Twins

My eyes watered as her tears just ran unchecked down her face. Her mascara was a mess, and I envisaged that a trip to the ladies' room with her friends would be in order as soon as they came off stage.

For the final time Karen raised the mike to her lips and said, "My folks understand, and have told the Dean that they will match whatever he makes on the auction in recompense. Please, folks, understand why I can't join in. This auction brings much-needed funds to every charity it selects that year. Don't use my need to honor my sister as an excuse not to have this auction anymore. She and I wouldn't want that to happen."

With that Karen handed the mike back, hugged her friend, and left the stage. She made it to the bottom of the steps before she ran into my arms. It seemed the trip to the bathroom could wait until the auction dance was over. We watched from the sidelines until the auction ended, and then Bethany and another of her friends grabbed an arm each and disappeared in the direction of the bathrooms. When she came back I resumed my own tradition of holding Karen's ass in both hands as we shuffled around the dance floor while everyone else around us held on for the ride.

*******

We wanted a quiet wedding; her folks wanted all the bells and whistles. The trouble with that was that Karen still had very little to do with them anymore. She told her folks straight out that she simply didn't trust them. She would go home and see them, of course, but as soon as she was done Karen jumped on a plane and came to us. Both my folks worked on her, and between both families, a truce came about for the day of the wedding.

But of course Karen still held sway over the final punishment of her folks. The families were exempt but, for every relation my family invited, her family could do the same to an equal amount. She knew the size of my family, so she did it this way on purpose. I'm told that it led to a few frantic calls between both moms for weeks. In total two hundred people turned up and had a blast.

I asked Charlie to be my best man, to make sure I got to the church on time and sober; two promises he kept. He knew very well that, if Karen didn't kill him, then Bethany sure would if he had reneged on either promise. As the music changed, Charlie looked behind us and did that double-take thing. I noticed, and looked over my shoulder.

"Wow" didn't even begin to do her justice. She looked absolutely stunning in a white strapless gown that this guy would make a real mess of describing. All lace and silk, and a huge smile attached to the owner. Karen was just so proud of herself for managing to make sure that the white was for real. When we said "I do," and I lifted the veil, I swear my heart stopped. I had lived with Karen for so long now and had seen every aspect of her, both naked and clothed, mapped out in my thoughts and memories.

Her body and soul were an open book to me and, other than the final act, I got to play with it anytime I wanted. I loved this woman standing in front of me; she owned my heart, and knew that this was the gift I placed in her hands every day, and would continue to do so forever.

The face that looked back at me when that veil went behind her head was a picture of true beauty. Her eyes were just so alive; it was the world's biggest certainty that her smile powered every light in the church that day. It was as though I was kissing her for the first time. It was also when I knew in my heart that Stacey was right all along: that I would protect this woman with my last breath.

As we walked back down the aisle towards the doors, I leaned over and whispered in her ear that she needed to take shorter steps because, if her foot got caught in her dress, not even her tits were going to keep that dress up and, judging by the amount of cameras and phones recording what was going on in the church, she would be all over Facebook and YouTube before the end of the reception. Every person with a camera caught her laugh that day.

With the wedding over, and after we had got back from our honeymoon, I turned my attention towards job hunting. I was now working in the graphics division of an ad agency uptown, and had been there almost six months before I was summoned into my boss's office. He showed me my contract of employment and told me that, when I was asked to work overtime, I was expected to do just that. His face was a picture when I told him that he hadn't met my wife and, when she expected me home, then home was the place to be. Security helped me carry my box of stuff as far as the front desk almost an hour later.

I guess my old boss didn't have a sense of humor. Over the next year, two other ad agencies decided that a fifty hour working week was part time, and terminated my contract before Karen was summoned to the Rossindon Foundation's head office.

Ethan Howard's health was failing. Staying in the job was going to kill him, and he wanted to see his own children grow up. Karen looked at me, and I just shrugged my shoulders. She was twenty-three: two years short of the agreed time she would take over, but we all knew Ethan would be dead by then if she didn't step in now.

