Side by side, as seen on Joanna’s laptop, Rockefeller and Samuel are physically interchangeable—even Juliana detects no outward difference. Psychologically viewed, however—inferred by factors less tangible, especially in as much as the photographs are static—she who birthed the twins knows which is which hands down. Sam is hers and Fell is his, no two ways about it. Odd that the latter’s betrothed could have gotten the pair confused, which Joanna maintains staunchly—the reason “Mom” mistrusts yet approves of her all the more, to prefer Sam over Fell an endorsement of her single-parent motherhood.

            ‘Let me get this straight, Sam. You propose to marry your long-lost brother’s expecting fiancée?’

            Sam, a bit perturbed to find himself on the defensive when his mother is responsible for twenty-two years of deception, bristles at her failure to apologize or even to explain her rationale for having kept him in the dark about his sibling.

            ‘Aren’t you going to tell me...?’

            ‘Why I never told you?’

            ‘Well, yeah. I mean, what a way to learn I’m not an only child.’

            He and Joanna swap complicitous looks. Shock—worn off for them—for Juliana is all-too-immediate... seeing her other son... confirming his whereabouts... reliving maternal devastation when he suddenly disappeared... stolen by that maniac whose egocentric influence is stamped all over Rockefeller... so much more like Stuyvesant than Sam could ever be... she hopes... she asserts... she reaffirms to herself in a solemn vow; keeping them apart perhaps the only way that Sam can stay uncontaminated.

            ‘Is Rockefeller privy to your nuptial plans?’

            Joanna takes her cue.

            ‘He knows I’m angry. He knows the wedding is off and that I’m pregnant with his baby and that I’m having it regardless. He doesn’t know, unless his father has told him, that he has a perfect twin. And he certainly doesn’t know that Sam and I have met, or that we’re happily engaged.’

            ‘But he’ll find out.’

            ‘Fell’s too busy with one of your ex-husband’s lab-rat monstrosities, some Bride of Frankenstein floozy he genetically engineered.’

            The vehemence with which Joanna blabs this cutting accusation staggers her addressees into silence. News to mother and son, they react as if appalled—she, from past experience, giving credence to the charge, he, from disbelief that such a thing is plausible, both aghast upon witnessing the evidence on display as Joanna plays the video pre Falk Foundation fire.