“What about the cafeteria staff?” I asked. “They’re commons. Same thing?”
Mel shook her head. “No. The cafeteria staff, our driver, and the groundskeeper have no idea what we do here. They believe this is a school for elite gifted children.”
“They do? That doesn’t seem likely without …” I hesitated.
“Yes?” Mel prompted.
“Without some intervention into their decisions about this place.”
“Mmm,” Mel said noncommittally. “Perhaps so. We treat them with the utmost respect,” she assured me. “But they are tools necessary for our operations.” Her voice held no hint of superiority, even if her words did. And it went along with my dad saying he hadn’t fit in here.
“They are just commons,” I said quietly, and my bottom lip trembled as the words “just like me” were added silently in my head. I felt like this was the end for me. I’d been given the keys to the kingdom, only to have the locks changed; spied the sunlight beyond the cave, only to watch a landslide smother the opening. I wanted to improve the world and had been shown how, but the door slammed in my face.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Melvina asked, placing her hand on my arm.
I took a breath and swallowed, preparing to tell her I was fine. But when I opened my mouth, all of my fears about failing, and not being adept, and wanting to be part of this place came spilling out, almost as fast as the fat tears rolled down my cheeks. My head was pounding, but my ramble went on until I had no more words, just silent sobbing hiccups.
Mel took my hand in hers. “Shh. It’s okay, Kinzie,” she said soothingly. “You are adept. This isn’t something for you to worry about.”
“But … but…”
She gave me another gentle shush. “I am quite certain of it, Kinzie.”
Through my tear-filled eyes, I could see the kindly expression on her face. “But I can’t do anything. How would you know?”
“In several ways, dear. The most definitive being your test results from the medical clinic,” she said, and released my hand with a squeeze to pull her computer toward her. I wiped my tears away with the heel of my hand, as she typed something in. “Here, she said, pointing at a squiggly line two-thirds of the way down a chart. “As we expected, your MRI showed sufficient activity in the areas of your brain where we would expect it for an adept, but it remains a less precise tool for us than this – an old-fashioned EEG. This line,” she said, tracing her finger along the up and down squiggles, “would be much flatter in a common. That alone is sufficient proof to me that you are adept. But here,” she scrolled the screen across and pointed to an area where several of the lines jumped into larger oscillations. “This is where we began the evoked potentials studies. Your brain responds to stimuli equally with your adept sense as with any other. I cannot imagine that could ever happen by coincidence in a common.”
I stared at the lines for a moment longer, before looking into Mel’s now serious eyes. “Then why can’t I do anything?”
Her brow knotted. “That remains as much of a puzzle as why we saw no indication of your attributes when you were young,” she admitted. “But you clearly are adept, and the rest we will figure out.” The old woman reached forward and took the rectangular box from the glass coffee table. She turned it in her hands for a moment before speaking. “Perhaps this is a good time to give you this, Kinzie.”
I hesitated as she tried to hand me the box. “But … a present? I didn’t …”
“It is not a gift from me, Kinzie. This is something that belongs to you, and knowing you are adept, it has belonged to you for a year. I had forgotten about it until this morning.”
I opened the rectangular box and found a sturdy chain with a metal pendant, just smaller than a half dollar, in the shape of an interwoven knot like the ones on the front doors. I lifted it from the box, and turned it to the side to see that the Celtic-type symbol woven around itself, reaching the edge seven times before turning back, always without touching itself.
“It belongs to me?” I asked, feeling the weight in my hand. It wasn’t silver. Something heavier. Pewter maybe.
“Yes, Kinzie. It does now. That is called a chivasta and belonged to Gordon Prescott, a colleague of mine on The Seven who passed away one year ago today. Now it belongs to you.”
