“You went with your parents?” she asked.
“Yes. Obviously it was before they were killed.”
“Then you went into foster care.”
“Yeah.” He made a rough sound. “Those years were pretty bad. I guess I tried to wipe them out. And anything before, too.”
“What happened to your parents?” she asked.
“They died in a fire. My mother threw me out the bedroom window, and somebody caught me.”
She winced.
“She saved my life, but not her own.”
When she started to speak again, he raised his hand, palm out. “Talking about my childhood after my parents died isn’t going to help us figure out what that place was.”
“You’re right.”
“What if they were . . . doing some kind of experiments on kids?”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. Psychological testing, maybe.”
She found herself following his line of thinking. “Or, you know, there are places that advertise for test subjects and theypay the people they use. What if they were testing some kind of vaccine or drug that turned out to have weird effects on us?”
“And our parents did it for the money?”
“Did your parents need cash?”
“If they did, I was too little to know about it. They died when I was five.”
They were both silent, trying to come up with scenarios.But they didn’t have enough information. They didn’t even know where to find the damn clinic.
“Did you have a good relationship with your parents?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t,” she whispered.
“In what way?”
“You can probably figure out most of it. I wasn’t very close to them. I could spend hours in my own fantasy world. And then . . . I got interested in psychic stuff. They were down-to-earth people, and what they called ‘mumbo jumbo’ made them uncomfortable. I went to college early and never really came home again. I hung out around Jackson Square in the summers. After college, I moved in with a group of girls looking for a roommate, but I was never really close to any of them, either.”
Her eyes drifted out of focus as she remembered that time.
“My parents hated me hanging around the Tarot card readers. They wanted me to get a real job. I just stopped calling them, and they stopped calling me.” Her breath hitched. “I didn’t even know that my mom was sick until my dad phoned to say she was dead.”
He pushed back his chair and strode toward her, taking her in his arms.
They should have told you,so you could visit with her. Maybe make your peace with her.
I disappointed them.
Stop. You couldn’t pretend to be something you weren’t.
She nodded against his shoulder. She’d gotten up to separate herself from him, but now she held on tight, absorbing the feel of his arms around her–and the soothing thoughts he sent her. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Nothing she had ever expected.