She made the Foundation put us up in some posh hotel, all expenses paid, while she thought about it overnight, but we both knew she had made her decision before she had left Ethan's office. Her only stipulation was that she wanted me on board before she agreed: what took me by surprise was that, when she said "on board," she actually meant working for the Foundation.

That woman worked on me most of the night before I agreed. I simply didn't have anything left in the tank to argue with her. Karen even let me sleep in, but she had no choice: I was exhausted.

We became more serious later that morning when we had the sit-down talk that needed to be aired. A husband and wife working in the same building is nothing new. What terrified her was that she would be my boss and didn't want the Foundation to destroy our marriage. We worked our way through both positives and negatives of each point either of us made, and slowly came up with a working strategy that still exists to this day.

*******

If anyone at the Foundation thought Karen was only going to be a figurehead they were quickly corrected. She locked herself into a room with the board and senior management of the Foundation and heard them all out, before standing up and telling each and every one of them that no one was indispensable. She sure rocked the boat; it seems great-aunt Amie invested a great deal of power into the head of the Foundation, and Karen was sure making use of it.

When one of the more senior board members took her to task, and reminded her that she had only been here "five minutes," Karen accepted his resignation. It came as a surprise to him, since he hadn't offered it, but security was waiting for him by the door, and that set the tone for the rest of the meeting. She then did something that I don't think even great-aunt Amie had foreseen: his replacement was Trisha Marshall.

The two of them became a force to be reckoned with in the boardroom. As for me, I was happy in my little cupboard, bringing the face of the foundation into the twenty-first century. Everything, from their Internet profile all the way down to the stationery, got a revamp. In the end I was also doing some graphics for the parent company as well.

Eventually the story of the twins being groomed to take over the Foundation got out, and the feeding frenzy from the news networks caused the Public Relations department to earn their wages.

Karen declined every interview, saying the Foundation should be the focus and not her. My personal opinion was that it only delayed the inevitable, and so Karen, Trisha and the board went back to work, at least until the next slow news week. But, just like any runaway train, it's going to come at you sometime. The slow news week once again returned, and the pressure was on the Foundation head for an interview. Even the whispers of "what is she hiding" were used to pull her into getting her to agree.

The gossips just kept up a stream so steady that it was becoming impossible to leave the house without running a gauntlet. At first the board had backed her, but now her own standing within the board room was being challenged. Karen would bring those conversations home with her, and it was taking me longer and longer to get her to unwind. In the end she got her press people to agree to an interview, but with stipulations.

The journalists all thought they smelt blood in the water, and cited freedom of the press. From where I was standing it looked like a lot of posturing and little getting done. In the end I figured I would do some research, and thank goodness I did. After a week of snooping around I thought I had a solution, but it was getting it past Karen that counted.

So I rang upstairs. The phone rang twice before it was answered. "Karen Sullivan's office, how may I help?"

"Hi, Becky! I need ten minutes with my wife sometime today." I heard paper being moved about and then a pause.

"She's busy up until two, Mr. Sullivan."

I gave up long ago trying to get her to call me Andy. She only called Karen by her first name because my wife threatened to send her back to the typing pool if she didn't.

"That's fine. Can you let her know I'll see her at two, and you may need to let her know that getting someone up from legal would be a good idea as well."

I put the phone down and waited, quietly counting to ten while I did. The phone rang on the count of seven. Becky sure worked fast!

"You're planning on divorcing me?"

I smiled: I just couldn't help myself.

"I thought about it, but I couldn't afford the alimony."

She laughed, so at least that was something.

"Karen, honey, I think I've got a solution to this press problem. I need to pass it by you first, and having legal listening in would push this along faster."

The line went silent for a moment. I'm sure curiosity was fighting with her busy day. When the confirmation came that she would see me at two, I smiled again. It really must be busy up there.

Dead on time I walked into my wife's office with a book and a laptop under my arm. Of course Karen just had to be Karen.

"Oh, great! I'm getting a PowerPoint presentation."

