by Meli Raine
“Is that the trick to getting you out of your room?” Mom says, pushing the plate towards her.
Gwennie looks at Jane. “Hi.” She grabs three cookies and disappears quickly.
“That’s Gwennie,” I say, thumbing in the direction she’s disappeared in.
Jane laughs. “I guessed as much.”
“Sit, sit,” Mom says. She gives me a look. “Don’t worry. I’m getting lost. I just want to make sure that you and Jane are all right.”
“We’re fine, Mom. I can pour coffee... or serve the soufflé that you’ve made, or the filet mignon. Did you carve a giant ice sculpture? Fly to Finland to get reindeer milk?”
Mom plants her hands on her hips and gives me a mock glare. “Don’t make fun of my hospitality, Lily.”
“I’m not making fun of your hospitality. I’m making fun of your overabundance of it.”
She snaps a dish towel at me. We all laugh.
Jane and I share a look that I understand instantly. When you’ve survived the worst, normalcy becomes a luxury. That’s what she means when she says our house is normal, when she says it’s homey.
And I agree with her.
“Before I go,” Mom says to Jane, her voice earnest and a bit sad. “I just want to tell you that I am so sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m sorry I ever doubted you or was angry with you. It was wrong. You were a victim, just as much as Lily was. In the grief and in the haze of everything, I misplaced my anger, and that wasn’t fair to you.”
Tears fill Jane’s eyes. She reaches for Mom’s hand and squeezes it. “Thank you, Bee. That means a lot to me. You don’t have to say it. I understood. But thank you.”
Mom joins her in the tear fest. “After all you did for Lily and all you did for us, I just—I feel so bad.”
“Don’t. Don’t,” Jane implores. “This was no one’s fault but Romeo’s and the people giving him orders.”
Mom nods. She swallows, her throat vibrating with the effort, and pulls a tissue out of the box on the counter. She wipes her eyes. “Good thing I didn’t put my face on today,” she says with a laugh.
We’re all crying now, so we all grab tissues and join in. Mom waves her hands at her face, then at us.
“Oh, I’m going now. Bye.” She disappears down the hall into the room that she and Dad use as a home office.
Red-rimmed eyes meet mine as Jane says, “Your mom’s amazing.”
I take a cookie, bite into it, and mumble around it, mouth full. “These cookies are amazing.”
“Got it,” Jane says. “You don’t want to talk about that.”
“I don’t want to talk about my mom, no. I want to talk about what happened.”
The tone between us gets serious instantly. “You want to talk about Stateless, don’t you?” she asks, knowing the answer.
“Yes.”
“Silas told me,” Jane says, breaking a cookie with her fingers, lifting a small bite into her mouth and chewing, but she doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Did he tell you everything about Stateless?”
“Everything that had to do with Alice, and with Duff. I knew that Alice was the one who started the research to try to find Duff’s little brother, and that she did it because of Alice’s relationship with Duff's grandmother, Eileen. She stumbled across the Stateless Project and everything that Monica Bosworth was involved in.”
“What else did Silas tell you?”
“Why are you asking me this, Lily? Do you know something that Silas doesn’t?”
“No. But I know something that Silas hasn’t told you.”
“Silas tells me everything.”
“Not this.”
“Then what?”
“Harry was part of Stateless.” It feels weird to call the president Harry, but I've picked it up from her.
“I knew that. I was at the meeting last month with Duff, Silas, Drew, Lindsay, and Harry's men. And we’re supposed to pretend that he wasn’t. That’s part of the deal. That’s why we were able to dial down your security to a lower setting, Lily. Mine, too.”
I glance out the window at the unmarked SUV out there. “Looks like your security level’s about the same.”
She shrugs. “I just do what Silas tells me to do. Tell me, Lily. What is it? What’re you keeping from me?”
“There’s a reason why Silas hasn’t dropped your security, Jane.”
“What?”
“Because you were supposed to be one of the first Stateless babies.”
Duff
I lift my hand to the center of the front door and knock exactly three times. I know Lily doesn’t like the doorbell sound.
The feel of the painted wood on my knuckles is grounding. No one answers. I know she’s here, and from the looks of the SUV out there, I know Jane’s here, too.
The pause is too long for my comfort. I pull out the key and unlock the door to find Lily and Jane standing there in the foyer, Lily’s hand on the doorknob, expressions of surprise on their faces.
“What’re you doing here?” Lily asks.
“Checking in on you.”
I walk across the handful of steps between us, touch her shoulder, and steal a kiss. There’s no hiding our relationship in front of Jane, who already knows, but she looks stunned. There’s no other word for it. The woman stands there, blinking, looking right through me.
It's not about the kiss.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“We were just talking,” Lily says, suddenly uncomfortable.
“About what?”
“About Stateless.”
“What about Stateless?”
Jane looks at me. “I was supposed to be one of the original Stateless babies? Is that true, Duff?”
“Oh, shit,” I mutter. “Silas didn’t tell you?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Don’t be mad at him. He was trying to figure out how to break it to you before he—”
“Before he what?”
