“Why would the doctors tell both of us that the other was dead?” I ask.
“My question exactly.” He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “The corruption in this godforsaken country runs deeper than you can imagine.”
His gaze meets mine and holds.
“I believed them, until I saw you one day in the back of a car. You were staring out the window.” He pauses. “I did a double take, thought I was losing my mind. But it was you.”
I think back to the endless errands, the suffocating car rides with Gladys, the sorry excuse for a foster mother who treated us more like chores than children. All those rides where I sat insilence, watching the world pass by, pretending I was somewhere else.
“I don’t understand.” My voice cracks before I can stop it. “Why didn’t you follow me, then? Why did it take so long for you to find me?”
Guilt flashes across his face, and I hate that I’m the one who put it there.
“I tried,” he says, “but I was living on the streets, Kat. No car, no resources. I was moving in and out of gutter zones, doing whatever I could to survive. But seeing you that day… It changed everything. It gave me something to live for again.”
He reaches out and places his hand over mine. His calluses brush against my knuckles, rough, worn-in, familiar.
“After that, I was determined to find you. It seemed like I was always a few steps too late. Your foster mom?—”
“Gladys?” I cut in, meeting his eyes.
He nods slowly. “Yeah, I found her.”
There’s something dark behind his expression now. “I had to torture the information out of her, but that’s when I found out the truth about you being an Avid. About how she sold you like you were a piece of property.”
My stomach twists, but not with sorrow. With satisfaction.
“She got what was coming to her,” he says, reading my face. “And I made sure every single kid under her care was placed in a proper home.”
I smile. A real one. The kind that blooms from somewhere bitter and vindicated.
“Good,” I say, wanting to know exactly how he tortured her but refraining from asking. I’m glad she wasn’t able to ruin any more kids’ lives.
“Once I found out you were an Avid, I had to do some digging,” Cade says, stretching one leg out over the side of the bed. “At first, I didn’t believe it. I thought Avids were anotheroverblown media invention—more corruption, more fearmongering. But the deeper I looked, the more the pieces started to fit.”
“What pieces?” I ask. My pulse quickens, like my body already knows the answer won’t be simple.
“Why the doctors lied to me at the hospital,” he says. “They knew what you were, Kat. Somehow. Some kind of blood marker or something flagged you. I don’t know the science, but someone up the chain gave orders. You weren’t supposed to go home. You were supposed to disappear.”
I blink. “Disappear… into the foster system.”
He nods. “That home wasn’t random. It was controlled with enough freedom to keep you quiet, enough oversight to make sure you never learned the truth.”
My thoughts catch on every unspoken memory of Gladys, her cold eyes, her locked office, the way she always knew when I was lying. Maybe one of the other foster kids didn’t turn me and Aurora in, maybe Gladys knew what we were the entire time.
And then something clicks.
“If you’re alive,” I whisper, “then what about my parents?”
The silence that follows is too loud.
Cade presses his lips together, and that’s all the answer I need. But he gives it anyway.
“They passed,” he says gently. “I’m sorry.”
I nod once. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”
And it wasn’t.It was mine.
