TWO OF ME – A free story

            The last days of the school year were always busy, even for the school librarian, and filled with an assortment of end of the year problems. Lena stood talking to one of St. Andrews’ students at the library desk about one of these today.

“I did check out that book, Ms. Bennett, but I brought it back,” Stacy Clark insisted. “Honest, I did.”

Lena kept her patient smile in place. “Stacy, the book did not get checked back in. The school’s policy is that final grades are held until any library books are returned or paid for in full if lost.”

“Well, the book isn’t lost because my friend Merna borrowed it after I read it.” She paused, her eyes widening. “Oh, my gosh, I’ll bet Merna still has it. She said she would bring it back for me. Can you see if she brought it back?”

“It hasn’t been checked back in by anyone,” Lena answered. “Why don’t you talk to Merna, check both your rooms and see if you can locate the book?”

Stacy sighed. “Okay. We’ll both look tonight. Merna is always forgetting stuff. She probably has it.” Waving at a friend she turned to leave.

“If you find it, bring it by tomorrow,” Lena reminded her. “Otherwise, you’ll need to pay for it.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem fair we have to buy a book if it gets lost,” Stacy grumbled as she walked away.

Lena had heard this and a multitude of other complaints and reasonings all week since end-of-year emails went out to all the students.

Her assistant librarian, Carol Wallace, laughed as Stacy left. “I think that girl loses a book every year.”

“I’m glad she likes to read and checks out books, but she does tend to forget to bring them back.” Lena frowned. “I hate that students have to pay for lost books but you know our budget doesn’t have much excess.”

“Most all libraries have that policy, Lena,” Carol reasoned. “And if you’ll remember, Stacy usually finds her lost books and gets them back to us.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s 3:30 going on four now. If you want to leave, I’ll finish checking in these last books. I’m doing a student tutoring session so I need to stay late anyway.”

“Thanks,” Lena said, heading back to her office to get her purse, belongings, and some paperwork to look through. As she came back with her car keys in hand, Carol leaned toward her and said quietly, “Do you know that woman in the doorway looking around? She really looks like you, doesn’t she?”

Glancing toward the door, Lena locked eyes with the woman standing there. She felt sure her mouth dropped open when she did. The woman did look like her.

Carol grinned. “I’ve always read everyone has a twin somewhere. This one must be yours. At first I actually thought it was you.”

The woman walked toward them now, almost a replica of Lena in height and weight, her hair the same dark brunette, almost black, cut in a similar pageboy to shoulder length, even her eyes the same gray-blue. At the library desk the woman paused, looking directly at Lena and putting a hand to her heart. “Are you Lena Barrett?” she asked.

Lena nodded.

The woman took a breath. “I’m Jeanine Vinson. I hate to intrude during the school day, but I believe we might be related and I came to speak with you.” She glanced around. “Is there some place where we might talk for a minute?”

Seeing Carol’s continued interest, Lena said, “I was just leaving for the day, but if it’s okay with you, there’s a nice picnic table under the shade trees near the parking lot. Perhaps we can talk there for a few minutes. It’s a pretty afternoon.”

“Oh, that would be nice.” The woman replied, seeming relieved at the idea.

“Just follow me out,” Lena said. She turned to Carol. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for closing.”

As the two women settled across from each other at the picnic table a few minutes later, Jeanine offered Lena another polite smile, looking around. “This is a beautiful school tucked away in the mountains near the University of the South at Sewanee. Like the college, it has a beautiful campus with glorious old European architecture, too.”

“It was once a military academy when the university opened, transitioning into a boys’ school and then merging with the girls’ school operated by the Episcopal sisters of St. Mary’s,” Lena said, talking casually to ease Jeanine’s obvious discomfort. “The school became the St. Andrews Sewanee School after the merger in 1981. On 500 acres, it is still known as one of the oldest Episcopal boarding schools in the U.S. We’re also still very linked to the college. I’ve always loved it here but then I love the mountains, and I like living away from the city. Not everyone does but it suits me.”

