Amanda stood up on watery legs. She leaned against the dresser.
“That’s insane. We can’t all be related. I mean Theo’s . . .”
“Asian. Yes. He might be an exception. Or perhaps their genetic engineering capabilities are more advanced than we realize.”
“But no one warned Hannah about entwining with Theo.” Did they? she suddenly wondered.
David chucked his good hand in a listless shrug. “I don’t know. In any case, if the Pelletiers are indeed augurs, then perhaps they knew that Hannah and Theo were destined to fail as a couple. Maybe they foresaw a more lasting union between you and Zack.”
Her throat closed tighter. “That’s not . . . You’re just guessing all this. None of this is proof.”
“Proof? No. But Esis did warn you about entwining with your own. And there’s one other thing I neglected to mention, something I’ve pondered every day. Maybe it’s why he didn’t ask more questions . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
David sighed. “When Esis appeared in our house, my father already knew her name.”
Amanda closed her eyes, fighting to hold herself together. She thought back to the incident on the Massachusetts Turnpike, seventeen years ago. Her father never uttered the Pelletiers’ names. But then he never asked for them either. Did he already know? Did both her parents know them?
She rushed to David’s side, squeezing his biceps with rigid fingers. “Listen to me. Whether you’re right or wrong about this, we have to keep it to ourselves. You hear me? Until we get absolute proof, we don’t breathe a word of this to the others.”
“If you wish.”
“You especially don’t tell Hannah and Theo. They don’t need this.”
“I said okay, Amanda.”
David watched her cautiously as she cleaned up the bandage debris. “Guess you have strong feelings for him.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough. But Amanda, there’s something you need to consider . . .”
“No.”
“Yes. This needs to be said. Whether you believe we’re all siblings or not, you know for a fact that Esis doesn’t want you entwining with Zack. You know she gets angry about it.”
“What are you saying?”
David studied his bandaged hand with dark and heavy eyes.
“I’m saying that for your sake and his, you might want to start thinking of him as a brother.”
—
At a quarter to three, David joined the others in the kitchen for breakfast. Mia was thrilled to see him swap warm apologies with Zack, and beamed with gushing relief when he squeezed her hand under the table. It scared her how easily David could move her to good and bad places. She wondered if that was a sign of being in love.
The bacon and waffles were nearly all gone by the time Amanda came downstairs. She met Zack’s bright cheer with a nervous half grin, then avoided his gaze for the rest of the meal.
Soon Theo sucked a sharp breath in pain, grinding all conversation to a halt. He glanced around at his worried friends, then sighed with futility.
“Yeah. I think it’s coming back.”
Zack tapped the table in tense resolve. “All right then. That settles that.”
“What settles what?”
“As soon as we’re ready, we’re saying good-bye to the cat and hello to Peter.”
He scanned the faces of the others, lingering an extra second on Amanda. “Anyone have a problem with that?”
Hannah, Theo, and Mia slowly shook their heads, censoring their many leery doubts about Peter. Amanda merely stared at her empty plate, deeply lost in other concerns.
David was the only one who smiled. No one needed to ask him how he felt on the matter.
—
The bathroom mirror was nothing more than a floating lumic projection. It was impervious to fogging, and could reflect at six different viewing angles.
As Mia finished drying herself, her elbow brushed a button on the wall. Suddenly the picture changed to a rear view. Unhappy to be mooning herself, she reverted to the traditional reflection, then squinted curiously at her body. There seemed less of her now than usual. She must have shed at least ten pounds since fleeing Terra Vista.
She slipped on her clothes and ran a drying wand over her hair, examining herself with sunny awe. Between the weight loss and David’s forgiveness, her mood was nearly healed from the battering it took earlier, when she received the cruelest message yet from future times.
I hate you. I despise you with every fiber of my being. You’re so hopeless, so clueless, so utterly blind to the things happening right under your nose. The Pelletiers are laughing at you, Mia. Semerjean is laughing.
I’d spoil the joke for you if I could, but it really doesn’t matter. Just take my advice and kill yourself. We should have never come to this world. We should have died in the basement with Nana.