“Why?” I asked, and Mel leaned back into the sofa with a soft sigh. “I’m sorry. He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
Her eyes looked into the distance. “Yes, Kinzie. A dear friend. I wish you would have had a chance to know him,” she said before turning back to me. “Chivastas are passed down through adept families. Had you been listening to my lecture a few minutes ago, you might have realized that ancient adepts needed a means of identifying each other. This was what they used. This symbol allowed adepts to silently admit their presence to each other, using a design that could be made of many different materials depending on what was available in a specific culture, but was also difficult to produce, so the commons were not likely to replicate it. As adepts became more organized, they kept track of each other through other means, but the existing chivastas continued to be passed down from generation to generation of adepts as a matter of family tradition. Over the years, most have been lost. Other lines of adepts died out. So today, there are only a hundred or so in the world that continue to be passed through unbroken lines. This is one of three within the Rothston adepts.” Mel paused, and gave me her kind, grandmotherly look, before she continued. “Gordon Prescott was your great uncle, Kinzie. You are the only survivor of one of the ancient families. You should put the chivasta on.”
I looped the chain over my head, but continued to study the intricate pendant. The metal was solid, but bore a few nicks from the wear of years, and a chill went through me at thought of the history this pendant may have seen. Something that connected me to that past. People stretching back for centuries. My family. A family I’d never known.
How would my life be different had I come here sooner? I could have met my uncle. Maybe had dinners with him. From Mel’s expression, I imagined him to be a good man. Kind, perhaps, or at least having an air of wisdom. My only blood relative. A connection to Rothston and to who I was. If only I’d displayed my adeptness earlier, then I would have …
“Wait,” I said, raising my eyes again. “Why wasn’t I raised here? I mean, if I had relatives here, why didn’t he raise me instead of my dad?” I cringed at how awful that sounded, when I hadn’t meant it that way. I’d had a good life with my dad, but … a blood relative.
Mel’s face grew more troubled. “We don’t really know,” she answered uncomfortably.
I tried to reach out to her with my adept senses and nudged her toward telling me more, but could barely read her at all. I’d have to do it with words. “But you must know. I was here and you knew me and my dad. My parents had left me, and somehow a decision was made for me to go live with my dad and not be told any of this.” My words had a bite of accusation, but what I was saying had to be right. I had family here. So the existence of Rothston wasn’t just omitted in my life, it had been intentionally hidden.
Mel didn’t disagree, but paused in thought before picking up her laptop again. She clicked several times before staring at the screen with caution.
“I don’t have any answers, Kinzie, and do not believe you will find them in this,” she informed me. “But it is all we know – your birth-father’s request.” She turned the laptop toward me. “It was found with you.”
On the screen was the image of a paper note, the fold lines looking old and tattered. Messy handwriting, not unlike my own, was scrawled across it.
Dear Melvina:
I need your help. This is my daughter, Kinzie Louisa Clarison. It isn’t safe for her to remain with me. I want Ken Nicolosi to raise her however and wherever he thinks is best. Uncle Gordy will want to have a role in Kinzie’s life, with the best of intentions, but please believe me that Ken is a better choice to raise my daughter.
; She is very special, and her mother and I hope that Ken will tell Kinzie that we love her with all of our hearts – but that will be his decision.
Mel, please make certain that Ken raises Kinzie. We cannot thank you enough.
Nate Clarison
My heart was pounding in my ears when I finished, and I started over, reading each word carefully. My eyes stuck on one line: “tell Kinzie that we love her,” and I remembered Dad saying that this fall, but I’d refused to believe him. Now, seeing those words in my birth-father’s handwriting … My eyes began to water, and I scanned the rest of the note again, looking for clues to my past.
“He didn’t want me raised here,” I whispered.
“Ken Nicolosi reached the same conclusion, although it doesn’t say that.”
“It does. My father – my birth-father – he didn’t want his uncle to have a role in my life. If Gordon Prescott was a member of The Seven, he would have a role, unless I wasn’t here,” I pointed out. I scanned the note again, and my eye caught on the bar showing the file name: “Daughter of Kenneth and Marjorie Nicolosi,” followed by my birth date. I looked up at Mel.
