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Flipping through the rest of the notebooks, the lists are all the same, same names repeated over and over and my hands tremble when I drop the books down on the table. The names. They mean something. Iknowthose names.
Anxiousness rips through me and I drum my fingers against the desk, trying to control the nervous energy. But it’s not helping, its running rampant and I swallow as the room seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
Those names. It can’t merely be a coincidence..Amos, Emily, Dylan, Jane....they belong, they belong to...
A past. A past I was never allowed to revisit. A past I was forced to push down, forced to act like it never had happened. And I don’t remember their faces, can barely remember what their voices sounded like, how they laughed, how they cried...
So many kids. Some of them leaving, most of them staying.
I sit as if I’ve turned into something solid in Husband’s chair, my limbs are tense but my mind is spinning and everything is alive on the inside. More alive than it’s ever been, my heart thumping so hard that it feels like it’s about to come out of my throat.
When Husband comes back, I still don’t move.
“Doll face, I’m home...,” he says with a smirk, stepping into the office but I grab one of the notebooks and throw it at him. Unfortunately it doesn’t hit him because his reflexes are quick and he smacks it away with his hand.
His smirk dies and he frowns, not knowing what’s brought on this change in me but I’m panting and I rise out of the chair.
“Those names,” I say, pointing at the notebooks and my voice is trembling. “I recognize them. Why do you have t...them?”
His jaw flexes and his big body is unmoving but he clenches his fists. “Why do you think?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head and my eyes are so strained that I feel a pounding in my temples, “it’s impossible.”
“Why, Daphne?Why? Tell me why I have those names.”
My body fills with adrenaline and my hand goes to my mouth as I shake my head. “You’re one of them. You’re one of us.”
He walks over to me but I don’t want him close. I’m too overwhelmed. I can’t think, my body feels like it’s turning into dust. How can he be one of us? I don’t recognize him. I don’t recognize his face. I don’t know his name.
But his eyes. Wolf eyes. Grey and forgiving and unforgiving at the same time. Harsh and protective at the same time. Wild but tame at the same time.
“Who are you?” I say, feeling like a different version of myself. A younger one. “Tell me who you are.”
“Guess.”
He’s uncompromising as always and I scream, “I don’t want to guess!”
He clasps my body in a hard grip and yanks me to him. “You sure you don’t remember? Not even if you think real good with your little head.”
“No! I told you I don’t know...”
“You have to know,” he says through his teeth and there’s hardly any air between his face and mine. “Do you remember when there used to be a storm and we would hide under the beds, so that they wouldn’t find us? They were always scarier when the weather was bad, weren’t they? Threw all kinds of strange shadows over their faces. Made them look like monsters.”
Trembling in his arms, I shake my head. I’m not allowed to remember all that. I was told to suppress it.
“No? How about when they would line us up whenever visitors would come? How they would give us clean clothes and comb our heads and tell us to smile so that nobody would suspect a thing?”
I shake my head again, tears pouring down my cheeks but he doesn’t stop.
“Remember how hard we would hold hands? You squeezed mine, praying to be chosen by a family and I squeezed yours, praying that you wouldn’t be.”
My head nods backward and my mouth drops and I look at him through my teary gaze. That I remember. I remember the boy who would hold my hand. But he looks nothing like the man in front of me. The boy was awkward and gangly and his voice would shake when he spoke. And yet...the eyes. It’s his eyes.
“Thane,” I whisper between cracked lips. “Thane Hawthorne.”
His eyes blaze. “Little Daphne Dollahan...,” he whispers back, using my old surname and I trace my hand over his features in astonishment and he leans into my trembling palm.
“Is it really you?”
