. Tessa watched through the doorway and saw Richie and Richelle as they circled around one another, each looking the other up and down, and whatever one of them did, the other did the exact same thing. It wasn't like watching a mirror image though; when Richie raised his right arm, Richelle raised her right one, when he lifted up his left foot to scratch the back of his right leg, so did she.
"Where did she come from?" Duncan asked Connor.
Connor laughed and said, "Haven't you figured that out in 400 years? When a man and a woman want to have a kid, they…"
"I know that!" Duncan replied, "I mean where did you find her?"
"In New York City."
"When?" Tessa asked.
"A couple months after I got back," he answered.
"Don't tell me," Duncan said, "She has a habit of breaking and entering too?"
"No," Connor responded, "She's a pickpocket, which is how we met."
"And she's been staying with you since?" Tessa asked him.
"That she has…she has no known family, nobody's missing her, nobody's filed any missing person reports on her. So she's been living with me for the past few months."
"Why did you bring her here?" Duncan asked his cousin.
"Because of the boy," Connor said, "There are too many similarities between them, they look alike, they act alike, they share the same name."
"You think she's related to Richie?" Tessa asked.
"Related?" Connor repeated, "I'm convinced they're twins."
"Oh come on," Duncan said, "That's impossible."
"Why?" Connor wanted to know.
Duncan was left dumbstruck and speechless for a few seconds before he said, "If Richie had a sister, we would've known."
"Oh yeah you would've known, like you know who his real mother is?" Connor asked, "All you were able to find out is that the woman he lived with when he was four was his foster mother."
"Did Richelle have a foster family too?" Tessa thought to ask.
"Long time ago," Connor answered, "She ran away one night and nobody's missed her since."
Tessa went back to the doorway and looked out again. "Look at them, Duncan," she said, watching the two continue to mimic each other's movements completely, "There has to be a connection between them."
"Maybe," Duncan replied as he watched them, "But I don't know."
"So you live with Connor?" Richie asked.
"Yeah," Richelle answered, speaking for the first time since her arrival, "You live with these people?"
"Yeah."
"Well apparently neither one of us lucked out," she said as she grabbed her jacket with both hands and felt through the pockets.
Richie turned around and looked to the doorway leading to the kitchen where Connor and Tessa and Duncan were; he didn't see them and he couldn't hear them talking. He felt Richelle poke him in the shoulder, and turning around, he saw her holding a plastic bag of red licorice she'd pulled out of her pocket.
"Want some licorice?"
"No thanks."
"Okay," she put it back in a pocket inside her jacket, "So where do they put you around here? You sleep on the couch, or do they put you on the floor?"
"I have my own room," Richie answered.
"Me too, where's yours?" Richelle asked.
"Come on, I'll show you."
They disappeared out of the living room and Richie opened the door to his bedroom and the two of them headed in.
"Not a bad looking place," Richelle noted, "My room's bigger than this though…" she looked around at all the stuff discarded all over the floor, "Or maybe mine just doesn't have as much junk lying around."
Richie rolled his eyes at her comment.
Richelle dug around through her jacket again and pulled out a pinkish yellow apple, "Want an apple?"
"No thanks," Richie replied, "What all do you keep in that thing?"
"I'm a firm believer in carry-on luggage," she told him, "Oh crap, that reminds me, I left my bags outside."
"Where?"
"On my bike."
"Your what?" Richie asked.
"You want to see it?" she asked, "…is there a way we can get out of here without those three vultures watching us?"
"Holy crap," Richie said when they stepped outside and he saw the black 1987 Honda parked next to Connor's car.
"Like it?" Richelle asked.
"Where'd you get it?" Richie asked.
"Connor got it for me…he figured it was safer than letting me borrow his car," she explained, and added, "Next one I get's going to be a Harley."
"Neat."
"Think so?" she said, "Hop on and I'll show you what it does."
"Can't right now," Richie told her, "We better get back up there or they're going to start looking for us."
Richelle grabbed two large duffle bags off the seat of the bike and followed Richie back into the store.
"This sure is an ugly place they got," Richelle said, "What's their business?"
"Antiques," Richie answered.
She snorted and responded, "Antique…that's another word for dump."
"Doesn't Connor have antiques?" Richie asked her.
"Sure but they're not piss poor ugly like the junk these guys are trying to pass off on some sucker," Richelle said, and stopped put down her bags and pick up one of the display pieces, "This urn for example."
"Put that down," Richie told her, "That's not an urn, it's a 16th century vase and it's expensive."
"One of a kind too I suppose, right?" Richelle asked.
"Probably."
She grabbed it with both hands and raised them over her head as though she meant to smash the vase on the floor, drawing a panicked reaction from Richie; but she just chuckled and put it back on the table it was on. She picked up her bags again and followed Richie back upstairs, and they returned just as the three adults came into the living room.
"Well Richelle," Connor said, "Looks like we're going to be staying here for a while. I don't think I introduced you earlier…this is my cousin, Duncan MacLeod."
"Hello," Duncan said.
Richelle didn't respond.
"And this is his girlfriend, Tess Noel," Connor added.
"How do you do?"
