Nightrise

cooled the air — there was no air-conditioning. Two framed travel posters and, on the coffee table, a model of an old biplane were the only clues that the place might belong to an airline stewardess.
    "Can I get you a drink?" Alicia asked.
    "No, thank you."
    "Do you want to lie down? You can watch TV if you like…"
    Jamie looked around. "What's your sister's name?"
    "Caroline."
    "Are you close?"
    "We see each other when we can."
    Jamie and Alicia were standing in the living room. They both looked awkward. This wasn't their house.
    And they still hadn't quite absorbed the chain of events that had brought them together. "Look, I'm sorry.
    All right?" Jamie muttered the words. "What I said, back at the restaurant, that was wrong. You're trying to help me. I know that. But what you want me to do…you don't understand…"
    "I'll make some coffee," Alicia said. "Why don't we go outside?"

    Ten minutes later, they were sitting together on the patio at the back of the house. By late afternoon, the sun had passed across the roof and they were able to enjoy the shade. There was a stretch of deck, a tangle of plants. They were surrounded by other houses but there was nobody else in sight. It felt very private. Even the noise of the Los Angeles traffic couldn't reach them here.
    "I don't like talking about myself," Jamie said.
    Alicia said nothing. She wanted him to relax, to begin in his own time.
    "Me and Scott. We've always been…"Jamie held up a finger and thumb, almost touching, to show what he meant. "He's the smart one. He's the one who gets us out of trouble. He always knows what to do. I think of him as my big brother although I guess we're twins."
    'You don't know?"
    Jamie shook his head. "We were found dumped near a place called Glenbrook, near Lake Tahoe. We were, like, babies in a basket, left by the side of the road. Except it wasn't a basket, it was a cardboard box. We had no names. Nothing. Oh yes. This was really funny. Someone had given us a tattoo. Both of us, the same tattoo."
    "Where is it?" Alicia hadn't meant to ask but she couldn't stop herself.
    "Here." Jamie flicked a thumb over his shoulder. "On my shoulder. It's a sort of circle with a line through it. It doesn't mean anything."
    "So how did you get your names?"
    "They called him Scott because the box we were found in was for Scott's grass seed. I got called Jamie after the local doctor who examined us. They thought we had Native American blood. They asked about us on the reservations."
    ''You do have that look," Alicia agreed.
    "I won't tell you too much about our life…what happened to us. I don't suppose you care a whole lot.
    Because what you want to know about is The Accident. That's what we called it. But we never talked about it. I never said anything to anyone about it except Scott, and I don't want to talk about it now."
    Alicia sighed. "Maybe if you start at the beginning, it'll make it all easier."
    "Whatever. There's not much to tell you anyway."

    Jamie had a cup of coffee in front of him, but he hadn't drunk any of it. For a few moments he stared into the black surface of the liquid as if it were a mirror, showing him the past.
    "Okay. We were just left by the roadside. We never had a mom or a dad or anything like that. There was a newspaper story about when we were found. We were called the Seed Box Babies. And after that we were taken into protective custody. I guess they kept us in the hospital for a while, but then we were fostered. They put us in this foster home somewhere in Carson City. There were another half-dozen kids there, all with Indian blood. I can't even remember where it was anymore. The people who ran it were the Tylers and we took their name while the police and the social services tried to find out where we'd come from.
    "Except they couldn't. Everyone was interested in the tattoos. They thought the tattoos had to mean something. After all, who'd go to the trouble of putting a tattoo on a baby? They went onto the reservations and asked questions and offered a reward. But it didn't work. And in the end they closed the file and just let us get on with it.
    "But things never stopped going wrong for us. We were always blowing out of different foster homes.
    We used to get into fights with other kids. We didn't pick these fights — they just sort of happened. By the time we were about six years old, we knew that it was always going to be the same…Scott looked out for me and I looked out for him. And as for the