Read Online The Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark - Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Higgins Clark
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never answers a question directly. âCarley, breakthroughs in new drugs are happening practically every day. Compare it to transportation. Until the nineteenth century, people rode in carriages or stagecoaches or on horseback. The train and the automobile were the great inventions that moved the world faster. In the twentieth century we had prop planes, then jets, then supersonic aircraft, and then spaceships. That kind of acceleration and progress is happening in medical laboratories as well. Think about it. Aspirin was only discovered in the late 1890s. Beforethat they were bleeding people to relieve fever. Smallpox. That vaccine is only eighty years old, and wherever it was, it eradicated the disease. As recently as fifty years ago there was a polio epidemic. The Salk and then the Sabin vaccines took care of that. I could go on and on.â
âDNA?â
âExactly. And donât forget that DNA has revolutionized the legal system as well as making it possible to predict hereditary diseases.â
I thought about the prisoners who were being released from death row because their DNA proved they hadnât committed the crime.
Gwen still had a full head of steam. âRemember all the books where a child was kidnapped, and then thirty years later an adult showed up at the door and said, âIâm home, Mommy.â â Today it isnât a case of whether or not somebody looks like somebody else. DNA testing makes the difference.â
Our dinners arrived. Gwen took a couple of bites, then went on. âCarley, I donât know whether Nick Spencer was a charlatan or a genius. I understand some of the early results of his cancer vaccine as reported in medical journals seemed to be very encouraging, but face it: At the end of the day, they couldnât verify the results. Then, of course, Spencer disappears, and it turns out he looted the company.â
âDid you ever meet him?â I asked.
âIn a big group at some of the medical seminars. A very impressive guy, but you know what, Carley?Knowing how much he stole from people who couldnât afford to lose it and, even worse, how he dashed the hopes of people desperate for the vaccine he touted, I canât feel a scintilla of sympathy for him. So his plane crashed. As far as Iâm concerned, he got what he deserved.â
T EN
C onnecticut is a beautiful state. My fatherâs cousins lived there when I was growing up and when we visited them, I thought that all of the state was like Darien. But like every other state, Connecticut has its modest working-class towns, and the next morning when I got to Caspien, a hamlet ten miles from Bridgeport, that was what I found.
The trip didnât take that long, less than an hour and a half. I left my garage at nine oâclock and was passing the âWelcome to Caspienâ sign at ten-twenty. The sign was a wood carving illustrated with the image of a revolutionary soldier holding a musket.
I drove up and down through the streets to get the feel of the place. The majority of the houses were Cape Cods and split levels, the kind built in the mid-1950s. Many of them had been enlarged, and I could see where yet another generation had replaced the original owners,the veterans of World War II. Bicycles and skate boards were visible in carports or leaning near side doors. The large percentage of vehicles parked in the driveways or on the streets were SUVs or roomy sedans.
It was a family kind of town. Almost all the houses were well kept. As in every place where people dwell, there was a section where the houses were bigger, the lots larger. But there were no cookie-cutter mansions in Caspien. I decided that when people started to make it big, they set out the âfor saleâ sign and moved to a more pricey enclave nearby, such as Greenwich or Westport or Darien.
I drove slowly down Main Street, the center of Caspien. Four blocks long, it had the usual mix of smalltown
âDNA?â
âExactly. And donât forget that DNA has revolutionized the legal system as well as making it possible to predict hereditary diseases.â
I thought about the prisoners who were being released from death row because their DNA proved they hadnât committed the crime.
Gwen still had a full head of steam. âRemember all the books where a child was kidnapped, and then thirty years later an adult showed up at the door and said, âIâm home, Mommy.â â Today it isnât a case of whether or not somebody looks like somebody else. DNA testing makes the difference.â
Our dinners arrived. Gwen took a couple of bites, then went on. âCarley, I donât know whether Nick Spencer was a charlatan or a genius. I understand some of the early results of his cancer vaccine as reported in medical journals seemed to be very encouraging, but face it: At the end of the day, they couldnât verify the results. Then, of course, Spencer disappears, and it turns out he looted the company.â
âDid you ever meet him?â I asked.
âIn a big group at some of the medical seminars. A very impressive guy, but you know what, Carley?Knowing how much he stole from people who couldnât afford to lose it and, even worse, how he dashed the hopes of people desperate for the vaccine he touted, I canât feel a scintilla of sympathy for him. So his plane crashed. As far as Iâm concerned, he got what he deserved.â
T EN
C onnecticut is a beautiful state. My fatherâs cousins lived there when I was growing up and when we visited them, I thought that all of the state was like Darien. But like every other state, Connecticut has its modest working-class towns, and the next morning when I got to Caspien, a hamlet ten miles from Bridgeport, that was what I found.
The trip didnât take that long, less than an hour and a half. I left my garage at nine oâclock and was passing the âWelcome to Caspienâ sign at ten-twenty. The sign was a wood carving illustrated with the image of a revolutionary soldier holding a musket.
I drove up and down through the streets to get the feel of the place. The majority of the houses were Cape Cods and split levels, the kind built in the mid-1950s. Many of them had been enlarged, and I could see where yet another generation had replaced the original owners,the veterans of World War II. Bicycles and skate boards were visible in carports or leaning near side doors. The large percentage of vehicles parked in the driveways or on the streets were SUVs or roomy sedans.
It was a family kind of town. Almost all the houses were well kept. As in every place where people dwell, there was a section where the houses were bigger, the lots larger. But there were no cookie-cutter mansions in Caspien. I decided that when people started to make it big, they set out the âfor saleâ sign and moved to a more pricey enclave nearby, such as Greenwich or Westport or Darien.
I drove slowly down Main Street, the center of Caspien. Four blocks long, it had the usual mix of smalltown
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