“You listed me as being the daughter of my dad and his wife?”
“We did. The note indicates that you were in some sort of danger. We thought it prudent to conceal your identity in our records.”
I sat back, deadly still, staring at the image of the note as a memory played at the edge of my brain. I closed my eyes and the living room fell away. Some great revelation was here, just beyond my reach, and it filled me with dread. I had been in danger. A man’s voice echoed from my memory, urgently imploring, “We have to do it now.” But I couldn’t see anyone, just the impression of radiant warmth, and a woman’s voice, choked with tears, whispering in my ear, “Remember what you’re to do, my little Mizbee.” Then the voices were gone. I opened my eyes and Mel’s comfortable room returned. And I shivered.
“Kinzie?” Mel prodded gently.
“My parents. I remember them,” I whispered, then lifted my eyes to look at Mel. “I was in danger.”
“From whom and why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. From … from …” My eyes widened as the vague impressions became more clear – not so much a memory as an instinct. My heart pounded twice before I pushed out the answer. “From Rothston.”
Chapter 14
Greg
More weight. I adjusted the setting on the leg press, then exhaled as I pushed, trying to burn off the frustration of being trapped in this house with Dad and Janis. Damn. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t need their artificial lives, or this house, or anything from them at all. This wasn’t my life, but they were too dense to get that. Especially Janis. She started the morning bitching at me to get out and see my friends. The people she meant weren’t my friends. Sure, I’d hung out with them in the past. Screwing the female half. But friends? They were nothing more than accessories to the socially acceptable lifestyle I’d been groomed to have. I pushed harder on the press, but it wasn’t enough.
I moved on to shrugs. What was wrong with me? I knew I wasn’t acting the way Dad and Janis were used to. Shit, I wasn’t acting the way I was used to. Something was off balance. Like some hidden variable was screwing up my comfortable life equation.
I held the contraction in my shoulders for a second as a now familiar thought entered my head. Leave. I lowered the weights again. I’d thought this over and over since coming home. Leaving would solve the problem. Never coming back here where people expected me to act like I always had. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted to be that guy – it was just the easiest path. Like electricity taking the path of least resistance. Electricity flowing through me. I shook my head, knowing where those thoughts went.
Bench presses. What should I do? Maybe this was just some phase I was going through, like Dad had said. Turmoil, brought on from the knowledge that once I was through college, I was supposed to be someone. Be an adult. Be a man. But what did that mean? Did it matter what I did after college? I would never starve. Beyond that, did I care what happened to me? Did anyone?
I set the bar back on its cradle, but didn’t move. Instead I lay there, staring past it to the ceiling. Life had been easier when I didn’t think about it so much. But I couldn’t seem to get that guy back, or didn’t want to. I wished there was someone here to talk to, so I could sort it out. And there would be – this afternoon. I smiled. Kinzie would listen. Then, the smiled faded. Or was she part of the problem? God, that girl confused me. So tiny. So innocent. And yet, with a single word, she’d stopped me from pounding Brolie at the Gala. My Czarina. I’d do anything she asked of me. But why?
The frustration welled up in me again at the thought of Kinzie in this house. She didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t me. I needed to get out. I felt like I’d explode if I didn’t. I looked at the bar resting motionless above me. I needed more weight.
ψ
Her flight had been fifteen minutes late but, still, it had been on the ground for at least ten minutes. Where was she? I popped onto my toes to look down the concourse on the other side of the security gate. Damn these holiday travelers. Logan was packed with idiots, milling around, carrying all sorts of bulky packages, and clogging up the airport’s halls. Then I saw her. Her dark hair bounced with her step as she wove through the crowd keeping her eyes on me the whole time. And she had a huge smile on her face. She jumped into my arms as I wrapped them around her, pulling her tightly to me and laughing. My body and my head relaxed at that moment, releasing the unwanted tension I’d been carrying for two weeks, and I hugged her tighter, never wanting to let go.