“Yes, I know that feeling” Jeanine paused and then took a deep breath. “I should not be here without having written or called you to see if you would agree to meet with me. When I was searching for you and the court helped me find you, they gave me your address and phone number and said I could reach out to determine if you wanted to meet.” She made a face. “I kept meaning to call or write and follow those instructions, but then I did some internet searching, saw where you lived, found where you worked, and on impulse I just got in the car and drove here today.” She leaned forward. “I just knew if I found you, I’d know.”

Lena, listening all this time, finally asked, “I’m not sure I’m following this, Jeanine. What did you think you would know when we met?”

She looked surprised. “That we’re twins. Identical twins. Separated at birth, adopted by two different families, but twins.”

Lena shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I think you have some mistaken information. My parents were told I was a twin but were told my other sister died at birth. So, it seems you might have reached out to the wrong person inadvertently.”

“No,” Jeanine insisted. “I have the right person and the paperwork and documentation to prove it that the court provided. We were both born May 7^th, the same year, to the same mother, at the same time at the same hospital in Lenoir City, Tennessee. Our mother was unwed and afraid and gave us up for adoption. The court also searched for her and learned she died young, and no name was given at all for a father.”

Jeanine leaned forward. “I kept dreaming of you, though, that I was supposed to seek you out, that I was supposed to find you at this time.” She reached into the large purse she carried, an oversize black bag a lot like Lena’s, big enough to hold the inevitable book Lena always carried around. She noticed a paperback tucked in Jeanine’s purse as she pulled out a folded set of paperwork.

“What are you reading?” she couldn’t resist asking.

An old Dorothy Gilman book,” Jeanine answered.

“About Mrs. Pollifax the CIA agent?’

Jeanine grinned. “Yes. I’m reading the whole series for the second time. It’s been so long since I read them that I’m enjoying them all over again. Do you ever do that?”

“All the time. I love Dorothy Gilman, too.”

They stared at each other for a moment before Jeanine passed Lena the papers.

“These are copies for you. You’ll find all the information you need in them and names to contact for confirmation.” She reached across the table to take Lena’s hand impulsively. “I know in my heart that we are twins. I can feel it, can’t you? There’s an odd link. There are other times, too, when I’ve dreamed about you. I believe at this time we need to know each other, to come together for some reason. That’s why I felt so compelled to find you.”

Lena looked over the papers for a moment. “This is so hard to take in.” She glanced up after a moment. “Our birth names are very similar, too, mine Lean Jean, yours Laura Jeanine.”

“There are a lot of cases where identical twins, separated at birth, have amazing similarities once they are reunited as adults.”

“Do you think we will find more similarities besides our looks?” Lena asked, beginning to see from the paperwork that Jeanine Vinson was probably the twin sister she’d always believed had died.

Jeanine smiled. “We are both librarians at private schools. I do know that already. I work as the head librarian at The King’s Academy near the Smoky Mountains in Seymour, Tennessee. It’s an old historic school like St. Andrews, that started in 1880.”

Glancing at her watch, Lena asked, “Are you driving back tonight?” She wondered as she asked if she should invite Jeanine Vinson to stay over at her home, but everything felt so odd and new to her right now.

“Yes, I’m driving back,” Jeanine answered. “It’s about three hours from here but with the days long now in May I’ll get back before dark. I am married and I have to work tomorrow.” She smiled. “Also on a humorous note, I have twin girls, so I have obligations with them, too. Like I said, I came impulsively, but here’s what I want to suggest. My husband and I have a beach house at Edisto Island, South Carolina. Do you know where that is?”

Lena nodded, not wanting to admit that she and her parents had vacationed there nearly every summer.

“The girls are going to camp in June right after school is out. I’d like you to come down to the beach house to stay with me so we can get to know each other.”

