It takes a little bit for Abigala to come find me. The shower is still running in the bathroom when she does; I’m sitting on my old bed when she knocks on the door, and I look up. She smiles a bit. “Hey.”

“I slept here,” I say softly, putting my hands on the blanket. “Nua slept there, and Keol slept in that little room.”

She doesn’t answer; just comes to me and sits next to me.

“Except for the times that he would go and sleep in her room with her,” I say after a moment. “And I slept here, except for the night that I didn’t.”

“Did she hurt you, Aber?” asks Abigala quietly, and I shake my head. “No. You did. Why did you give me away?”

I look at her; she doesn’t know what to say, she just shakes her head. Finally she just murmurs, “Aber.”

“Before I knew her,” I say quietly, “before I knew that she was trying to help me…I thought about you every day. I thought you were coming to save me. From her. But it was the other way around.”

“Aber, she didn’t save you.”

“Yes, she did,” I say. I stand up and move to Nua’s bed so we’re looking at each other. “You turned us in. Mom and Dad, all of the boys, just so you could get a fucking job with Miss Lilly?”

“Aber.”

“And you had no idea what Ava was like, for all you knew she was just like her mother, and you gave me away to be married to her.”

“I didn’t know she would make you marry her daughter,” says Abigala desperately, and I shake my head. “You said that before too. What did you think was going to happen?”

“She’s the director of agencies,” says Abigala, leaning forward. “Across the entire country. Mom and Dad never let you know what agencies were, what they were like, but I knew. I visited them, I met people from them, and she came to me. She wanted my help on what she could do to make them better.”

“You believed her?” I say. “You believed her when she said she wanted to fix everything, make it better?”

“Yes,” says Abigala. I can see tears in her eyes, but she blinks them away furiously and takes a deep breath, and then says, “Yes, I did, and I wanted to help. She said that the first way we could make them better was to make sure that all the boys were accounted for. She needed my help.”

“Lilly LeGatte does not need anyone’s help,” I say softly. “Just their information. So she knows what she can take advantage of.”

“I thought she was going to help you,” says Abigala quietly. “I, listen, I knew that the boys were going to go to a shelter, a real one, an agency, like they were supposed to. So they could be counted, and funded, and taken care of. They’re safe, I promise. But I thought, she told me, she was supposed to put you aside, so I could come back to you-”

“Oh, she put me aside, all right. She had her own special plans for me.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Abigala does not say anything to that. She just takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes, and I ask softly, “Why didn’t you come see me?”

“I didn’t know you were here,” she says softly. “I didn’t know where you were at all, she wouldn’t tell me, about you. I asked. She just said you were safe.”

“Ava was keeping me safe.”

“You love your wife, Aber,” she says, looking at me again, and I shake my head. “No. You don’t get to say that it all worked out for me, because you had no idea of knowing. I could be dead right now for all you knew. You don’t get to take credit for Ava being good.”

“I’m not,” she says, leaning forward. “Aber, I was trying to find Mom and Dad, I was looking for you, I asked about you every day-”

“So you knew you messed up,” I say. “When those women in the black suits took us away, you knew that she had lied to you, that, that she was dangerous.”

“I, when she took Mom, I, I…”

“So why did you get married?”

Abigala blinks, and then tears well in her eyes. She reaches out for my hands, but I pull away and stand up. She stands too. “Aber.”

“No, you know what,” I say, pressing my fingers into my eyes. Then I take a deep breath, and wipe my mouth, and turn back to her. “She manipulated you. And you fell for it.”

She bites her lip.

“It’s not your fault, really,” I say after a moment, “but you fell for it.”

She doesn’t say anything, and I just take a deep breath in, and then breathe out slowly. Sometime in the past few minutes the water has turned off, and I stand there for a second, in my old bedroom, mine and Nua’s, and finally I just say, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I leave, and she does not stop me.

Ava’s already in bed when I get back, new sheets and all. Nua’s sitting next to her, and I sit on his other side, looking over to see Penny and Sloan and Bayan on the couch with the dogs. Ava yawns, and Penny comes over to sit with us. “So?”

“I don’t know,” I say exhaustedly. “Your mother…said things.”

“Yeah,” says Ava softly. “We need to…”

“We need to fix this,” agrees Penny, “but that can wait. She’s not going to hurt us in her own home.”

“Why not, she has before,” murmurs Ava. “I don’t want her to call your wife. Or Sloan’s.”

Bayan glances over his shoulder at us. Sloan’s fallen asleep, her head in his lap, and Penny shakes his head, smiling slightly. “She would’ve, by now. We’re part of her evil plan now.”

Ava manages a slight laugh, and Penny brushes her hair back out of her face. “Get some rest, duckling.”

“Yeah, good night, asshole,” she says sleepily, and Nua grins. Penny smiles back, and then stands. He goes to the bathroom, and I watch him go in. He shuts the door behind him, so that the room is dark, and I take a deep breath. Abigala and Ava have never met, until now, and now they are at odds with each other, against each other. For as long as I’ve known her Ava has been at odds with her mother, and now Abigala is on her mother’s side. I still don’t entirely understand how it has all happened, despite Ava’s very long explanation this afternoon. I just can’t wrap my head around Abigala’s explanation. I wonder if she will talk to me again, to me and Ava. I wonder if she will try to explain it all to Ava.

Nua shifts a little, his hand nudging mine by accident as his arm lies across Ava’s waist, and I smile a little. Ava looks like she’s asleep already, and Sloan is too, over there, and I suddenly feel exhausted. We climbed up a ladder and walked through a forest and made it all the way back home today, well, not home, but back to the beach house. I found my sister again today, and my mother-in-law. Penny saw his mother for the first time in three years today, and Bayan saw her again for the first time since he stole her daughter and ran away. No one wanted to come back here, but we all had to, for me. For Abigala.

We have a lot more to discuss. But that’s for tomorrow.