CHAPTER 24
TABITHA
Aweek has passed since my disastrous trip into town, and I can’t stop thinking about it. About what Auntie Gray and my Daddy told me about how much my new family loves me, about how devastated they’d be if anything happens to me.
Those thoughts haunt not just my every waking hour, but my sleep as well. Right this very moment, I’m lying in Daddy’s bed, staring out at the sun creeping through the blinds as the nightmare-slash-memory I just woke from plays over again in my mind.
In it, I’m maybe six years old and I’ve just been delivered to my third foster home in as many years. My new “parents” aren’t cruel, none of them have truly been cruel, though I’ve heard horror stories from other kids in the system. Stories about bruised faces and lies told to doctors to cover the abuse they suffered at the hands of the people entrusted with their care.
I consider myself lucky that I’ve never faced more than a sharp word here and there, and even that I do my best to avoid by being as quiet and meek as possible. Never drawing attention to myself, never making trouble if I can help it.
Until that fateful day.
The family I’d just been placed with was one of the nicer ones, though still a bit neglectful, even if I wouldn’t recognize it as neglect until I was much older. A couple weeks after I’d been placed with them, they took us to the beach. I’d never been to the beach before, and I instantly fell in love. So in love, that when my new parents decreed it was time to head back to our condo, my heart broke at the thought of leaving my beloved ocean.
But I did. Because I didn’t want to make any trouble.
Later that evening, however, I found myself desperately wanting to return to the beach. I asked the parents, but they told me it was too late and we could go back in the morning.
I tried to be good. I really did. But the ocean was calling me.
So I answered.
And it was so beautiful at night, the moonlight dancing atop the waves as they crashed against the sand. I remember standing there, thinking that nothing in my life would ever be as perfect as that moment. For what must have been hours, I sat on that beach, watching the ocean move, listening to the sound of the waves as they broke inches from my feet.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, only that one moment I was watching the water and the next a police officer was shaking me awake. Somehow, I managed to tell him which condo my family was staying in, and he brought me back. I was so scared, imagining how mad they’d be about being out all night looking for me while I was asleep on the beach.
But when we got back to the condo, my temporary parents were shocked to see me on the other side of the door. Apparently, despite the fact that I’d snuck out right after dinner, nobody, not a single person, realized I was gone.
There was plenty of yelling after the police officer left. Not because I’d snuck out and I could have gotten hurt, but because of what could have happened tothem. Didn’t I know how muchtrouble they could get in with the cops if I disappeared? Didn’t I know they could lose their license? Every point made was about the inconvenience I’d caused them, and nothing about what could have happened to me, a lost little six-year-old girl out in the world all by myself. Two days later, I was moved to a new home, and while they didn’t tell me it was because of what happened at the beach, I knew. Deep in my heart, I knew.
Comparing that to what happened last week, there are plenty of differences. For starters, Auntie Gray noticed almost immediately that I was gone.
But the look in her eye when she saw me talking to the sheriff…thatfeels so very familiar. And I can’t shake the feeling that she was more upset about what I might or might not have said to Reese than any danger I might have been in.
Closing my eyes, I turn away from the window and toward my Daddy. He doesn’t wake, but his arms instantly open, pulling me in so he can press a kiss to my forehead.
My family loves me. They do. They’re nothing like the dozens of temporary foster families I was bounced around between as a child. My brain, the logical, reasonable part of me, knows that this is true.
Now I just need to find a way to convince my heart.
Colt
Something is going on with my babygirl.
Ever since her trip into town with Gray and the other Littles, she’s been… I’m not even sure what the word is. Not bratty, necessarily. But every time I turn around, she’s in trouble with someone new for breaking one rule or another.
One day, she snuck into the kitchen when Eli wasn’t in there and climbed onto the counter to try and get at the snacks we keep in one of the high cabinets, well out of reach of Little girls. Another day, she nearly burned herself using her Auntie Gray’s curling iron.
And just this morning I had to spank her for trying to go outside in the rain after she’d specifically been told to stay in the house.
Worry nags at me as I try to work, to the point I end up giving up on the idea entirely and go to hunt down my brothers. Bram is in the living room, watching over the girls while they put together a puzzle.
Dropping down onto the couch beside him, I watch as they discuss in earnest which piece goes where and why, and my heart clenches with a love so fierce I wonder how it doesn't simply kill me.
“You’re worried about her.”
I glance over at my twin, my near identical copy in every way, down to the tattoo on our right arm we both got after our parents’ deaths. The one person I could never keep a secret from even if I’d wanted to. I might not believe in most woo-woo stuff, but our twin connection? That shit is as real as it gets.
