“How is sheourmother?” I stared up at the person I’d always considered my brother. For a while, I wondered if it was biological. Now, I’m confused by what Jezebel said. “What she said doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m not supposed to say.” Kyle flashed me his six-hundred-watt grin, the one that let him get away with too much when he was in high school. “But like when we were kids, Em. I can’t tell you, but if you guessed...” He shrugged.
“We can’t be siblings. Jezebel only had one child.”
“That’s what she wanted our father to think.”
“She said we shared a womb.” The answer hit me—another movie plot. “Shit, am I Princess Leia?”
Kyle nodded. “Yeah, you got it. That makes me Luke.”
I recalled the conversation in the car. “Jezebel said—”
“Don’t call her that. She’s our mother. She deserves the title.”
“Why? She gave birth. She didn’t raise us.”
His expression darkened. “Stop, Emma. Don’t let the spirits hear you talk like that.”
God, he sounded like Miss Guidry.
I shook my head and peered around the kitchen. Nothing made sense.
I decided to focus on the one question and avoid the usage of proper nouns. “Shesaid we shared her womb. But we can’t be twins, Kyle. We have different birthdates. I don’t mean one day and the next. You’re eight months older than me.”
Kyle shook his head. “Let her tell you. She’s waited a long time to tell us both what happened and is happening. It’s been planned out...fuck...for longer than we’ve been alive.” He was back to holding the edge of the door.
“Kyle, I’m not going in that cellar.” I looked pleadingly at him. “You remember how I am about locks.”
“Fuck, the smoke.”
“It was fire, Kyle, not just smoke. I was trapped.”
“The fire was outside. You only thought you were trapped.”
A group of us kids had been playing a game—truth or dare type. Greyson and Kyle dared me and my friend to go into the hall closet and see how long we could stay. At first it was easy, until we realized the door was locked. Even so, neither of us panicked until the smoke. Our first thought was that the house was going to burn down with us trapped in a closet.
Ironically, it was Liam who opened the door.
Even today, thinking about the chain of events made my skin crawl.
I wasn’t going to debate this incident with him again fifteen years after it occurred. “I won’t go down into that cellar if the door is going to be locked.” When Kyle didn’t reply, I added, “Mom and Dad understood.”
His lips formed a straight line. “The O’Briens always gave into you, Em. It’s time to grow up.”
“Grow up? I’m not the one living with my mother.”
Kyle’s jaw clenched and his nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. “Go down in the cellar. It’s furnished and not bad.” When I didn’t move, he added, “If you want, I’ll go down with you. But you have to stay, and I’ll tell everyone the door can’t be locked.”
My eyes closed as a tear slipped down my cheek. I wasn’t sad. Frustrated combined with a lingering uneasiness would be a better description of the cause. “I need to call Rett.”
“Even if I handed you a phone, there’s no reception, not with regular phones. There’s something about the ground out here, it defies reason.”
“Is there internet?”
“Do you know his phone number?” Kyle asked, his tone turning mocking.
“No, but...”