“Before he initiates a project to dig into the truth behind Stateless.”
“What truth behind Stateless? You mean, whether my father’s involved?”
“That, and more.”
“What more?”
“With John, Blaine, and Stellan’s parents dead now, the timing is just too suspicious. Something’s going on, Jane, with the Stateless Project itself.”
“Well, of course. Romeo just tried to—”
I cut her off. “Romeo was just one head of the hydra.”
“Is this about your brother?” she asks.
“So Silas did tell you that,” I mutter.
She nods. “He did. It’s the whole reason behind all of your work. I understand it all better now. Your brother is alive?”
I shrug and look at Lily.
Lily nods. “I saw him. I think,” she says to Jane.
“Do I smell chocolate chip cookies?” I interrupt.
Lily rolls her eyes. “This is a conversation that requires caffeine and sugar.”
We migrate back into the kitchen, my hands clenched, my shoulders tight. The fact that Silas didn’t tell Jane about her origins makes me wonder what else he hasn’t told anyone.
What are Drew and Silas keeping secret from me? What are they doing with this information? They told me I could turn down the security on Lily, and I have, but we still have a twenty-four-hour detail outside. Silas has kept everything up for Jane, though. It’s all funded by Jane’s inheritance from Alice. There’s no shortage of money or resources, but there is a shortage of information.
The vectors aren’t adding up.
We settle at the kitchen table again. I reject the crappy coffee here at Tom and Bee’s house, but I devour the great chocolate chip cookies.
After a few minutes of silent eating, Jane looks at me and asks, “Did Alice know?”
“Did Alice know what?”
“Did Alice know that I was supposed to be one of the first Stateless babies?”
; “I don’t know.”
Reeling, I process that question as fast as I can, because it changes the entire understanding of Alice’s relationship with Jane. If Alice knew that Jane was supposed to be Stateless, but for some reason was never handed off to the project, then how much of Alice getting to know Jane, getting her to Yates University, turning her into her model, and eventually making her the heir to her estate, is interwoven with Jane’s status all those years ago?
How did the project that Harry was involved in somehow not acquire Jane?
“My mother,” Jane says, obviously following the same line of thought. “My mother must have been why I was never handed over. I wish I could ask her. Wish I could ask my father,” she whispers, her voice filled with anguish. “But how do I ask someone who may have been the person who wanted me handed over to this crazy, evil system?”
“We don’t know that, Jane.” I swallow hard and look at Lily, who is openly crying. “We don’t know anything about what happened all those years ago.”
“I’ll bet it was Monica,” Jane hisses. “I’ll bet she wanted me handed over when she found out my mom was pregnant with me and then she got pregnant with Lindsay. It would’ve been convenient, wouldn’t it? Get rid of me. Ruin the love between my mother and Harry?”
“I don't know any of these people,” Lily says, her voice filled with helplessness. It's clear she wants to find a way to make Jane feel better.
There is no way.
“I wonder if Lindsay's biological father was part of it?” Jane asks, grasping at straws.
Lily just shrugs, but her eyes widen at the commentary.
I let Jane ramble. She’s got a point. Anya probably did save Jane from that kind of fate, but I doubt Harry did it out of a sense of sacrifice. And who the hell knows about Lindsay's bio dad?
“I think that’s what Silas wanted time and space to work on,” I tell her. “He wanted to find out why you weren’t taken before he sat down with you and explained that you were even part of the equation.”
“He should have told me,” she snaps.
Lily touches her arm. The two share a look. “These men think that we don’t deserve all of the information,” Jane says to Lily. “That we’re too weak to handle it.”
“No.” I stop her right there. “It’s not that we think you’re too weak.”
“Then what?”
“It’s that we’ve put ourselves in the line of fire for you. We take the hit first. We’re your physical wall, your shield–your filter. And after that, if we’re still standing, then we cushion the blow that you have to experience.” Emotion makes my throat tighten. “So don’t blame Silas. Don’t get angry at him, Jane. He’s doing this out of love.”
“Love.” Her voice is filled with contempt. “Love. I don’t want to talk about Silas’s love. I know he loves me. I know my mother loved me. I have no idea whether my father loved me or not. I used to think he did. I used to think he loved me, because the alternative was too horrifying. But now this? What am I supposed to do with the knowledge that at some point, someone high enough in the Stateless Project thought that I was just a piece of property they could take as a newborn out of my mother’s womb and train into being a member of some new army of relentless spies for some purpose we don’t even understand?”
I take another cookie. I shove half of it in my mouth. It’s a defense mechanism.
Lily sniffs. She takes a sip of coffee. Ground-up cinnamon floats on the surface in erratic patterns. She licks her lips and turns to Jane. “I think it’s like Sean says to me sometimes: we’re just never going to know, and the not knowing can’t be what defines you.”
“Easier said than done,” Jane says. “And meanwhile, I turn on the television. I listen to the radio. I go online, and my father is everywhere. He’s quoted in the press every day. There are pictures of him everywhere. I can’t escape him.”
