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Here, they can breathe a moment and the sky seems clear, the immediate danger passed, no hint of what’s to come except for a thick and eerie stillness.
“They approached me back before Christmas,” says Bruce. “I really didn’t have a choice.”
Bruce is talking about the FBI and how he helped them investigate and arrest her brother for, among other things, money laundering for his investors, embezzlement, tax evasion.
There are also allegations that Red World was being used as a place for predators to groom and lure young kids playing the game into sending nude photos of themselves to sell on the dark web. That company officers knew about this and did nothing to stop it.
None of this jibes with the life she thought they had.
Her husband has been lying to her. She suspected as much. She might have preferred to discover he’d been cheating. That seems so simple now.
And that’s the least of it.
Henry, the stranger who arrived as the sun was rising, sits over by the kitchen island. He’s on the phone.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll be home soon and I’ll explain everything.”
He’s told Hannah things that she can’t believe, though on some level she knows they’re true. Catrina, Henry, Mako, and Joshua are all related by a sperm donor, someone who it turns out was a monster, a serial rapist and killer who sold his sperm for money. Catrina was on a mission to cleanse the gene pool. Henry was trying to stop her. Joshua was helping her, because she had learned that he was stealing money from his clients. Mako had no idea that the woman he’d hired as his assistant was his half sister.
Hannah’s life which felt rock solid, is built on quicksand.
But she is her parents’ child. This she knows. She, too, was conceived by sperm donor, it seems. Not the same sperm donor as Mako, but a stranger. She, too, has some half siblings looking for connections. But that door is closed. She canceled her Origins account as soon as she understood the truth. It didn’t matter to her that the man she called “Daddy” was not her biological father. He was everything she needed him to be. And she wants nothing more. Sophia is famous for saying: Family is not who you are, it’s what you do.
Leo kept her safe, and was always there. He showed her the stars, and was always the first face she saw when she looked out into the audience at school plays, graduations, swim meets.
Now Hannah finally understands what Sophia meant.
There will need to be a conversation, probably many long, hard, and unpleasant conversations. Most of them will be about Mako and who he is, what he’s done, what will become of him. Some of them will be about Sophia and Leo and the choices they made. Sophia will drink. And Leo will be emotionally absent. But they’ll get through what comes next together. Hannah believes that.
They are still in the vacation rental. That skull surrounded by bits and pieces of bones. The black eyes stare at her. She hates this place.
Henry comes to sit across from Hannah where she’s curled up on the couch.
Cricket has gone to lie down on Hannah and Bruce’s bed. Soon they will all go to Liza and be there for her. She is fighting for her life. Liza has lost everything, and whatever mistakes she might have made, she is still family. Hannah will take care of her through whatever comes next.
Hannah is hurt—some bruising, a bandaged injury on her arm where a bullet grazed her but didn’t penetrate. She has refused more medical attention. She can’t be laid up right now, her family will need her. She’ll have to get home to Lou and her daughter, to her parents.
The road ahead is long and dark.
She can see the man in front of her, who is related to her brother, but not to her, is in pain. He rests his forearms on his thighs, his head hanging.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she says. Trina. Mickey’s half sister, too.
He looks up and she sees Mako’s eyes, Catrina’s eyes, it sends a little jolt of recognition through her like it did when she first met Joshua.
“That’s—very generous. Considering what has just happened to you.”
“Family, right?” she says with a light laugh.
“Yeah. It’s messed up.”
Bruce stands by the fireplace, staring at the flames. He did what he had to do; she knows this. She married an honest, hardworking man who cares for his family and always, always does the right thing. Like her father—like herDad. She has no idea what her biological father was like and she doesn’t need to know. The first thought she had about Bruce was:he’s safe. She chose him as the foundation on which she wanted to build her life, her family.
She doesn’t love that he lied to her and hid this huge thing from her. She doesn’t love that he worked with the FBI to take her brother down. But she understands it.
Could she have been trusted with that information? Or would she have worked to save Mako from the fate he had designed for himself? She can’t answer that and doesn’t want to.
But she’s done cleaning up Mako’s messes. In fact, she herself has some penance to do. What had Catrina called them—Hannah and Cricket? His handmaidens. That was a painful truth that she would have to face.
