by SM Olivier
“Nope,” several male voices chimed in at once.
I rushed through getting the kids down to sleep that night. I felt the piano calling me, and I felt relief at Will’s support in me dropping out of school. I was still going to go to school, but now I wasn’t forced to be around people that didn’t like me or know me.
I kissed Ella goodnight and went to close her door, when she called out to me. “Blake did you look at my drawing?”
I felt like hitting my forehead. “Not yet,” I didn’t feel like lying to her. “I’ll look at it soon. I love you. Goodnight, sleep tight.”
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” she chimed in quietly, her voice sounded disappointed.
I immediately felt guilty. I think I had stuffed it in my locker at school when I put my books in there. I would look at it tomorrow when I went to clean out my locker.
I went into my room, rinsed my body off, and slipped into a pair of boy shorts, a tank top, and a sweatshirt that naturally fell off one of my shoulders. I know almost everyone had retired for the night. We had a long night the night before, and today had been a physically and emotionally draining day. Drake and Remy had volunteered to put down the boys, and I had gladly accepted it.
I saw the under-cabinet lights and the blue glow of the pool in the back yard coming in through the living room as I made my way down the stairs. I ran my fingers along the walls of the hallway as I let myself into the music room. I sighed taking a deep breath in. It had been way too long. I turned the lamp beside the piano on. It was dim but I didn’t need much light. I wasn’t reading music and my fingers knew the keys all too well.
I warmed up my fingers before I got to the song that had been replaying itself in my head all day. It was hauntingly beautiful and perfect for the way I felt. I began to sing softly as my fingers found the right keys to The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel.
After the last key was played, and the last note sung, I felt somewhat at peace. I sighed, leaning against the piano, letting the silent tears fall. I thought finally finding out who I was, would make things easier, but it had only made things more complicated. I knew having my gifts were a blessing. Having the Bells walk into my life was a blessing. Meeting my connections was a blessing. I had a deep belief that everything happened for a reason, but I couldn’t see it right now. I was drowning in the silence.
Why did I have this ability to heal, if the first person I tried to heal died? I slammed my hands on the piano, raging in silence. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Collin was dead, and it wasn’t fair that my gift hadn’t helped me when I needed it most. Noah had reassured me several times that it was inevitable, but it didn’t make it any easier.
I felt long, lean, muscular arms wrap around me, and for a moment I resisted. I didn’t deserve to be comforted. Collin’s parents had lost their only son. They would never know the embrace of their son ever again.
Finally, I felt myself melting against his embrace. By his smell, I knew it was Drake. I allowed him to pick me up and cradle me against his chest. I tried to draw from his quiet, enduring, forgiving-to-a-fault, demeanor. Finally, I felt my tears abate; it had been a cleansing cry. A much-needed release.
Drake stroked my back the whole time. He didn’t speak, and I appreciated it. Every now and then I didn’t need words. From time to time, I just needed to know someone was there. I didn’t need empty platitudes or the fake sense of sympathy. I despised when people automatically assumed they understood the struggle the person grieving felt, even if they knew the pain of loss. Grief wasn’t one size fits all. Everyone experienced grief differently. No two scars of death left the same mark. I had lost my father at an early age. Drake had lost his father at an early age, but I am sure we had grieved differently. Our fathers had been unique to us, just as our expression of grief was unique to us.
When my sobs quieted down, and the shudders stopped coursing through my body, he finally spoke.
“I was thinking about throwing together some French toast for tomorrow morning, want to help me? We can put them in the oven before our run, and they should be finished by the time we get back,” Drake asked hesitantly.
I giggled. “Yes, that sounds like a plan.”
Drake was so meticulous and organized when he cooked. He hated a messy work station, so it always surprised me when he pulled out his numerous binders of recipes that were thrown in all haphazardly. The cabinet above the ovens were packed with recipes he had been collecting since he was 11.