Lena started to protest but Jeanine held up a hand. “Please think about it. Pray about it. The girls will be at camp. My husband Stuart will pick them up and bring them down to the beach with him after our week for a family time. You can meet them all then, if you want, or leave before they come. You don’t have to stay the whole week either if you don’t want to but you can. It’s a lovely beach house and it will give you a free vacation.”

She tried to think what to say.

Jeanine smiled. “Don’t say anything now, Lena. I’ve dumped all this on you suddenly. But think about the idea and then call me later. I’ve written the dates down for you. Please say yes. Neither of us have other close family. I know your adopted parents were older, like mine, and that they are gone. I truly feel we need each other and need to know each other.”

Lena found herself continuing to study this woman, an almost mirror image of herself. “I’ll think about it,” she said to be polite, not sure what she would actually do when she thought about all this more.

Jeanine stood. “Let me get on my way back. Forgive me for coming without calling first, but I’m so happy to have found you.”

Lena got up from her place, too. “I hope you have a safe trip back,” she decided to say.

“Pray about coming, Lena. I believe we are meant to know each other.” She handed her another packet of papers from her purse. “Here are pictures of the beach house, a map to it, my phone number and email, and our address in Seymour.”

She reached out impulsively to hug Lena, surprising her, tears in her eyes. “I have a sister, my very own sister. I am so blessed.”

Jeanine insisted on taking a couple of selfie pictures then with her phone before she left, waving and calling back, “See you again soon.”

Lena walked to her car and drove home, stunned with all Jeanine Vinson’s revelations. As she pulled in the driveway, her phone pinged.

Pulling it out of her purse she found a text message from Jeanine, “I loved meeting you,” with one of the selfie pictures she’d taken of the two of them. Following it was another picture of two dark-haired girls about eight or nine, sitting in the crook of a tree, grinning, the girls obviously twins. “Here are my girls Ramona and Rebecca,” Jeanine texted after their picture. “They look a lot like us, don’t they, and a lot like I did as a girl. I wish we had pictures of us together then, don’t you?” And that’s when Lena started to cry.

Naturally, she prayed and thought about Jeanine’s visit a lot in the closing weeks of May before school ended. She read and verified all the paperwork Jeanine had given her, and did her own research, confirming that Laura Jeanine Thomas Vinson was actually her twin sister. She’d never thought to question what she’d been told about her twin dying. Jeanine searched the internet, also, to see Jeanine’s home and school in Seymour, to learn all she could about her. Amazingly, when locating a picture of Jeanine’s home, she found it was painted a deep, rich yellow and very similar to her own house in style, although larger, with a white railed porch and a gabled roof.  Jeanine’s husband’s name was Stuart Ralph Vinson, and Lena had been engaged to a man named Stuart, his full name Stuart Bales, before he went abroad with the military and was killed. Little coincidences like this fascinated Lena, despite her natural inclination to order and good sense as a librarian. She found a random newspaper article that announced Jeanine had once won her school spelling bee, and Lena knew that she had excelled in that subject, too, and of course, after undergrad work in small liberal arts colleges they’d both gone to the University of Tennessee to study Library Science, or Information Services as it was called now, to get their MLS degrees to become librarians. It’s amazing their paths hadn’t crossed, but she saw Jeanine had married after her undergrad degree, not going straight on into her masters program as Lena had.

Her curiosity aroused by the continuing similarities she kept finding in their lives, she said yes to Jeanine’s invitation. Lena admittedly loved Edisto and a free week there after a hectic school year also sounded too good to say no to. Besides, their island house was beautiful and right on the beach. And Jeanine was right, they needed to come to know each other.

In mid-June, Lena headed to the beach to Jeanine’s and now, several days later, the two of them sat out on the screened porch behind the beach house talking together and listening to the waves of the sea, the seagulls, and the sounds of the sea breeze.

