floor beside the lifeless body of their mother. Her beautiful face was bruised, beaten. And there was blood, so vividly red against her pale, pale lips.
Her little heart hammering, unable to take in the full meaning of what she saw, she’d knelt on one side of her mother while Dani had knelt on the other. They’d each taken one of their mother’s hands and tried to will her back to life.
She wasn’t sure when her brother had gotten up to call the police, but she knew he had. Just as, somewhere in her heart, she knew that it had been their father who had killed their mother.
But Anthony had never confirmed it, never said yes or no when she asked. It was a piece of himself he’d kept locked away from both her and Dani. The police took him at his word when he’d told them he didn’t know who had done this. People didn’t waste too much time questioning a three-year-old.
Whether or not their father had killed their mother, Benedict Payne had disappeared from their lives that night. It was the second abandonment.
The foster system they found themselves catapulted into was fraught with abandonments. They were yanked from one home to another, sometimes taken in all together, sometimes taken in separately. Throughout it all, they’d managed to maintain their silent connection.
Until now.
Dani had used a conventional method, the telephone, to connect with her, calling her several days ago to reconnect. Her sister had called to tell her things Dani felt she needed to know. Unique though they thought themselves to be, they were far from alone. That there were others like them, others with “gifts” that did not belong to ordinary people. In addition, the DNA test results which Danielle had undergone to prove the link and which had involved samples from each of the fellow “gifted” individuals were now unaccounted for at the private lab where they had been processed and stored. It wasn’t a case of misplacement, but something more. Something, Dani confided, far more sinister.
It had been a great deal to assimilate and Elizabeth wasn’t a hundred percent sure she believed all of it, even though she knew that Dani did.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She had no idea if Anthony believed any of it. He’d been too busy yelling at her the last time she’d seen him to discuss it.
They’d just finished up a job, and instead of going out to celebrate, Anthony had insisted they come back home and turn in early in preparation for the next assignment. She remembered being resentful that Anthony constantly controlled her life.
When she’d told him about Dani’s call, he’d turned on her, livid. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to hear anything about Dani.”
She couldn’t make herself believe that he meant what he said. “Anthony, please, just listen—”
His green eyes had darkened. “No, you just listen. Dani made her choice. She left us. Fine, she’s gone. We’re here and we have a job to do. Now go to bed, we’ve got an early day tomorrow.”
It was then that she’d decided enough was enough. Looking back, she realized she should have taken a stand a long time ago, before Anthony had become so accustomed to controlling her life. “No.”
He’d looked at her, astonished, angrier than she’d ever seen him. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
She’d turned her back on him, heading for the front door. Beyond that, she had no clue where she was going.
“It’s a two-letter word,” she’d said over her shoulder. “You figure it out.”
Anthony had grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “What’s gotten into you?”
And then the dam broke inside her. “What’s gotten into me is that I don’t want to live this way anymore. I don’t want to go from job to job, jumping when you say jump.”
Anthony looked as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Hey, Jeremy is the one who gives the assignments—”
She’d gritted her teeth together, refusing to cave in the way she always did. Her position may have been peacemaker in the family, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t above making a little war herself. “And you’re the one who acts as gatekeeper.”
“Gatekeeper?”
“Yes, gatekeeper. To my prison. Anthony, we don’t do anything but the jobs that Jeremy gives us. We don’t socialize, we don’t go out. Just because we have these—these gifts doesn’t mean we have to hide like freaks.” More than anything, she desperately wanted to spread her wings and fly.
“We’re not hiding.”
“Well, you certainly try to hide me.” One word was leading to another and she couldn’t seem to stop. “When have I had a single relationship? You won’t let me out of your sight.”
“We don’t have time for relationships.”
“That’s just my point. It’s always what you think is best. There’s never any discussion, never any room for another opinion, just yours.” His expression had remained impassive. Stony. She might as well have been making her case to a wall. “Damn it, that’s why Dani left. You were suffocating her. She wanted to be her own person.”
“Fine,” he’d shouted. “She has what she wants. She’s her own person.”
“But that doesn’t mean cutting her off, dead.”
His eyes were cold, steely. “Can’t have it both ways, Lizzie.”
Suddenly, the argument was back in her court. It wasn’t Dani they were arguing about but her again. And she was fighting for her life. “Why? Why can’t I have it both ways? Why can’t I work for Jeremy, be your sister and still have a life of my own? Why can’t Dani have a life of her own?”
For a moment, there had been genuine concern in his eyes before the wall went up again. “Because it doesn’t work that way. Because we’re different. Because things can hurt you out there.”
“I’m thirty-one years old, Anthony. You can’t keep me in bubble wrap forever.”
And then he’d taken the ball out of her court. In typical Anthony fashion, he’d made the decision for her, even though he probably hadn’t realized it at the time. “You want to be free? Fine, be free. Go off on your own, just leave me the hell alone.” The words echoed in his wake as he slammed the door behind him, storming out of their apartment.
At the time, she’d been incensed—and hurt. She ran about, collecting her things and tossing them into the suitcase they used when they went out of town on jobs.
And all the while, she’d filled the spaces in her head with snippets of songs she knew. So that Anthony couldn’t tune in and discover what she was up to.
The wheels had been set in motion. She needed her space.
She’d left.
Once inside her car, she placed a call to Jeremy on her cell phone. To say he was surprised when she told him she was going on a much needed vacation was an understatement, especially since she said she was going alone. She’d lied and added she wasn’t taking her cell along.
“How can I get in contact with you?” he’d wanted to know.
“I’ll call you,” she’d promised.
But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t going to. Not for a while.
When she’d finally let her guard down, she’d discovered that there were no communal thoughts for her to let in. No feeling that something that Anthony was experiencing was touching her.
Like smoke on the wind, Anthony was gone, out of her life, as if he’d never been there.
It felt wonderful to be normal, to be alone with her thoughts.
Wonderful and strange and lonely, she slowly discovered.
So