“Okay,” says Ava, putting her hand on the wall. “We knock it down.”
“Knock it down?” says Penny, raising his eyebrows, and then grins. “Cool.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” says Ava. She turns to us; it’s me and Penny and my mom, standing in the hallway on the second floor in front of her office. “We have to put a door into this bedroom.”
“I was wondering if we were gonna cut a hole in that wall,” I mutter, and Ava grins, nodding. “Yeah, I think we should. So we cut a hole in this wall, and I think Addis and Ane should get the big bedroom.”
“Oh,” says Mom, at the same time Penny says, “Huh?” And then he says, “Bayan and I have been in there.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Ava, holding up her hands. “But that’s only the first part. The second part is that we turn the boys’ bedroom upstairs into a nicer room for the two of you.”
“Oh,” says Penny now, raising his eyebrows, and then he looks at me. I shrug. “Yeah, sure, works for me.”
“Well,” says Mom. Ava smiles a little. “And there’s the little bedroom, inside that room. So, like, Aber, if you or Nua ever want a room to yourself, you can go in there, if that’s alright with Penny and Bayan.”
“There’s a little room?” asks Mom, and I nod. “Yeah, I mean, it’s literally just a bed.”
“That’s cool, I think,” says Penny. “Like, I’m fine with that.”
“Good,” says Ava. “Okay. I also think we can refurnish the upstairs living room.”
“Refurnish it how?” asks Mom, and Ava says, “Turn it into more bedrooms.”
“More bedrooms?” I say skeptically, looking over my shoulder. The room with two beds in it that my parents have been sleeping in is down the hallway behind us, as well as the room Taymer has been using and then the third guest room, the door to that one is locked, it has been locked and no one has gone into it since the day Keol left it.
“Yes,” says Ava, “because eventually we’re going to bring the kids home.”
“The kids,” murmurs Mom under her breath, and Ava says, “There’s six of them.”
“Can we make three more bedrooms out of the upstairs room?” asks Penny, and Ava shrugs. “Maybe, or just two, because we’ll need a bathroom. So then some of ’em will have to share a room, but it can be the bigger one that you’re in now, Ane.”
“Okay,” says my mom slowly after a moment. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“We can get a new bed for you, Penny,” says Ava, “and move the two beds up there down to the new rooms down here.”
“Sweet,” says Penny. “Can I interior design it up there?”
“You’ll have to ask Nua,” I say, to both him and Ava. “He’s pretty attached to the lamp in there.”
Ava laughs. “We can put it in our room somewhere.”
“We have to go shopping,” says Penny. “We gotta get all new stuff, for new rooms and my room and building more rooms.”
“Yes, we do,” says Ava with a slight smile, glancing at me. “I’ll have to hire someone for that.”
“Okay,” says Mom. “Sounds good to me.”
“Yeah?” says Ava with a grin. “Oh, good, it took me hours to figure out how everything could work.”
Mom laughs, and then puts her hand on my shoulder. “Well, good job.” She heads off down the hallway, and Penny claps his hands. “I’m gonna go tell Bayan.”
“Cool,” says Ava softly, as Penny goes bounding away, and then she reaches out for me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, looking down the hallway to the guest rooms again. “Yeah, no, that all sounds good.”
“Hey,” she says, squeezing my fingers, and I smile a little, looking at the floor. “Are you ever gonna do it, then?”
And Ava sighs too, and pulls a little on my arm so I take a step closer to her. “We’re setting things up.”
“Like what?”
“Like figuring out what exactly we have to charge her with,” says Ava softly. “And where she’ll go, and what kind of deal we can make with her if she ever decides to talk to us.”
I sigh. It has been a few days since my own mother suggested arresting her own daughter, a few weeks since my parents have come home, but no one has made any move on Abigala yet. She knows what is happening, she knows we are dealing with her, but she just stays in her bedroom when she is not with Dad, and even when she is with Dad she does not do much talking. She has shut herself down, and if we arrest her and send her away she will never speak to any of us ever again, I think. But Ava and my mom and my dad have agreed, have decided, they know what they have to do.
