“She would,” I murmured, lifting my face to the night sky. “They loved each
other so much. Kels and I were grateful they went together. We weren’t sure one
would survive without the other.”
“They wouldn’t have left either of you girls, if they had a choice.”
Her unexpected offer of comfort tightened my throat. I dropped my head.
“Thanks.” The word squeezed past the lump lodging in my throat. My brain continued to chew over things and bit-by-bit, pieces clicking into place. With as
close as she had been to Carl and Becca, she had to have known about me. I broke the quiet between us. “You knew, didn’t you? Even before the test.”
“Yes.”
I tried not to flinch. I spent years doing my best to hide what I could do from
my adoptive parents, worried they would leave me like all those before them. It
took time to realize Kelsey and I were safe with the Ardens. Once I began to believe that I brutally shoved my ability down, refusing to see what it could offer, more afraid it would ruin everything. For the six years I lived under the Ardens’ roof, wallowing in the precious peace I found. It never occurred to me
that my parents had seen right through it. “How long?”
“Your question needs to be more specific if you want to understand the
answer you seek.”
Her Zen-like rebuke set my teeth on edge. “Fine, at what point did Carl tell you about me?”
“Your senior year in high school.” Delacourt turned until her back rested against the porch rail and set her elbows on the edge. “Once Carl and Becca realized you were going to go to the marines, they worried, so they reached out
to Flash and me. Carl had pulled some strings and managed to get ahold of your
juvenile records. What he found raised some serious concerns.”
A sickening blow of betrayal weakened my knees, until the railing was the only thing holding me up. Those records had been sealed for a reason. Suspicion
lifted its ugly head. Had it all been a lie? The smiles, the acceptance, the love?
Was it real?
A bead of cold sweat ran down the side of my face, using the lace-like scar
patterns as its path. If I let go of the railing to wipe it away, I’d end up on the ground, so I held tight.
“Arden, stop!” Her sharp command acted like a slap, knocking me out of the
dark spiral. “They loved you. You and Kelsey both. Don’t you ever doubt it, girl.”
I had no idea how she managed to see through my emotional mess, but I
grabbed onto her reassurance like a drowning child. They loved me, I knew they
had. With every word and every action, they proved they saw me as someone worth loving, repeatedly. Throwing it all away now because my world was in the
midst of remaking itself, was a piss poor way to honor that.
Forcing my fingers to uncurl, I turned and mimicked her position. “I know.”
The words were shaky. “I know they did, sir.” This time they were stronger.
“What did Carl find out?”
“It wasn’t what, it was who he talked to; Officer Payton and Audrey Peltier.”
The names seared through my brain, triggering lightning flashes of
memories. The young, picture-perfect couple who picked the quiet, green-eyed,
dark-haired girl with the mysterious past. Older and cynical, it was easy to recognize Audrey Peltier’s belief she would find her way through my emotional
walls and uncover the daughter she always wanted. Instead, she lost her
husband, her dream family, and ended up in psychiatric ward on suicide watch. I
refused to say anything until I heard exactly what Delacourt knew. I met her gaze, raised my chin, and kept my mouth shut.
Her small, sad smile came and went. “Hell of a thing for a child to discover.”