“I keep pinching myself as I look across at you,” Jeanine said, smiling at her. “I didn’t know about you until mother died. Afterward, I was helping dad go through old papers to move to a smaller place in an assisted living facility, his health not good. We were talking casually about twins and about my own twin girls and Dad commented that twins ran in families. ‘You were a twin, too,’ he said, out of the blue. I was stunned, but he told me then what he knew about that, which was actually very little.”

Lena decided to be honest. “There were times when I wondered about my birth, my real mother, and I wondered if I had sisters or brothers. As an only child, I often envied my friends who had larger families and very active families. Both my parents were older; they owned and ran a small thrift store with busy store hours. I often entertained myself at the store and at home reading. I always loved books.”

“We certainly have that in common,” Jeanine said. “My parents were educators, my dad later a school administrator. Naturally they valued reading, but when I discovered the small public library near my home, it became my great love. I checked out books all the time and decided even back then I wanted to be a librarian someday.”

They had talked all afternoon after Lena arrived and in the next days, too, telling each other about their lives, their families, their childhood, their schools and friends. Big things and little things. They’d even laughed settling on the porch after dinner that first night to learn they both loved rocking chairs. They both sat in one now, rocking while they talked.

Lena grinned. “I read several books about twins reuniting before I came and about the Jim Twins, born in 1940, raised by different parents, and reunited in their late thirties.”

“It’s an interesting subject,” Jeanine agreed. “I rewatched the old movie The Parent Trap with the girls, trying to prepare Ramona and Rebecca for the idea that they had an aunt who was my twin. Gosh, that was a cute movie.”

“I’ve seen it, too,” Lena said. “I also found an old interview of the Jim Twins with Johnny Carson on his old show. Their story is a lot like ours. They both had identical first names, both named Jim, and their first and second wives even had the same first names. They went to take part in twin studies at the University of Minnesota where the College found their intelligence tests, personality tests, and medical histories almost identical even though they they’d never met after being adopted. Stories like theirs, and ours, make a strong case for the influence of heredity.”

“Yes, I read some stories like that, too. Most twin studies find it hard to determine if the similarities between identical twins, besides looks, are more linked to heredity or culture, since the twins grow up so closely in the same home and environment.”

“Well, we have incredible similarities.” Lena grinned. “I’m sure some university would love to study us, but I’m not sure I want that probing and recognition.”

“It really is amazing how many things we have in common. We both loved spelling and English, but didn’t do well in math, algebra, or geometry. We loved to swim and hike but didn’t like organized sports. We didn’t do well in most sports either and hated gym and P.E.” She laughed. “We both always had cats, and we both had a black-and-white cat named Sylvester when we were girls.”

“Looney Tunes cartoons made Sylvester the cat really popular then,” Lena reminded her. “We probably both saw those old cartoons.”

“Maybe, but we both had cats named Dinah and Socks, too,” Jeanine added. “Those cats weren’t on TV or in movies.”

Lena laughed. “Yes, but they were both Book Cats … Dinah in Alice in Wonderland and Socks in one of Beverly Cleary’s books. You know we both read everything we could get our hands on when girls. Books were a big influencer to both of us.”

“I named a lot of my dolls after book characters, too. Did you?” Jeanine asked.

“I did.” Lena smiled at her. “And I’ve been wondering if you named your girls, Ramona and Rebecca, after book characters?”

“I admit I did, and I wanted them to be spunky, individualistic girls, too, like Ramona in the Beverly Cleary books and Rebecca in the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms story.”

They stopped talking for a moment to watch a line of brown pelicans fly across the ocean in a uniform line and to listen to the waves washing up on the beach.

“We think so much alike, it’s kind of spooky,” Lena said after a moment.  “We even like and dislike the same foods, the same books and authors. We both love yellow—and my gosh, both have yellow houses—and drive yellow cars, which are hard to find today. We both have cats and not dogs, like to do needlework and embroidery and to keep busy hands, and we collect thimbles. None of those interests are very prevalent for anyone to have in common.”