“Here’s the other thing,” says Ava softly. “I think what we can do, well. Part of the upstairs living room will have to be made into a bathroom, too, I think, so we’ll have to do repiping and rewiring and stuff. But I think, also, I’m gonna try and see how many bedrooms we can fit in there, if we rearrange everything and remodel. We’ll keep a room for her, for when she comes back.”
“Will she ever come back?” I mutter, and Ava smiles slightly, squeezing my fingers again, and shrugs. “I hope so.”
I look at her, and she smiles again, and that is that.
It takes almost another week after that for all of those details that I don’t know anything about to be figured out. I don’t know about the details and I don’t want to know. Ava is slightly less stressed nowadays, because my mom has been helping her, but my mom is also slightly more stressed now. And Ava only comes to bed late, usually Nua or I are already asleep by the time she crawls in between us, and we only wake up in the morning when Bayan comes in to bring us breakfast. He is in his routine, the routine he has been in for fifteen years now, he does what he needs to do around the house and he does not know how to do anything else so he just keeps doing it. I ask Penny every so often if my dad has talked to him, to Bayan, to both of them, and he just says not yet. There is not much to do anymore. The first few months I was here I was constantly thinking about Abigala and where she was and if she was okay, and then when we were down in Tent City I was thinking about my parents and where they were and if they were okay, and then we came back here and I was thinking about Ava and where she was and if she was okay, and now they are all home and they are all working and figuring things out and I am too tired to be a part of what they are discussing but too awake to not do anything. I go with Nua to the library, we sit in our two chairs and he reads and I try to read but more often than not I just stare at the pages of a book, thinking about what Nua said about having a fireplace in here. If we’re renovating the entire house maybe we could throw that into the mix too.
It is about a week after Ava starts planning the house renovations that the other thing that Ava has been planning comes to fruition. I wake up early one day, she pulls me out of bed, and we meet my parents and Abigala in the foyer. Out of the window, in the morning light, a car is waiting outside for her. My sister hugs my mom, and then my dad, and then me. I hug her back. Ava is waiting by the door, and Abigala squeezes me close to her, and then lets me go, and looks to her. Ava opens the front door, and the two of them go out to the car.
I go to the window, and watch Abigala get in. There is someone in the front seat whom Ava seems to know, because she talks to them through the window for a minute, and then she stands back and watches the car pull away.
“So that’s it, then,” I say softly. “She’s going to jail.”
Neither Mom nor Dad answers me. Ava stands outside for a moment more, and then turns back to the house. She comes back in quietly, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. She’s close to me, I’m standing by the window right next to the door, but I don’t look at her. Finally Mom says, “She knew what was coming. She knew what would happen. She still refused to talk.”
“Aber,” says Ava softly, putting her hand on my shoulder, and I step away. “Don’t Aber me.”
“Aber,” she says again, and Mom sighs. “Okay. We should probably…”
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But she trails off, and I take a step back again, looking at all of them, my dad and mom and Ava, they look back at me, and I feel something in my stomach. I swallow, and Ava says softly, “Are you okay?”
“You broke up my family,” I say softly. “What do you think?”
“Aber,” says Mom this time, gently. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I know,” I say frustratedly. “That’s all we’ve done, is talk, and even with all that talking you couldn’t find time to tell me that you knew where my parents were and you were visiting them.”
Ava scoffs, but my mom looks at her too, Ava never told my parents that she was married to me until the day I showed up in the jail to see them again, I am a bit angry at her for not telling me about my parents earlier and I don’t know if my parents are angry about that too.
“What do you want us to do?” asks Dad quietly, and I make another noise, rubbing my face, my voice is muffled into my hands when I answer. “I don’t know, I don’t know, because you won’t tell me anything, so I don’t know what you’re doing, or why you do anything, so how am I supposed to make any suggestions?”
“We’ve been telling you,” Ava says quietly. “We’ve been telling you what we can. We’ve told you everything you need to know.”
“Right,” I say, dropping my hands. “Just like before. You told me everything I needed to know, except that Abi was working for your mother, and you only told me that when we had been underground for months because you couldn’t hide it anymore.”
