Count On Me

Part Fifty Nine

Chapter Fifty Nine

Ninety minutes later they were in the car, cutting through the countryside, Nate chattering madly in the back seat about his day, his lunch, his teacher...Lizzie couldn't believe that it was possible to feel so normal after all that had happened. In a brief moment she'd taken to Google and read a little about Locked Twins. Some of the stories she'd read were grim, a baby dying when it couldn't be delivered, then some of them...like her mother had hinted, dismembered to allow the bodies of both babies to be separated.

She couldn't imagine how hideous and traumatic that could be and she did feel a huge pang of guilt, and pain on her mother's behalf. But it wasn't her fault. None of it was. And her parents could have done many things, counselling, anything but take it out on her. Oscar glanced at her occasionally, she knew he was concerned about her, but she wasn't about to let the news from her parents to ruin her. It was a horrendous story, painful, the thought that she lived at the expense of her brother, but it wasn't her fault. It was no one's fault. It was a tragedy, and that was exactly how she was viewing it.

The car turned onto a gated driveway, and a mansion appeared on the horizon.

"Wow," she offered as she placed her hand over Oscar's on her thigh.

"It's part of the luxury range of getaways. I still get a little discount!"

She smiled, "you are really spoiling us."

As he pulled into the gravel car park, he turned to them both, "you are worth it. Both of you."

The whole building was opulent. From the extravagant, yet somehow not overstated, chandeliers and marble pillars that decked the hallway, to the four poster bed in the master bedroom of their two bed suite, everything was perfectly lavish. Not that Nate's room was any less elaborate.

"It's brilliant!" He exclaimed running into the room and throwing himself onto the huge bed. Then before Oscar had got their bags into the room, Nate was bouncing up and down on the bed, actually squealing with glee.

He chuckled from across the lounge that separated the two bedrooms, "not sure it's meant as a trampoline, but if it keeps him happy!"

Lizzie rolled her eyes, "Nate, stop love. You'll hurt yourself."

He groaned as he bounced on to his bottom then collapsed starfish on the bed, "You are no fun!"

Oscar laughed, "get changed into your swim stuff, we can hit the pool?"

Nate's eyes lit up as he turned to Lizzie, "can we? Go swimming?"

Oscar watched the two, a smile on his face, despite everything he still turned to Lizzie for confirmation that he could or couldn't do something. He saw her as his mother, and she was, in everything but biology.

"Let me find them," she buried her nose in the large bag that she'd brought for them. Two pairs of swim shorts in very different sizes landed on the bed. Within seconds Nate was completely naked and pulling them on. As his father pretty much mimicked him, she rolled her eyes.

"You two go on, I'm going to sort out towels and dry clothes to wear after your swim."

Oscar chuckled, "they've got robes...look." He gestured to Nate who appeared with a white hotel robe that seemed more like a regal cape than a robe, dragging behind him as he walked towards them.