Light reading for him was pouring over cookbooks with a notebook perched in his lap. He scribbled in his notebook, tweaking the recipes to his liking.
We worked in companionable silence for a while before I looked over at him. “Do you really want to pursue this career in cooking, or are you running away from Rose?”
He gave me a contemplative look before he spoke slowly. “I have to admit, not having to see Rose every day has helped make this decision easier, but I have been living a lie for years. I let Rose dictate my life for a long time. I love children, and I find the human mind fascinating, but after doing my rotation in the children’s mental ward, I began having my doubts. How do you fix something that’s broken? I have a deep belief that some of these children are born broken. I’ve seen loving mothers and fathers, and then they have this child filled with rage and instabilities. They say and do things that creep even me out. I can’t see that, day in and day out, without it affecting me some day.”
I cleared my throat. “When I was 10, I was admitted to a mental health facility. My step mother caught me talking to Jaxson. Back then, I didn’t know I could communicate with him silently. She sent me away. They believed I had created an imaginary person to help me cope with my father’s death. Nothing was wrong with me. Jaxson was real. There was this little boy I was in there with that was slightly older than me. He would tell us about accidently killing his neighbor’s cat. He felt no remorse. It was like he couldn’t express it. It was like he was broken. Then he went on to hurting other neighbors’ animals. He would lure them away into the woods and hurt them. He had a false sense of power from it. One day, he was playing with his friend and his friend wouldn’t let him borrow his baseball mitt. He took a rock and hit him numerous times. His friend died. When I met him, he still thought it was his friend’s fault. He believed he should have just let him borrow the mitt and he wouldn’t be dead. He couldn’t even pretend to feel remorse or guilt. It was like there was a void within him.”
Drake barely suppressed a shudder. “There’s been a few cases I’ve seen like that.”
“So, yeah, cooking doesn’t give you nightmares,” I laughed uneasily.
“No, it does not,” he gave me a crooked smile. “Can I ask you a favor?” he asked hesitantly.
“Sure,” I said as I placed my pan of French toast into the refrigerator.
“Can I sleep with you or will you sleep with me? Just sleeping,” he held up his hands. “I just want to hold you and go to sleep.”
I smiled up at him. “Yes. I would like that.”
As much as I wanted to know how it would feel with him physically, right now wasn’t the right time. With Rose unwilling to have a DNA test we had no clue of knowing if the child she carried was his; Ella’s prediction or not. We didn’t need to muddy the waters any more than what it was.
I had come to care for him deeply. Sometimes, he was my quiet in a storm that raged on. I didn’t want to fall for him anymore than I already had. We would be free to be ourselves with each other when Rose was finally out of the picture.
Chapter 20
“Up in the mornin’ with the rising sun,” Jemmy sang out as our feet pounded on the pavement. The early morning sun was just beginning to rise. It really was a site to behold.
It had been two weeks since we began our training program. Our group of 16 had grown to a group of 30 or so. Some of the instructors had taken to joining our runs, and some of the other Knights as well. We still had to push Jemmy to get out of bed every
day, but I think she was secretly enjoying the rewards of her work.
Today she began to sing a cadence, and I knew she was up to no good. Everyone humored her, repeating her words back except for Remy and Jace. They just tossed her back a warning look. The gaps between runners had narrowed, and Sam wasn’t in the back anymore. That was still Jemmy.
“Don’t know why we gotta run all day, since we’re the gifted ones,” she called out. She was barely breathless. I was impressed. I heard a few snickers as the group repeated after her. “Remy and Troy are sons of guns,” she giggled at her own joke as everyone repeated after. “Gonna make us run just for fun.”
I found myself singing along, and Remy and Troy gave me mock annoyed faces.
“One, two, three, four, sound off.”
“One, two, three, four,” we all shouted back at her.
It seemed to help us as she continued to shout out made up cadences. I could tell she had spent a lot of time researching them.