Something flashes in Ava’s eyes, and I remember the day that she locked me in the closet here in the foyer. I look over my shoulder to the door, and Ava follows my eyes, and sighs, she must remember too, she never apologized for that, did she. I take another step back, away from her, and she sighs. “I’m sorry, Aber, but we’ve made a decision.”
“I know,” I say softly. “You made your decision.”
Ava looks at my parents. Neither of them say anything. She sighs, and closes her eyes, shakes her head, and turns to go. Anger flares up in my stomach as she starts to go up the stairs, and I take a step forward. “Don’t just walk away.”
Ava whirls around, a few steps above us. “Oh, like that’s not what you’ve done this entire time, whenever anyone upsets you even slightly.”
“Okay,” says Mom, holding up her hands. “Guys.”
Ava ignores her. “Really, Aber, you want to be married so bad, maybe try acting like you’re old enough.”
“Ava,” says my dad, and this gets her to look at them, finally, how long has it been since a father said her name like that. She exhales angrily, her nose flaring, and then she turns and she walks away.
I make a noise in frustration, and my dad says, “Aber.”
“I know it’s her fault, I know she should just tell us, but what now?” I say. “We sent her away. She’s not going to talk to us ever again. We just confirmed for her everything Lilly told her about us.”
“If she never talks to us ever again,” says Mom calmly, “then she’ll just have to go to court and see what a judge says.”
“Will you ever forgive her?” I ask quietly, looking up at them, and they look at each other. They have a look on their faces that I recognize, from when I was younger, when Abigala or I would ask a question that they didn’t want to tell us the answer to like where did all those boys in our house come from or what do they mean when they mention their wife. Finally my dad says, “Maybe. If she’s sorry.”
“If she apologizes,” says Mom softly, “to her husbands. We’re not the ones who need to forgive her, they are. And it very well may be that they never do.”
“We’ll find them,” I say. Mom shrugs. “I hope we will. And even if we do, they still might not forgive her. And if she has hurt someone that badly, that they cannot forgive her, how am I supposed to?”
I take a deep breath, and look at them. Dad smiles slightly at me, but it’s sad, and I nod. “Okay.”
I go up to my bedroom after that. I think Nua is still sleeping, probably, I don’t know if Ava went back to bed with him, but I go to Abigala’s bedroom, my bedroom, Nua’s and mine, and I sit on my bed. I sit on my bed, staring at Nua’s, that’s the one Abigala has been using, but she won’t be using it anymore. I could sleep in here if I wanted. I could’ve been sleeping in here the whole time if I wanted, back in my bed and away from Ava, but I chose not to. I chose her and I didn’t even think about it, it was the easiest and most natural thing in the world to choose her.
Someone knocks at the door, and I sigh. “I don’t really want to talk right now,” I say softly, and Bayan clears his throat.
I jump a little, I thought he was Ava or my dad, and he just smiles slightly, and then sighs, and sits down on Nua’s bed. I look at him. “Oh. Sorry.”
He shrugs. “I know that you’ve been asking your father to speak with me, and I appreciate it. It’ll be good to do that, soon.”
“Sorry,” I say again. “I just, he was always so good about stuff like that.”
“I understand,” says Bayan with a slight smile. “I’m just trying to figure things out, now, as we all are.”
“Yeah,” I murmur, twisting my fingers together. “You know, you don’t have to keep keeping her house pretty.”
“I’m aware,” says Bayan, with the patient but tired tone of voice of someone who has been told the same thing a billion times already. “I told Miss Ava this, in the car, a few weeks ago, she asked what I would do if she kicked me out.”
I look up at that, surprised. “She wouldn’t kick you out.”
“No,” says Bayan, his lips curving into a smile ever so slightly, “but if I was absolutely forbidden from living here, what would I do, and I said I don’t know.”
“Do you have a home, or a family?” I ask. I should have asked this months ago, but I just never thought about it. Bayan just shakes his head. “Not that I remember. There’s nothing I miss outside of this house.”
“Yeah, me either,” I whisper. “Except…”
“For a long time my job has been taking care of Ava,” says Bayan softly. “And then Owen, and Keol, and Nua, and you.”
