The Third Twin Read Online Free

to keep an eye on a woman with Alzheimer’s. “I can’t take her either,” she said.
    Patty showed anger through her tears. “So why did you tell her we would get her out of there? We can’t!”
    They stepped outside into the torrid heat. Jeannie said: “Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and get a loan. We’ll put her in a better place and I’ll add to the insurance money.”
    “But how will you ever pay it back?” said Patty practically.
    “I’ll get promoted to associate professor, then full professor, and I’ll be commissioned to write a textbook and get hired as a consultant by three international conglomerates.”
    Patty smiled through her tears. “I believe you, but will the bank?”
    Patty had always believed in Jeannie. Patty herself had never been ambitious. She had been below average at school and had married at nineteen and settled down to raise children without any apparent regrets. Jeannie was the opposite. Top of the class and captain of all sports teams, she had been a tennis champion and had put herself through college on sports scholarships. Whatever she said she was going to do, Patty never doubted her.
    But Patty was right, the bank would not make another loan so soon after financing the purchase of her apartment. And she had only just started as assistant professor: it would be three years before she was considered for promotion. As they reached the parking lot Jeannie said desperately: “Okay, I’ll sell my car.”
    She loved her car. It was a twenty-year-old Mercedes 230C, a red two-door sedan with black leather seats. She had bought it eight years ago, with her prize money for winning the May-fair Lites College Tennis Challenge, five thousand dollars. That was before it became chic to own an old Mercedes. “It’s probably worth double what I paid for it,” she said.
    “But you’d have to buy another car,” Patty said, still remorselessly realistic.
    “You’re right.” Jeannie sighed. “Well, I can do some private tutoring. It’s against JFU’s rules, but I can probably get forty dollars an hour teaching remedial statistics one-on-one with rich students who have flunked the exam at other universities. I could pick up three hundred dollars a week, maybe; tax-free if I don’t declare it.” She looked her sister in the eye. “Can you spare anything?”
    Patty looked away. “I don’t know.”
    “Zip makes more than I do.”
    “He’ll kill me for saying this, but we might be able to chip in seventy-five or eighty a week,” Patty said at last. “I’ll get him to put in for a raise. He’s kind of timid about asking, but I know he deserves it, and his boss likes him.”
    Jeannie began to feel more cheerful, although the prospect of spending her Sundays teaching backward undergraduates was dismal. “For an extra four hundred a week we might get Mom a room to herself with her own bathroom.”
    “Then she could have more of her things about her, ornaments and maybe some furniture from the apartment.”
    “Let’s ask around, see if anyone knows of a nice place.”
    “Okay.” Patty was thoughtful. “Mom’s illness is inherited, isn’t it? I saw something on TV.”
    Jeannie nodded. “There’s a gene defect, AD3, that’s linked to early-onset Alzheimer’s.” It was located at chromosome 14q24.3, Jeannie recalled, but that would not mean anything to Patty.
    “Does that mean you and I will end up like Mom?”
    “It means there’s a good chance we will.”
    They were both silent for a moment. The thought of losing your mind was almost too grim to talk about.
    “I’m glad I had my children young,” Patty said. “They’ll be old enough to look after themselves by the time it happens to me.”
    Jeannie noted the hint of reproof. Like Mom, Patty thought there was something wrong with being twenty-nine and childless. Jeannie said: “The fact that they’ve found the gene is also hopeful. It means that by the time we’re Mom’s age, they may be able to inject us with