When I looked down at my watch, I noticed we had made excellent time getting back to the house. Drake and I had plenty of time to get breakfast ready before everyone went to school.
I found my new schedule to be amazing. I wasn’t as tense or anxious. We had our morning runs during the week. If time permitted, we had breakfast ready for everyone by the time they got ready for school. Everyone pitched in, getting the children ready. I didn’t worry about taking a shower until we were finished with getting everyone out the door. I generally got showered and dressed, then headed down to the den to do my class work on the computer. Micah often joined me on the laptop as Ms. Tanya—or Tanya, as I called her—looked over his shoulder. Then I headed to the recovery center and observed the despondent females. After that, I would head over to the training facility.
I was generally done with all my school work by noon every day. With zero distractions like changing classes or interacting with my peers, a lot of unnecessary chatter died down, so my work was completed sooner. All my professors were working well with me. I was already ahead in my History of Performance Arts class and English Literature class. I didn’t have to wait for other students to understand the material, so I was able to zip right along to my comfort level.
I was even able to focus on the children more. Alex and Micah were thriving. However, Ella and Chip were becoming a concern of ours.
Alex was a miniature version of Jaxson, in a way. He was a class clown and liked making people laugh and happy. He loved the attention and told us he already had girlfriends. His grades were improving, and he was grasping more of his learning material. He had clung onto Jaxson and began emulating him as much as possible.
Micah was making leaps and bounds with his work. Tanya had no doubt he would be ready to attend school in the fall. He had begun filling out, but he still ate like he had a tapeworm residing in him. The haunted look in his eyes had faded, and he was becoming more outgoing and open. The person he seemed to like to imitate was Remy. He requested permission to join us in our training program and lifted weights with Remy every day. Remy had created a reasonable plan for him to follow. We also agreed that we found no harm in Micah training with us.
Chip was becoming more and more surly, since we were still unable to locate his mother. He was acting up in school, and almost every other day one of us had to go to the school and pick him up. He was picking on other children and getting into physical altercations. It was getting bad enough that we were considering pulling him and home schooling him as well. The only thing we had going for us was he hadn’t been using his gifts in school…yet.
Ella spent her days drawing in a sketch book Noah had given her. Occasionally, she would play video games or go swimming with the other children, but she preferred staying in her room and drawing. We thought she was just trying to perfect her abilities to draw. Patrick had given a few pointers to her, and that’s all she needed. When we looked at her drawings it was just a picture of a boy—or teen, more like it. We all thought she might have her first crush, but we didn’t know who it was.
The pictures of the boy became more and more detailed. Jace had purchased her a set of premium colored pencils. The teen looked to be around fourteen or fifteen years old. He had dark hair and dark eyes and appeared to be mixed with white and Hispanic. In most of her drawings, he looked desolate and sad.
When we asked her who it was, she was unsure. She had no clue who it was. When we asked too many questions, she became more withdrawn.
This morning we were making breakfast burritos, homemade potato pancakes, and tortillas. Drake tasked me with making the filling. I sautéed some onions and red peppers while I browned some ground sausage. When the onions and peppers were cooked sufficiently, I added my whisked eggs. When they were done, I added shredded pepper jack and cheddar cheese.
“Do you have any tortillas ready?” I asked Drake.
“Sure do,” he said as he slid me a plate full of them in front of me, briefly squeezing my waist.
He would embrace me or touch me, but that’s as far as we would go right now. Especially with Rose still hovering in the background. He had told her clearly that he wasn’t interested in a relationship with her any longer, even if the baby ended up being his. Will had a lawyer working on the details, thankfully.
Drake and Jemmy had accompanied Rose to her first doctor’s appointment. She was 14 weeks pregnant, which hadn’t worked in her favor. Drake had been gone for 3 of those weeks during the estimated time of conception. With the death of Collin, she had lost her option B.