This was wrong. I stepped back awkwardly, realizing how that must have looked.
“That was quite a greeting,” she grinned, acknowledging that I had crossed the line.
I took her duffle from her. “I missed having the Czarina around. Haven’t known what to do without the boss here.” She smacked my arm in jest, and I smiled even more. I really had missed her.
I wound through the holiday traffic on I-90 in Dad’s Benz, while Kinzie told me about her flight. She twisted around in the seat excitedly as she read the exit signs for Boston Commons, and Fenway Park, and MIT, and Harvard. This was a new world for her.
“Is that were you went to school?” she asked, examining Brookline’s high school resting behind a narrow park.
I shook my head. “Would have if I had stayed here, but I went to prep school in Connecticut instead.”
“That had to be strange, not being home in high school. Although …” She paused, her lip slipping into her mouth for a moment before finishing her thought. “I might have liked it.”
I tried to picture Kinzie with me at Danners, and I couldn’t do it. She was too smart for that. Not that I hadn’t gotten a good education there. But the place was more about connections – making sure we were all prepared to function in the moneyed world in which we’d been raised. Kinzie would have hated it.
I pulled into the stone-walled entrance to our drive, and Kinzie’s eyes studied the red clapboard house nestled at the street.
“Is that your house?” she asked.
“Uh, no,” I stammered awkwardly. It was the caretaker’s cottage and was rented to some “starving artist” whose work was momentarily in vogue in Janis’s circles, otherwise that would have been my answer – move out of the main house for the simplicity and solitude. We rounded the bend on the tree-lined driveway. I had always loved that turn, revealing the fountain in the circular driveway and the French Provincial house in all its splendor, all the more picturesque today with fat snowflakes drifting out of the December-gray sky. “That’s my house,” I said. But I didn’t care about it now. More than that – it seemed cold and pompous compared to the cozy home we’d just passed.
I pulled the Benz into the garage, popping the trunk to grab the duffle. Kinzie climbed out of the car and scanned down the line of resting vehicle
s. “Jeez, how many people live here?” she teased.
I followed her eyes to the waste before us. Two people lived in this house, yet four cars sat here – two Benzs, a Beemer, and Janis’s Porsche SUV, a.k.a. the most ridiculous vehicle ever created. Like a baleen whale with a wig and lipstick. And Mr. Heisenberg was still in Indiana. No one needed this much stuff. And certainly no one in this house deserved it.
I led her through the breezeway and opened the back door. She stepped through and scanned the kitchen’s granite countertops, multiple sinks, and teak cabinets. This was really getting strange. The driveway. The garage. The house. These were all things I was used to. That I didn’t even notice. Yet, with Kinzie here, it was like I was seeing them for the first time. And I wasn’t happy with what I saw. Maybe this had been my problem since I got home. This life – the one where I could have anything I wanted, and did – no longer fit my new equation. But why? And what was I supposed to do now?
Janis and Dad bustled into the kitchen, laughing about a social faux pas that had embarrassed one of their friends at the club. They stopped in their tracks when they saw us, uncertain whether to acknowledge the girl standing by the door. It wasn’t like I hadn’t brought girls here before, but we’d rarely been in the main part of the house, and never interacted with my parents. I glanced down and saw Kinzie’s oversized army pants. And no girl I brought here had ever looked like this. Damn. This was going to be more awkward than I thought.
“Ja… uh … Mom, Dad, this is Kinzie Nicolosi, a friend of mine from school.” I put my hand on the back of Kinzie’s shoulder and led her the rest of the way into the kitchen. “She was going to have to spend Christmas by herself, so I invited her here.” I shot my parents a warning look, wanting them to be normal. But Janis and ‘normal’ didn’t mix. Like oil and water.
Foreseen (The Rothston Series) Page 16