“Sometimes I start a sentence and you finish it, too,” Jeanine said. “You often know what I’m thinking before I say it. You love nature and the mountains and the beach, places of peace and beauty, and they help to calm you when you’re stressed like they do me. You’ve told me that several times. I’m sure one of those colleges would have a field day talking to us.”

“We have differences, too,” Lena put in. “You’re more extroverted and outgoing. I’m a little more introverted, or at least not as quick to be chatty with people I don’t know well. I don’t think you’ve ever met a stranger from what I see. You chat away with everyone.”

“Ramona is like that, too, but Rebecca is quieter, more like you, although she can chatter away all day once she knows you,” Jeanine said. “They both play piano and really love it. They love to sing and are in the children’s church choir. They are also taking tap dancing. I never could dance very well. I couldn’t seem to relax into the rhythm of it.”

Lena shook her head. “I was awkward with that, too, and I still don’t dance well.”

Jeanine got up to go into the kitchen to get them a bottle of Perrier from the refrigerator. It was another of those small things they’d found they both loved, water slightly flavored and in a cold glass bottle all its own. A little indulgence.

Lena knew that another difference in them was their level of wealth. Jeanine’s husband’s family owned a wealth management firm, based in Knoxville with a big branch office in Seymour that Stuart managed. Like Jeanine, and like herself, Stuart was an only child although she’d learned he had a brother who had died young. Stuart’s father was still living but not his mother, so their immediate family was small, too. Lena had only one older aunt in Chattanooga where she’d been raised. Perhaps their limited family made finding each other even more special. Lena and Jeanine had bonded already in the last days, too. They had so much in common, that they seldom lacked for anything to talk about, and they loved so many of the same pastimes that each day brought another revelation about something they learned they both loved to do, some other passion they shared.

When Stuart and the girls came to the beach at the end of their week, Lena liked them all from the first and felt comfortable with them. It seemed, in an odd way, like they were her family already, a part of her. Stuart was comfortable and easy to be with, the girls, too. And the girls soon had Lena walking on the beach with them, playing board games and cards, sitting out on the beach enjoying the sun, riding bikes around the island, playing putt-putt, laughing and cooking together in the kitchen.

Walking along the beach with Ramona and Rebecca one evening, Ramona said, “I’m glad Mama came to find you. She said she’d always felt like there was an empty part of her.”

“She did say that,” Rebecca said, pushing her bangs back that the sea breeze was blowing. “She had some bad dreams, too, like something bad had happened, maybe to you. Were you sick or something? I know sometimes when Ramona is sick or going to be sick. “

“No, I haven’t been sick. I’m fine, and I’m glad your mother came to find me, too. Living all by myself, except with my cats Lucy and Tom, I didn’t realize I was a little lonely until you two, your mom, and your dad got mixed into my life.”

“Can we come to see you?” Ramona asked.

“Yes, of course. My little house has two extra bedrooms. I have plenty of room. I live in a small town, St. Andrews, but there are a lot of beautiful places to visit near my home.”

“Mama wants you to come and see us, too, this summer.”

“Yes, she’s told me that. I promised I would come, too.”

“We live near pretty places, too, like the Smokies and Gatlinburg.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing everything,” Lena said, and meant it. She and Lena had already planned more summer visits before school began again and more time at the beach in August, too.

Over the summer the two sisters followed up on those plans. It seemed perfect they’d met as their summer breaks from school began and they kept the road between their homes busy and the beach house on Point Street full of laughter and love. She’d missed having love, close family love. Lena wondered, too, watching Stuart with Jeanine if she’d have had that same sort of loving affection with her own Stuart if he’d lived. She liked to think so.

Through the fall, Lena and Jeanine stayed in close touch, with occasional weekend visits when they could manage them, often spending part or all of their holidays together. The girls wrote Lena little letters she cherished and kept, and Lena now had pictures of her new family tucked around her house in St. Andrews.