A sniff. A tear. A tight throat. Jane's letting it all out as she drinks the rest of her coffee, puts down the mug, and looks at us.
“I can’t escape knowing what he may be part of.”
“Me, either,” I commiserate.
“He holds one of the highest offices in the world, and he's a founder of... this?” she chokes out. Lily gives her a sympathetic look and hands her a fresh cookie.
Jane munches on half of it and looks to me, as if I have insight.
I shrug. I take a cookie. I shove it, whole, into my mouth.
I chew.
The cookie is good.
That's all I really know.
Chapter 14
Lily
“Oh, no, not you again!” Rhonda says to me with a grin as I walk into the gym. It's been two months since I was released from the hospital. This is my return to outpatient physical therapy, and Rhonda's on my team again.
Just like old times.
“I feel so loved.” I stop at the water fountain and hit the button to fill my water bottle.
She laughs.
Old Clem is on a machine, lifting his calves one by one. He cackles. “Good to see you here again, Lily. Not that I want to.”
This is the ritual of physical therapy. We aren’t here because we want to be here. We’re here because our bodies require that we show up.
“No security detail?” Rhonda asks as I walk over to one of the gymnastics mats and pull a therapy ball into the center.
“Supposedly, no,” I say. “They cleared me.” And then I look pointedly out into the parking lot. “But there are suspicious black cars following me everywhere.”
“You’re important enough to follow, but not important enough to be told.”
I wink at her. I halfway make it. The left side of my body doesn’t quite remember how to do everything.
Yet.
She points. “Good!”
“I look like I have something in my eye.”
“Keep trying, Lily. Keep trying,” she encourages me.
I start doing the stretching exercises on the therapy ball, more focused on balancing and keeping my midline in place than actually stretching out.
That’s the point of all of this work: to align me.
To strengthen me.
To get this broken, battered body in tune with the blood flow to my brain that keeps me sentient and functioning.
As I go through the motions, the scent of the workout room hits me. It’s like a blanket, a warm, familiar feeling that takes me out of my normal routine. I don’t want to be here, not one bit. Rhonda’s fine, but she represents a kind of failure.
This is therapeutic. Therapy is what you engage in when you can’t be normal. That’s not a criticism or a put down. That’s a statement of fact. I’d be worse off if I didn’t seek out this kind of therapy–and yes, the other kind.
I know.
Rhonda hands me two-point-five-pound weights. I roll so that the therapy ball is underneath my shoulder blades, my knees bent, my hips up. I start lifting, one by one, then both at the same time, my eyes focused on where the weights meet.
Everything’s aligning as it should, and not just in my body, either. The new psychologist I see is making a difference. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s so focused on distilling down to the Lily who could overcome so much adversity, or if it’s because I don’t have to lie to him.
I’m pretty sure it’s more of the latter.
My thighs start to scream, then shake, from the effort it takes to stay in place. That’s one of the hardest parts of all the activity. The shaking. Rhonda says that muscle fibers fire at different rates and from varying points in a muscle that’s stressed. In a normal environment, they learn to trade off and take turns so that the effort is fully engaged.
At no given time is a single set of muscle fibers overstressed. It’s when they become overstressed that the body starts to shake, the fibers firing at will in order to support the entire structure.
That’s how systems work, right? Different parts take their turns, supporting the whole, and when the system is overst
ressed, all of the pieces blow out their energy reserves in order to keep it going.
Muscles aren’t that different from the Stateless Project. Muscles aren’t that different from a presidential campaign. Muscles aren’t that different from the holiday rush in a flower store. My muscles, though, quiver less and less as I build a stronger relationship between all of the separate parts that make up the whole that is Lily.
“Duff! What’cha doin’ here?” Clem shouts.
I look up and damn near fall on my ass. My foot catches me. I set down the two-pound weights. They feel more like twenty pounds. I run my fingers through the top of my hair, dislodging the ponytail. My abdomen is threatening to spasm.
“Lily?” Sean inquires as he comes over, immediately focused on my well-being.
I wave him off. “Give me a sec,” I gasp.
He does. A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have backed off.
A few weeks ago, I wasn’t this strong.
My water bottle comes into my field of vision, attached to his arm. “Here,” he says.
I roll down the curve of the ball, my ass hitting the gymnastics mat. I take the bottle. “Thank you.”
He kisses my temple and whispers, “No problem.”
After a few gulps of water, I feel centered enough to stand up, taking Sean’s hand. We turn to find Rhonda gaping at the both of us.
“You two are together?” Her eyebrows are sky high.
Sean shrugs. “Yeah.”
Seconds tick by as she clearly works to organize an answer. Finally, she grins nice and wide and says,
“Took you long enough!”
Duff
“I am a pool noodle. A really old, overly bent, limp pool noodle.”
“Quit turning me on, Lily, with all that sex talk.”
Her throaty laughter makes me smile. It also makes me hard. We're leaving her PT session, the looks from Rhonda amusing and, if I admit it–kinda nice. Being public about being together, even in small settings like that, feels like progress.
Lily isn't ready to make a big announcement to Tom and Bee, but we're getting there.