Читать книгу The Real Father - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 5

Dear Reader,

When I was a little girl of three or four, the family lore goes, I climbed comfortably onto my father’s lap and snuggled there for several minutes. But then, chattering happily, I chanced to look up. Openmouthed, I looked again. It wasn’t my father at all. It was my uncle, my father’s identical twin.

Even today, everyone laughs at the memory of my panicked, poleaxed little face. With one violent shove, I wriggled down and fled—not because I didn’t love my uncle, who was a gentle, darling man, but because I had been so thoroughly deceived.

Later I learned that I was just one of many such victims, both innocent and deliberate. Confusion followed wherever they went: “I saw you at dinner the other night,” a wounded friend would complain. “Why didn’t you say hello?” The tales of their early years were legendary—including nights when, midevening, the young men would trade dates, their lady friends never aware of the switch.

And the most amazing case of all… One day, when they were little boys, my uncle Matt ran down the hall and slammed into a full-length mirror. His mother, comforting him, was moved to ask, “But Matt, dear, why on earth did you do that?” To which my uncle replied, “I thought it was Mike, and he ought to get out of the way.”

I felt less foolish when I heard that one. After all, if even they couldn’t tell the difference, how could I?

Perhaps, since I’d been brought up on such wild—and possibly a tiny bit embellished—stories, it was inevitable that someday I would want to explore the plot and character possibilities of twinship.

Jackson and Beau Forrest, the twins at the heart of The Real Father, are purely fictional creations. However, the trials they endure are not, thank goodness, based on any real events in the lives of my father and his brother.

But in building Jackson’s personality—in understanding his guilt, his grief and the intensity of his loss—I did draw on what I had witnessed at home: the love that was more than love, the connection so profound, it approached the mystical, the communication that ran along lines buried much deeper than words.

My father and uncle had the luxury of growing old together. Jackson and Beau did not. As I tried to comprehend what such a loss would mean to an identical twin, as I asked myself how such an emptiness could ever be filled, I realized that it would take more than the perfect heroine.

It would take at least two.

And that’s how I found Molly and Liza Lorring. A landscape architect and her daughter—or the Most Royal Queen and Beauteous Princess of the Planet Cuspian…depending on who you ask. Between them, they’re quite equal to the task of slaying any dragons that might be plaguing a hero.

I hope you enjoy their story.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien