by Sofie Kelly
“Not at first, but I have known for a while.” I jammed my hands in my pockets.
“How long have you known about Hercules and Owen?”
I looked away. “I figured it out when the work was being done at the library.”
He did the math. “More than three years?”
“Yes. But we weren’t together then. We weren’t together for a long time. I had to keep it secret. If anyone finds out what they can do they’ll be taken to a lab and their brains will be”—my voice broke—“dissected. They’ll be a science experiment.”
“So the time Hercules stowed away in that guy’s car . . . ?”
“He walked through the back window.”
“Do you know how many laws of physics this violates?” Marcus asked. He looked shell-shocked.
“Well . . . in the case of Owen disappearing, possibly none. It may be that somehow something in his cells allows light waves to bend around him. He doesn’t dematerialize. You just can’t see him. As for Hercules, matter can pass through other matter. Neutrinos are passing through us right now.” I’d done a lot of research trying to come up with an explanation for the boys’ abilities.
“You should have told me.”
“I know. I kept putting it off and it just got harder. I’m sorry. I know I keep saying that but I am.”
Marcus looked at Owen. He looked over at the door that Hercules had disappeared through. He took a step backward.
“I, uh, I need some air,” he said. He grabbed his jacket and was gone.
He was gone.
I swallowed hard. “I lied to him,” I said to Owen. “I lied to him, so what did I expect?”
I straightened the chairs around the table. I got the coffeepot ready for morning and took muffins from the freezer.
I gave Owen two stinky crackers just because.
He looked in the direction of the porch and meowed.
“I’ll take a couple out to your brother,” I said.
Hercules wasn’t in the porch. He’d gone outside where it was cold and dark and wet? I opened the back door.
Hercules was perched on the wide arm of the wooden Adirondack chair that I had dragged out during our late-February warm spell—more for him than for me. Marcus was sitting in the chair.
He was still here.
He hadn’t gone anywhere.
I stood in the open doorway for a moment, not sure what to do.
“I love you,” he said. He didn’t move and he didn’t look in my direction.
“I love you, too,” I said. Then I closed the door and went back inside.
about the author
Sofie Kelly is a New York Times bestselling author and mixed-media artist who writes the Magical Cats Mysteries and, as Sofie Ryan, writes the Second Chance Cat Mysteries.
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