“He’s getting worse and worse. All of us can see that,” Mark said. “Isn’t there some way you can stop him? Wean him off or something?”
“You think I haven’t tried?” She hurled the question at him. He winced at the harshness in her voice, making her instantly contrite. I don’t ever want my brothers to fear me as they do Father. She touched his arm gently. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
Mark met her gaze. Not for the first time Eve thought how very beautiful this strong, gifted brother of hers was. If only he wasn’t also so very haunted …
“Eve?”
“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I said that maybe you should overdose him.”
Eve blinked at Mark in shock, pressing her finger against her lips to shush him, and then looking quickly behind them. She saw nothing but palm trees and grass that had once been meticulously maintained but had gone to seed more than a decade ago. Like everything else on their island—it used to be sweet and beautiful, but was now wild and neglected. Ever cautious, Eve closed her eyes, rested her hands on the sandy ground, and concentrated, reaching into the earth and listening with the grass, swaying and seeing with the palms …
She opened her eyes and slid closer to Mark, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You can’t just blurt out something like that.”
“I get tired of hiding how I feel, Eve.” The waves mimicked Mark’s frustration by swirling and rippling around his ankles erratically.
“It won’t help if he hears you say something like that.”
“But he isn’t here. He’s inside messing around with his lab equipment and not actually accomplishing anything because he’s a fucking junky obsessed with his next fix. So, I’m saying it again. Maybe you should overdose him.”
“Keep your voice down,” Eve whispered at him. “Mark, what do you think would happen then, after he ODs?”
“If we’re lucky he dies. Or falls into a vegetative state. If he’s dead I’ll bury him at sea. If he’s a turnip we’ll use part of those billions he stashed away to put him in a nice facility until his body gives out.”
“Lucky?” Eve practically hissed the word. “How would it be lucky that the only person on earth who can fix us dies or becomes a vegetable?” She didn’t mention anything about the billions they apparently didn’t have. There was just no point in giving Mark anything else to be pissed about.
Mark turned so that he faced her and spoke slowly, clearly. “Eve, he cannot fix us.”
“Of course he can!”
“Then why hasn’t he?”
“He needs those kids. He needs to study them and use his findings to create a vaccine that will fix us. You know this. He’s talked about it over and over again,” Eve said, trying not to sound as exasperated as she felt. Mark was the strongest of the brothers—the sanest. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t damaged. They were all damaged.
“What if he’s lying?”
“He’s not.”
“How do you know that?” He held up his hand as she started to answer. “No, don’t talk. Just listen for a change. What if Father has been lying to us? Maybe not all along. Maybe there was a time when he believed he could fix us. Then years passed. Almost two decades passed. And he realized he can’t fix us. Nobody can. What if he wants us to bring those kids here not as our salvation but as our replacement?”
Eve felt a shudder begin deep inside her and move outward, like an earthquake. She fisted her hands in the sand to stop their trembling.
“Then that would make him a monster.” She stared into Mark’s eyes. “Do you think he’s a monster, truly? Do you think our father, the man who created us—cared for us—loved us our entire lives is a monster?” When Mark remained mute Eve thought everything within her might shrivel and die. She wouldn’t be earth anymore, dark and fertile and rich. She would be desert. Eve didn’t think she could bear to be shriveled, dry, and cracked inside. In despair she asked her brother, “Don’t you love him at all anymore?”
Mark’s dark gaze had returned to the water, but at her last question his eyes found hers again. “I love him. He’s my father. I’ll always love him. But Eve, that doesn’t make him any less a monster. What you have to ask yourself is when will it be time to slay the monster?”
“Oh, god, Mark … I don’t know!”
“I hope you do know before he destroys us all.”
Eve deflated. Her shoulders sagged. She filtered sand through her fingers, trying to let the warmth of the sunbaked granules soothe her. “Okay, I hear you. And I suppose Matthew and Luke feel the same way?”
“It’s getting harder and harder to tell with those two. If I try to push them into talking about Father, Luke starts to heat up. I can’t tell if that’s because he’s as pissed as I am, or because he’s scared or still in denial.”
“Or maybe because he’s on Father’s side. You have to consider that, Mark.”
Mark sighed and splashed salt water on his face and chest. “I’m aware of that. It’s one reason I quit questioning him.”
“What’s the other?”
“I’m pretty sure Father would know something was going on if Luke lit our cottage on fire.”
“That’d be pretty obvious,” Eve agreed. “What about Matthew?”
Mark shook his head. “I think he feels the same as I do, but it’s even harder to tell with him.”
“He’s disappearing more and more?”
“Well, yes and no. He starts to fade away when he’s stressed, but that’s how he’s been for years. What’s changed with him started a decade ago.”
Eve nodded. “Yeah, when he realized his connection with the Internet.”
“It’s his thing, that’s for sure, and we all thought it was a great outlet and a damn convenient talent, but it’s changing him, especially this past year when we’ve been relying on him more and more to try to track Foster and Cora and the others.” Mark met her gaze again. “I swear, Eve, someday he’s going to disappear inside one of those damn computer programs of his.”