I scoff, looking away.
“You’ve all had your…unique challenges. Things I had to learn about you. What kind of foods you liked, what time you woke up in the mornings, where you spent most of your day. And also how you related to Ava, and how she took to you, and how the two of you got along. And for you, there was the twin connection.”
I look back at him, and he smiles slightly again. “Everyone says twins have a stronger bond than most siblings, or something like that. And I saw it with Ava and Penny, when they were younger. But two different twins, married to each other, missing their siblings, that was something I had never seen before. And Ava understood it, she understood you, and so we all wanted you to find Abigala again. Ava wanted to help you find Abigala again.”
I can feel my eyes welling with tears. Bayan never lets on how much he knows but he must have known much more than I did much longer than I did, with the way he helped Ava and gathered information from Lilly. And I think of Ava’s father, who died when she was six and they don’t know why, and Penny, who was sent away when he was seventeen and he had no choice, and Abigala. I was taken away with no choice too, and I found my way back to Abigala. Penny found his way back to Ava. And then Ava sent Abigala away again.
“We all did, we wanted something good to happen so bad, and so it was hard for us, too,” Bayan continues softly, “for me and Ava to figure out what was happening with her and what we needed to do. And even when your parents came into the mix, trying to balance all of that, it got complicated.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“It’s disappointing,” says Bayan softly, “and frustrating. You tried so long to get back to Abigala and when you finally did you learned she had betrayed you. So you stayed and you stood with your wife, which was something you would never have thought could ever happen just a year ago.”
“The world’s upside down,” I say, and Bayan smiles. “It doesn’t have to be, Master Aber. We’re home, in this house, with your parents and a family that cares deeply about each other, and in a few months we’ll be bringing home six children to take care of. It’s going to be a lot, but it’s exactly how it should be.”
“How it should be?”
Bayan shrugs. “It’s what is happening, so it must be what needed to happen.”
“That is a very,” I say slowly, “a very philosophical way of looking at it.”
Bayan smiles a little. “Things wouldn’t happen if they weren’t supposed to.”
“Is that how you’ve lived your life?” I ask him. “Everything that’s happened to you, from the agency and Lilly and Penny, things wouldn’t happen if they weren’t supposed to?”
“It’s more of a big picture thing,” answers Bayan. “The day to day can be full of unnecessary little actions, things that don’t have any affect on the outcome. But the outcome will always happen, the way it was meant to. I know that I was meant to be here. Some of the other things, while I’ve been here, that happened to me, they didn’t need to happen, but overall, I’m supposed to be here, in this house, with all of you.”
“Is it a god?” I ask. “Who decides what was meant to happen?”
“I don’t know,” says Bayan. “And I don’t need to know. I just need to know that the big things, in the grand scheme of things, are right. And if they don’t feel right, then they are a step on the path towards the right. And a lot of the big things, I don’t have control over. I just have control over the little things. Like what to make for dinner.”
“Oh, that’s not a big world-defining event, then?” I ask, and he smiles. “No. Your marriage was.”
I look at him.
“Abigala…going away,” he says after a moment, “was. It’s what needed to happen, so that we can take care of her children, and we can work towards finding her husbands. Because for them, what needs to happen is that we find them, and this is a step on that path.”
“Greater good,” I murmur, and he purses his lips. “More or less. More like, untangling a web. Sometimes a bunch of people’s strings get mixed up into a knot, and we have to work through it. But it’s only a matter of time before what’s supposed to happen does.”
“And that’s undoing the knot,” I say. “So we get our strings and Abi’s strings and her husbands’ strings all sorted out.”
“Yeah,” says Bayan softly. “We just have to take care of our strings.”
This makes me laugh, I’m not sure why, and Bayan looks at me, and smiles too. “I understand if you’re angry about it, though.”
“I’m,” I say, I was about to say I’m not, but I don’t know if I am or not. I sigh, and shrug. “I don’t know. I just have to figure it out. And let what’s supposed to happen happen.”
Bayan smiles a little, and nods. After a moment he stands, and he leaves me alone.