“And?”
“Why not chips with it? And why a big glass of milk?”
“I don’t know! Why the third degree?”
He sighed and dropped his head. “I just want to talk. It feels awkward.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I know. I’m trying to move past it. You’ve apologized until it'd be cruel of me to ask you to keep apologizing, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you love me, truly I do.”
“But?”
“But I’m still angry. I’ve got a handle on the anger, but I can feel it, bubbling under the surface. Except for me, it’s not just anger bubbling. It’s fire. And if I let it go, I’ll literally catch on fire.”
“And it’s all directed at me?”
“No. Not even most of it is directed at you. But you seem to be the catalyst. I can’t do anything about any of the other things that have happened. But you’re still in front of me, a living reminder of what I… What we all went through.”
“If I could go back and change it I would, you must know that. Knowing that you’re an Unseen changes everything.”
“Wait. You told me before you knew what I was.” I felt myself heating up, anger rising.
“Yes. Because we knew you were something different. We strongly suspected, based on David’s powers, that you had to be something more than human.”
“So, if David had shown no extra powers, you wouldn’t have told me?”
He stared at me, expression blank. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I waited patiently for him to answer.
“I won’t sugarcoat it for you, that would do you a disservice.”
“Fine.”He’s about to make me really angry.
“I probably wouldn’t have told you anything.”
“You would’ve let me go on not knowing what happened to my children?”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Do you really need to know all this?”
Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I leaned back in my chair, sandwich forgotten. I stared him down.
“Fine. We had a contingency plan. If you hadn’t begun to move on by your next birthday we were going to have ‘found’ the boys in another state, dead in a car crash, too unrecognizable for anything but a DNA match, which we would have faked, of course.”
My hands began to leak steam. I felt the fire inching up the inside of my neck, itching to be released. I stood, pushing my chair back. Turning my back on Elias, I walked out the back door to the pool that lay between the house and the beach. Untying the side ties of my suit, I shed it before jumping into the deep end of the pool.
The cool water soothed my fiery nerves. Anthony opened the doors of the bedroom as I leaned back to float in the water, breasts and belly bulging out above the water. “Do you want company?” he called.
“No!” I barked.
He saluted me and went back inside. With his advanced hearing, I knew he heard our conversation, and I knew he'd realize I wasn’t just angry with Elias. It was his plan, too.
CHAPTER THREE
RILEY
They gave me the space I needed to calm down as I alternately floated and swam laps in the pool. When the sun was completely down, and the night was illuminated only by the moon and the underwater lights, and I’d thought it through from every angle I could, I grabbed an oversized beach towel from the huge wicker cabinet nestled against the house. Leaving my swimsuit lying on the concrete, I went back inside in only the towel.
Elias and Anthony sat on the couch, eyes glazed over, not really watching the sitcom on the television. “Okay,” I said, startling them.
I chuckled. “What’s wrong with you two? Didn’t you hear me come in?”