"Well, no, but I'm more than willing to tan your ass for your cheek if you wish."

Karen had Marcus Whitman sitting in one of the plush seats in her office. She didn't just get one of our in-house counsel; she got the Head of Legal himself to sit in on this. He laughed, and she blushed.

"You do realize you ain't getting any tonight?"

By now I had put my stuff on the edge of her desk, and I leaned over as she did the same. Our lips met somewhere over the middle of it. It took Marcus to politely cough to remind us both he was still here.

"Sorry, Marcus, but she gets cranky if she doesn't get kissed at least seventeen times a day."

She swatted my arm and Marcus smiled as he watched Karen blush again. I handed her the book, and her brow creased as she instantly recognized it: the name of her high school in large letters over the top of it. Karen opened to the page where I had left a bookmark. The photos of all her year looked back at her. Marcus and I watched her in one of her unguarded moments as her finger traced some of the faces and paused at the picture of Stacey staring back at her.

Her eyes sought mine: she was already close to tears, and only one word escaped her lips as she fought hard to ask it. "Why?"

Marcus was the smartest of them all; he just sat back and watched everything. I leaned onto her desk and pointed to one picture at the bottom right hand side of the page. Karen looked at the photo and the words written underneath: "going to be a journalist."

"I remember her: Sophie Derns. She was the sports reporter for the school."

This time I nodded, and by now I had my laptop open and was typing while I spoke. Sophie went to Harvard and studied journalism, and also did the broadcast journalism course. She sure wanted it bad. By now I had turned the laptop around, and an older version of Sophie Derns stared back at Karen. Sophie had a blog.

"Sophie has had a hard time of it. From what I've been able to find out, she was doing well until she filed a sexual harassment suit against the star anchor at the station."

After hearing that Karen's mouth fell open.

"But Sophie's gay! She came out towards the end of high school."

I shrugged my shoulders. Just then the door opened, and Becky walked in with a file in her hand. She passed it to me, and I thanked her as she smiled and left the room. I also placed this in front of my wife.

"It turns out your predecessor signed off on this. The Rossindon Foundation sent Sophie to Harvard through a non-disclosure agreement with her parents."

By now Karen was seeing what I was aiming at. The press all wanted a piece of her, thinking that she had something to hide. What better way to counter that than by having a journalist that already knew her do the story: one who also had an axe to grind against the very people who curbed her own career. My part in all this was over. I could already see the cogs going around in Karen's and Marcus's heads, so I packed up my stuff and headed for the door.

"Oh, husband of mine? You're so getting laid tonight."

Seeing Marcus smirk set me off, and I just couldn't resist.

"Am I getting the Saturday night special, with heels and Basque, or the schoolgirl outfit?"

Karen's smile quickly approached that thousand watt threshold, and it almost felt like we were the only people in the room. Her eyes lit up as she noticed Marcus starting to squirm in his seat as well.

"Honey, I'm getting that 'I dream of Jeannie' outfit out for you tonight."

Poor Marcus would now have that vision living in his head for the rest of the afternoon while he was talking to Karen. As for me, I had done my bit. I went back to my cupboard and started again on the graphics I had put on hold. For the next few weeks neither one of us mentioned Sophie Derns. As far as I was concerned, I had pointed Karen in her direction; what she did with it was above my pay grade.

But I knew Marcus. You took his laid-back manner and believed it at your peril. Karen called him her pit bull. He would have had a file on Sophie Derns sitting on Karen's desk by the end of the month. For the first time in the Foundation's history one of the Board had been singled out by the press, and it happened to be my wife. They believed there was a story to be had if they could just dig deep enough, and it was that attitude that was slowing down the work that the people of the Foundation were doing.

*******

It took a call from Becky to make me realize how far things had progressed. It seemed that I was summoned to the top floor for a meeting with my wife at one that afternoon. It was also the first time I met Sophie Derns in the flesh.

Karen looked up as I walked in and leapt from her chair. "Ah! This is my husband."