Richelle said nothing and just shrugged her shoulders in response.
Well this was becoming very awkward for all of them.
"Uh," Duncan cleared his throat, "Richelle…why don't you…why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?"
"There's not much to tell, I've been living with your cousin for four months because his was the only wallet I picked from a pocket that came with its owner attached to it," she said.
"Well…what do you do in New York?"
"What does any person do?" she asked, "I live."
"Do you have any friends in New York?" Tessa asked.
"Oh yeah I got a few friends," Richelle answered, "They call me torpedo."
Tessa's eyes about bugged out when she heard that. "Torpedo? Why do they call you that?"
Richelle walked over to Tessa and stuck her chest out, showing that the Frenchwoman was not as well endowed as she was.
"Oh they call me that for some pretty obvious reasons," Richelle said, "How about you, you ever consider trying a push-up bra?" She took another step towards Tessa and looked down her blouse, "Or a bra at all? I sincerely hope you don't go out in public like that…a fine thing that'd be, some guy comes up from behind, tries to cut the strap off your purse, maybe cuts too far, your blouse comes off and ooh you'd be quite a sight standing in the middle of the street like that, wouldn't you?"
"Richelle!" Connor said in a warning tone, and she seemed to back off, "I'm sorry, Tessa…Richelle has a tendency to open her fat mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind."
"Well she would," Richelle insisted.
Connor grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and pulled her towards him.
"Say you're sorry," he told her.
"I'm sorry," she said in a flat tone.
He smacked her and said, "Sound sincere when you do it."
"I'm sorry!" she replied in a sarcastic tone.
Duncan rolled his eyes and said, more to himself than the others, "I can tell this is going to be a very long visit."
That night the five of them were gathered around the table, attempting to have a nice conversation over a dinner of spaghetti and dinner rolls. Duncan and Tessa were seated beside each other, Connor was seated across from them, Richie sat next to Connor, and Richelle had been seated in between Duncan and Connor; she stood up and took the chair with her and moved in between Connor and Richie, forcing Connor to move closer to his cousin.
"Well," he said, "This isn't exactly the most pleasant view to have while eating, but it'll do."
Tessa was still of the mind that there was some connection between Richie and Richelle, and decided to take her guess for all it was worth.
"So Richelle," Tessa said, "What do you like to do for fun in New York?"
"I like riding around on my motorcycle," she answered.
"Oh, you have a motorcycle, did you hear that, Duncan?" Tessa asked.
"I heard, I heard," Duncan dryly answered as he picked at his food and looked down at his plate, "So," he said to Richelle, "Do you go to school in New York?"
"Why should I?" she asked.
"Oh, just wondering."
She looked at Richie and asked him, "Do you go to school?"
"No," Richie answered, "I work here."
"For what, room and board?"
"No," Duncan answered, "He helps with the customers, he cleans up the shop, and he's paid for it."
"And he still has to live here at the end of the day?" she asked, "Poor sap."
Under the table, Connor stomped on her foot and everybody heard it, and they heard her yell. Richie moved his chair closer to Tessa, who said to him, "Those two are like watching a Punch and Judy show."
After dinner, while Tessa cleared the table, Richelle suggested to Richie they go out and go for a ride on her bike. Richie hesitated in answering and looked to Duncan who just nodded his head and told them to go along. They were out the door and gone, just like that; leaving the three adults to talk amongst themselves.
"Well I know it's only been about an hour," Connor said, "But what do you guys think of her so far?"
"Well…" Tessa said, "She's very…she's a real…"
"She's a pain in the ass, Connor," Duncan said, "She's rude beyond words and doesn't seem to consider anybody else's opinion as being of any importance."
"Egads, who does she think she is, a teenager?" Connor asked, "Don't tell me Richie never mouths off."
"Not like that," Duncan said.
"Well, it's a geographical difference is all, Richie grew up here, Richelle grew up in New York," Connor told his cousin.
"I'm convinced," Tessa told the men as she joined them in the living room, "She has to be related to Richie, it's just too much of a coincidence."
"Well we don't know that for fact," Duncan said.
"We can find out, can't we?" Tessa asked, "Police compare people's DNA for crimes, can't we take them to somebody who does that?"
"It wouldn't work, Tessa," Connor said, "DNA is a science but it's not an exact science. If we're lucky, maybe the test would find an 80% genetic match in them…but 80% is still a long shot, it means their DNA is compatible with millions of other people's as well."
"There has to be some way we can find out," Tessa said, "We couldn't find out who Richie's parents were because of confidentiality laws with the orphanage…what about a birth certificate? It would have to say who his mother was on the birth certificate."
"If he was born in a hospital," Connor said, "He might've been born at home, or in a car, or he might've just been thrown away."
"What about Richelle? Does she have a birth certificate?" Tessa asked.
"Yeah," Connor answered, "But I don't think it's a real one and it wouldn't matter much because the woman listed as her mother died when she was eight years old, and there was no record of her being born with a twin."
"But it has to be true," Tessa said to them, "It just has to be…they look almost exactly alike, they have the same names, they both like the same things. It can't just be a coincidence…can it?"