As the spring of the next year rolled around, Lena woke several times in a sweat with nightmares racing through her thoughts. She always slept hard and well, so this troubled her as the dreams continued on. Eventually, she broke down and went to see the doctor for a check-up, but found all was well with her physically. Was there a problem she didn’t know about with Jeanine, with Stuart, or with one of the girls? Lena probed gently in her conversations and even drove to their home for a weekend, checking. But they were as happy and well as ever, looking forward to the summer to come, to going to the beach and sharing more time together.

Lena had almost believed the troubled dreams had passed away until she awoke with a start one night, her heart racing, feeling like she was flying out into space. She could hardly breathe and got up to pace the floor and look at the clock, the time in the dark just after one am. This dream was the worst of any she’d ever had, so Lena slipped on her robe and went to sit in the living room to pray.  She fixed a cup of hot tea, trying to calm herself, but she kept feeling something was dreadfully wrong. In time she fell asleep in the chair, but her phone ringing early in the morning woke her.

A small voice she recognized immediately as Ramona said, “Aunt Lena, we need you. A bad thing has happened. Me and Rebecca need you.” She heard the child break into sobs then. “Come soon. We need you.”

She heard Rebecca weeping in the background, too, and echoing Ramona’s words. “Please come, Leenie,” she said, using a little nickname she often called Lena. “We’ve lost our mommy and our daddy. We need you.”

A deep voice came on the line then. “This is Stuart Vinson’s father, Gordon. I am here with the girls at their house. I didn’t mean for the girls to call you. I planned to later. I just picked them up at a neighbor’s where they’d stayed the weekend while Stuart and Jeanine went on a business trip for our company to New York. They flew, of course.” Lena heard him break down then. “The plane crashed. I’m so sorry to tell you. There were no survivors.”

Lena heard him weeping and could hear the girls crying, too.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Lena said, hanging up the phone. And she knew then why she’d had the dreams and wished vainly that she’d understood their warning. What had Jeanine said right after they met? That she’d kept dreaming of her, that she knew she was supposed to find her at this time. Another time later, while sitting out on the porch of the beach house one night, Jeanine had said, “If anything ever happens to you, if you get sick or ill, you call me. I’ll come. I’ll be there right away. Promise me, too, if anything ever happens to me or to me and Stuart, that you’ll come. You and I are part of each other. I will always be here for you, and I know now you will always be there for me and for Ramona and Rebecca. We are family now.”

“Of course,” Lena had assured her. “We are family. I will come whenever you need me, and I know you’ll come to be a help to me, too.”

Jeanine had reached out to take her hand. “Remember, too, that no matter whatever happens, Lena, we will always, always be sisters in heart.”

The remembered words sent a chill over Lena as she packed. She glanced up toward heaven, tears running down her face. “Don’t worry, Jeanine. I’ll take care of the girls, of our girls, just as we promised.”

Ten years later, Lena remembered that time as she watched Ramona and Rebecca walk across the stage at St. Andrews Sewanee School, graduating with honors, both girls sending her smiles out in the audience where she sat. Somehow they had all survived that horrible time. She’d brought the girls home with her, raised and loved them, kept them in touch with their grandfather. Their father Stuart, with forethought, had set up the girls affairs well with his own father through their business. There had been no want, except for the heart. And together they had kept the memories of Jeanine alive.

“Sometimes when I look at you, I see Mama,” Rebecca had said to her once and the words didn’t hurt Lena but warmed her heart.

“Always together in heart,” she whispered to Jeanine later, looking up toward heaven, sure Jeanine and Stuart were smiling down to see their girls graduating, both nearly grown, smart, capable, gifted and happy. Lena had seen to that with love and diligence.

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Note: All photos my own, from royalty free sites, or used only as a part of my author repurposed storyboards shown only for educational and illustrative purposes, acc to the Fair Use Copyright law, Section 107 of the Copyright Act.