Her arms came around me in a warm hug. I recognized the woman sitting in the chair next to the one Karen vacated: she smiled and put the cup she was holding down on the little table next to her.

"OK. Quick introductions, boys and girls. Sophie Derns, this is Andy, my husband and the brainchild of you being here." Karen then looked at me. "She's agreed, but with conditions. I need you in on those conditions, since they will affect you as well."

Karen then pointed to a chair, and we all sat down as she explained everything. I could see both positives and negatives in what Sophie was asking for. She certainly desired the story, but wanted to make it a "fly on the wall" type of interview. Follow Karen around for a month and get to know the woman behind the Foundation but, to do that, Karen wanted Sophie to live with us for the month.

There are some things that you would never pick up from a photo or reading about someone, but you may if you're in very close proximity to them, and I picked up that very vibe from Sophie Derns that afternoon. As we all sat and talked for the next hour, even discussing some of the suggestions that came from Sophie which I admit hadn't occurred to me, that niggle wouldn't go away.

As our talk ran down I knew Karen was going to flat out ask me. My wife seemed to find that pause in the conversation and turned to me.

"So Andy, it's agreed. Sophie stays with us for the month, and she's my shadow here at work."

I took one more look at Sophie and trusted my own instincts. "I'm sorry, but no." My wife wouldn't have been happy with just that much, so I continued. "Something about you doesn't sit right with me, Miss Derns. Had I picked up on it earlier, then I would have looked elsewhere for the solution to all this."

The look on Karen's face told me I was going to catch hell for this at home. I excused myself and left the office, going back to my cupboard via the coffee machine at the end of the corridor. The knock on my door came twenty minutes later. Had it been Karen she would have come straight in so, curiosity being what it is, I called for whomever to come in. Sophie stood in the doorway, still unsure if she should even come any further. I also recognized security standing behind her.

Perhaps this too was inevitable, so I pointed to a chair by my desk and nodded to security when she cleared the doorway. He nodded back and closed the door, but I had little doubt he remained standing outside while she was in here.

As she sat I said "I'm sorry I wasted your time."

The look on her face made me think she wanted to start this conversation.

"You think I'm going to hurt her?"

Shrugging my shoulders got the silence that followed. What could I say to her? That the voice in my head made me do it? Yep, I could see that would go down really well.

"Karen came to see me, Andy; not some lackey, but her. Mind you, I came close to calling the cops when some big guy knocked on my door."

We both smiled; that would have been Tony. He went everywhere with Karen, and had been her driver and bodyguard ever since she walked into the Foundation's building and signed on the dotted line.

"When I heard what she had to say I was all for it, Andy. I've sat on the sidelines while certain members of the press got their claws into her. They're not letting go, Andy, and doing it my way takes the pressure off you both and puts it back onto them."

Sophie spoke a lot of sense over the next half an hour, but every time I looked at her my mind just knew she was hiding something. Something that Marcus and I hadn't found when we both went snooping, and I just knew that was the part of me that wouldn't budge. In the end even she could see it.

For a second she bit her lower lip. It looked cute, and inwardly I smiled. "Karen told me you loved them both. She said you could tell them apart."

This wasn't a conversation I was ever going to be comfortable having. The link I had with Stacey was way too personal for anyone but Karen to understand. The hole in my heart left by Stacey's death was healing year by year, but only because my wife was now the most important person in my life. The day I stood in that church and told Karen I loved her, she knew I meant it. My love for both these girls was my business, and it annoyed me slightly that Sophie was leaning on my feelings for them in the hope of using it as some type of leverage.

"You're not going to change your mind: I can see that, but I want to do this for my own reasons, and I'm hoping that sharing one of them will help you reconsider."

Her eyes never left mine, but even now the doubts remained in my mind.

"I interviewed Stacey and Karen several times for the high school paper, more often in their final year. Between them they cornered the market in silverware on the track, and could have easily got athletics scholarships. The twins made a point of never playing games with me like they did with some of the girls. They both knew I was gay, and yet neither freaked out nor set me up to fall."