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back to Hot Springs, finished his electrician’s apprenticeship, and began working for a local contractor. Determined to provide for his family without Janice having to work, Larry earned enough so they could save a little money each month. After three years of frugal living, they had scraped together the down payment on a thirty-thousand-dollar starter house in a subdivision two hundred yards from Lake Hamilton. It wasn’t large, maybe fifteen hundred square feet, but following nearly a decade of tiny apartments and trailers, it felt like a mansion—the perfect home in which to expand their family.
    A month before the due date of their second child, the doctor gave Janice some startling news.
    “Mrs. Brown,” he said with a smile, “there’s a little something extra I failed to notice before.”
    “Extra? Like what?” Janice asked.
    “Extra, like an extra baby. You’re having twins, ma’am.”

2

Something Special

    W HEN A DAM’S TWIN SISTER , M ANDA , was born three minutes ahead of him on February 5, 1974, it was the last time she beat him at anything. Adam was the first to scoot, first to crawl, first to walk, and first to climb out of the crib … and plummet to the floor.
    The first time Adam smacked his head as he escaped the confines of his crib was at nine months. While goose eggs and bruises bred caution in Manda, they didn’t faze Adam. He’d cry a bit, then be off exploring. After three such escapes, Larry cut a foot off the legs of the crib to shorten Adam’s fall.
    That was one of many safety precautions Janice and Larry implemented to prevent Adam from injuring himself. Janice would often recruit Shawn, older by five years, as a second set of eyes while she rushed to prepare dinner. “Keep an eye on Manda,” she’d tell him, “but watch Adam like a hawk.”
    Adam didn’t come with brakes. He loved to climb, be it stairs, fences, or a ladder in the garage. If Adam was missing, the first place his parents would look was up. Soon after his second birthday, Janice glanced out the living room window and saw that Adam had pushed a chair across the back porch and was using it to climb up on the railing—twelve feet above the ground. Before she could react, he stood up tall and jumped out of sight. Horrified, Janice charged outside and down the steps, to find Adam rolling on the ground and laughing. The spanking she gave him was so hard it left a handprint on his bottom. “Never,
ever
do that again!” she yelled.
    A few days later, he did it again.
    At age three, Adam climbed onto the kitchen counter and dug into an open can of peaches, slicing his hand on the sharp edge. He stayed calm during the car ride to the emergency room, as they waited to see the doctor, through the exam—all the way until he was about to get stitches and the nurse insisted on strapping him into apapoose-like straitjacket. Crying and screaming, he struggled like a wild animal until he was soaked with sweat and panting. “Help me, Mommy. Help me,” he pleaded with Janice, his lower lip quivering.

    Janice and Larry didn’t know Adam had launched himself off the roof of the family car until the roll of film, photographed by seven-year-old Shawn, was developed weeks later.
    “That was Adam’s soft side,” Janice says with tears nearly thirty-five years later. “It was also when we knew this was a kid that could not be held down.”
    In spite of his strong-willed, unstoppable nature, Adam was a sweet child. As a toddler, he would sit patiently while “Meme”—his name for Manda—wiped his face after meals, then give her a big hug. Well into elementary school, he would climb into his mother’s lap and cuddle. From the moment he learned to talk, he was full of praise for others, complimenting Manda’s crayon coloring, telling Janice how good dinner was, always using “please” and “thank you,” and exhibiting impeccable manners in holding doors open for others and saying “sir” and