She was becoming increasingly irrational and unstable. She was upset that he had left school. She had no way of seeing him other than her appointments. He refused to see her otherwise. She sent him baby names daily. She was asking for funds for the nursery. She tried to guilt him. In the past, he might have fell for it. He didn’t any longer. She had been toxic, and his rose-colored glasses had been removed.
“What smells so amazing?” Terrance asked as he came into the room. Our family had grown over night. The Knights assigned to us seemed to be here as often as the family. I secretly thought they liked the homemade meals. They had even started contributing to the grocery bill.
Will didn’t seem to mind, since he was rarely home. He had gotten back into the labs with Cora. They were busy trying to analyze our blood. Dr. Neil had been transferred to the mountain facility and still wasn’t talking. His computer was full of research, but it was written in code, and no one seemed able to crack it.
“Breakfast burritos,” I informed him as I put one on the plate for him.
Drake slid a potato pancake on the plate beside it. “There’s mild, medium, and hot salsa in the fridge, and sour cream,” he explained.
“Thank you kindly.” He smiled wide and took his plate into the dining room.
“Yum, I’m starved,” Troy said, strolling into the room, dropping a kiss on my cheek.
“Good, because we have food.” I smiled.
I continued to roll the burritos and placing them on a serving dish. As everyone came in, they grabbed a plate and loaded their plates up, thanking us, and took a seat in the dining room or at the bar.
Jaxson was the last to arrive, with Alex following. Alex’s eyes seemed bright and his skin flushed. “I don’t think my little buddy is feeling good,” Jaxson stated as he picked Alex up and set him on the counter beside me.
I put the back of my hand on his forehead. “Aww, little man, are you getting sick? You do feel a little warm.”
He shrugged. “I’m fine. I want to go to school. Kimmy is bringing me a cookie. She promised.”
I laughed. “I don’t think it’s a clever idea for you to go. I don’t want you to get the other children sick.”
“Here, buddy, open up,” Jace came to stand in front of Alex with a thermometer. “Put it under your tongue…and close.”
Alex obliged and swung his legs back and forth. His stockinged feet hitting the cabinets beneath him. The thermometer beeped after a few seconds.
> “100.9,” Jace explained. “He’s running a low-grade fever, but maybe’s it’s best if he stays home.”
“Can I stay home?” Chip asked hopefully.
I shook my head. “Sorry, buddy, I know you don’t like going, but you need your education, and Alex isn’t feeling good.” At his crestfallen look, I tried to cheer him up. “It’s Friday, so maybe after school we can go get some Halloween candy and your costumes for tomorrow night.”
He seemed to cheer up at the promise of getting a costume. He was looking forward to trick or treating and dressing up.
“Where are we having a party?” Jemmy asked excitedly.
“Dad said we couldn’t have it here again because we left a mess for Sue to clean up last time” Jaxson said forlornly. I had to resist the urge to snort. I remember the aftermath of his last party, when I had been there. I had guilted the others into helping me clean up. Not intentionally, mind you.
“But Steven, Cora, and Beth already volunteered to watch the kids after trick or treating,” Jemmy groaned.
“If, and I mean a big if,” Remy said sternly, “you set up and do all the clean-up, you can have it at the new We 7. It could be our soft open. Then we don’t have that far to walk to my house. The painters just finished in there, and the furniture hasn’t been delivered yet, but you can sleep on air mattresses and sleeping bags.”
“Yes!” Jemmy cried out in excitement. “We’re having a party! At Remy’s! Are you coming?” She turned to Dawn.
Dawn smiled. “Technically I’m off duty, so sure.”
Jemmy squealed again and started singing, “We’re having a party! We’re going to dress up! After school I’m going to go shopping!” she turned to Remy. “For decorations.”
“Remember, whatever you put up, you’re going to have to clean up. I’ll provide food and soft drinks. NO one, and I mean no one, underage will be purchasing alcohol at my bar.” Remy stated firmly.