She’s still asleep by the time the rest of us are up the next morning, and after a few minutes of lying around Bayan stands, and stretches. Penny stands too, and comes up to the bed and sits down on the end of it. Ava shifts a little, and groans.

“Morning,” says Penny.

“Mm,” says Nua.

“Ugh,” says Ava.

“Hey,” I say. “You’re up.”

“Yeah,” she says, making a noise again, and rolls onto her back. She winces, and Penny stands up, stretching. “Alright. Ready to talk?”

“No,” she grumbles, squeezing her eyes shut. Shiv jumps up next to her and curls in the curve of her waist. “I’m starving.”

“I’ll get breakfast,” says Bayan softly, but suddenly I say, “No, I’ll do it.”

Ava opens one eye, and then closes it. “’Kay.” Bayan furrows his eyebrows, though, looking at me, and I say, “I’ll go, I’ll get you something.”

Bayan does not say anything else. I let the bedroom door close softly behind me, and once I’m alone, finally, for the first time in over a week, I take a deep breath.

The hallway still smells like smoke. I stare out the window for a moment, watching the waves crash onto the sand, and then run my fingers along the wall as I go across the hall to my old bedroom.

The sheets are rumpled and the lamp is on. Abigala’s been using Nua’s old bed. She’s not in the room, but didn’t bother to pick up after herself, and various books and articles of clothing and papers are strewn around the room, some piled on my bed, some on the nightstand between them. I smile a little; she was like this at home, too. I close the door behind me gently and then go down to the kitchen.

She’s there. Ava’s mother isn’t, luckily, but when I go inside Abigala is looking through a cabinet, and pulls out a bowl as she turns to me. “Aber.”

“Hey,” I say quietly. The yogurt is in the fridge; the spoons in a cabinet nearby. Abigala watches me. “What are you making?”

“Breakfast,” I answer. “For Ava.”

I don’t have to look at her to know her lips tighten. “Right,” she says quietly.

“And what about you?” she asks after a moment, turning to the pantry to pull out a box of cereal. I shrug. “Not hungry.”

“Aber,” she says again, softly, and I look at her. There’s something in her face, in her eyes, and then she comes to me and hugs me.

I hug her too. I missed her. I spent all this time trying to get back to her. I squeeze her close to me for a second, and then gently push her away. “Abigala.”

“Why is this so weird?” she asks quietly, and I laugh, turning back to the breakfast I’m creating. “Because we both did things we promised we weren’t going to do.”

Abigala doesn’t answer, and I say, not looking at her, “Speaking of, where even are your husbands?”

She makes a noise. “What?”

“Your husbands,” I repeat, busying myself with the blueberries. “Your four husbands that I’ve read about.”

She sighs, leaning against the counter, and rubs her eyes. “They’re at home.”

“At home, where’s home? I thought you lived here.”

“Well, I do,” says Abigala. “But, you know, after they got Mom and Dad, and I had to live somewhere for a little while, and then Lilly asked me to move in, to be closer to her-”

“But not your husbands?” I ask. “I mean, you already got what you needed from them, what with the six children and all, so you just left them-”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What are you trying to say?” asks Abigala, her voice hard, and I turn back to her again. “Abi.”

She doesn’t answer.

“For eighteen years we have been taking care of people who have been hurt like that. Our only example of what it could be, and should be, was Mom and Dad. And then as soon as they were gone, as soon as Lilly got them and you were allowed to, you joined it.”

Abigala shakes her head. “No.”

“No?”

“You’re cynical,” she says, looking at me. “We saw the worst of the worst. I always promised you that I wouldn’t do that. That I wouldn’t treat them like that.”

“And the whole time when you were not treating them like that, did you ever wonder what happened to me?”

She looks at me, and then runs her fingers through her hair. “Lilly said she was making sure you’re safe.”

“Abi, I don’t want to believe that you’re stupid enough to trust Lilly LeGatte with that, but the only other option is that you just didn’t care what happened to me.”

“Of course I cared,” she whispers.

“How could you be so sure, then, that Lilly was making sure I was okay, if she never let me see you, if she never let you check on me yourself? I could have been halfway across the country right now, she could’ve sent me away like she did to her own son, and you would’ve never known because you took her word for it.”

“No,” says Abigala softly, and then she clears her throat and shakes her head. “No. I was looking into you, and into Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “Where are they?”

And Abigala looks at me for a moment, and then shakes her head. “I can’t tell you that.”

I scoff. “You outrank me, right? In the government? In the agencies department? You can know, but I can’t, about our own parents.”

She does not answer this. I go into the cabinet for some cereal. Then I squeeze my eyes shut and tilt my head back and say, “I’m just confused, Abigala, how we all ended up here in this house.”

“Your wife explained it pretty well,” says Abigala softly. “It’s bigger than all of us, it has been, for years. And Lilly’s the mastermind.”

“Are you saying that to defend her?” I ask. “Or yourself?”

“So I disappointed you by marrying,” she says, her tone slightly defensive, and I open my mouth to protest, but she continues. “So how did you disappoint me?”

I think a moment of how to answer, opening a drawer slowly to get a spoon. Abigala watches, and then reaches over to hand me an orange.

“I married too,” I say in response, taking it from her.

“Well-”

“And,” I continue. She falls silent, looking at me.

“I choose her.”

And I leave her standing in the kitchen, staring after me, but she makes no move to stop me.

Penny and Nua are sitting on the floor when I get back, with the deck of cards between them. I just bring the bowl over to Ava and sit down next to her on the bed, and she grins, reaching for it. “Oh, thank you.”

Bayan comes over too, and Penny joins us. Ava looks around at us, raising her eyebrows as she takes a bit. “What?”

“Where did you go?” asks Penny, and she smiles a little, swallowing. “I told you. Hospital.”

“Why?” he asks. She sighs, and then takes another bite before answering. “They had to take the stitches out. And when I left, before, I wasn’t ready to. But we couldn’t wait any longer.”

I glance at Bayan. He does not say anything.

“She just wanted me to go for a couple days, to see if there was anything else they needed for me. And they took some blood and did some tests and tried out some new medicines.”

“New medicines?” I ask, and she smiles a little. “Since I’m not on the ones for my lungs anymore they can try some other things with me.”

“Like what?” asks Penny, but she just shrugs, and takes another bite. “Honestly, that’s pretty much it. There’s not that much to tell.”

Nua and I go to get some breakfast too, a little while after that, and then we go to the library. I go back through the bookshelves to her office, and put my hand on the doorknob. It’s unlocked. The lights are off, and I turn them on, and I go to the desk. The last time I was in here the drawers were locked, but they’re not anymore. Most of them are empty, though. The long skinny one is the only one that opens, and there’s only a few pieces of paper inside. They’re not Ava’s; they’re Abigala’s. She must have taken over Ava’s office too. One is a small badge, it looks like an ID, and one is a scrap of paper with scribbles on it that I cannot read. For someone who wants to be a writer Abigala’s handwriting was always worse than even mine. The full-size pieces of paper just have numbers and letters on them, in columns and rows, some sort of data, and I don’t know what it is and what it’s for. These papers must not be very important, if she’s left them here. I sit down in the desk chair and take a deep breath. The last time I was in here Ava told me about Abigala. I wanted to get back to Abigala. I wanted to leave Ava. Now I am here with Ava and Abigala will not tell me where her four husbands are.

How times have changed.