AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No kidding. How much did you believe?” Devaney asked, coming farther into the room, as Dahlia and Dorie crept in behind her. Of course, they did. They stuck together. It was the four of them against the world. It always had been.
Sisters took care of sisters.
There had been plenty of years where the only realfriendsthe four of them had had were each other. If there were neighborhood kids to play with, that was it. Oftentimes…where they lived…there weren’t. And it was just them.
She’d asked so many times beforewhythey couldn’t do the things other kids did. Sports, drama clubs, homeschool groups, field trips, anything to be with other kids—but their father had always been far too busyworkingto take them.
And their mother had just been too afraid.
Supposedly Dylan’s mother’s social anxiety disorder had kept them home. Dylan understood that.
Her mom did have social anxiety. Severely.
She’d seen evidence of it so many times before. And she’d reconciled with what that had meant for her and her sisters long ago. Things had eased up a little once Dylan had been able to drive herself and her little sisters other places. To the mall, the park, movies, that sort of thing.
They’d never really been allowed to go anywhere else. They should have. She should have just taken her sisters wherever she wanted to take them. But she hadn’t. Dylan had always toed the line like the good little girl her parents had demanded she be.
But now…she had to wonder if her mother and father had lied about that, too. If her mother’s severe anxiety hadn’t been a handy little excuse to keep their daughters right there next to them forever.
Trust, once destroyed, was hard to build back.
It was hard not to feel like they had been robbed of a real childhood.
As well as robbed of theirrealfamily, too.
“I want to know aboutthem,”Dahlia whispered. She always whispered when she was nervous. She’d struggled to speak as a kid. Speech therapy had helped. But she’d always been shy when she spoke—and reverted back to whispering when she was nervous. Afraid. Confused. “If they are anything likeus.”
Devaney pulled her legs up under her, then patted her lap. Dahlia laid her head on her twin’s knee. They looked alike, but Dahlia just had a fragile air about her that had always made Dylan and Devaney want to protect her from everything. Dorie, too. She was sweeter than Dylan and Devaney by far.
Also a little bit more stubborn, too.
“There is no one quite like us,” Devaney said dryly. “We’re originals, remember?”
Well, maybe theyweren’t.
Their parents hadn’t told them their siblings’ names. They didn’t know if they were boys or girls, or how old. They just knew…Wyoming. Near Sublette County. There was an inn there. And that inn had been in their father’s family for decades.
Dylan reached for her laptop. She’d bought it with her own money five years ago. Her father had been so angry—they hadn’t wanted her or her sisters on the computer unsupervised at all. He’d said it was because ofscreen timerotting brains and internet predators and things. Well, she’d been eighteen. He hadn’t been able to stop her buying it with her own money.
She’d turned her laptop into her key to alife.She’d worked as a virtual assistant for five years now. She had her own company and everything. Dylan had herownmoney. Not a lot, but more than her sisters had. And she used that money for them, too. Whenever she had to.
Now she wondered if his resistance to the internet had just been to keep her and her sisters from knowing anything about the outside world. The internet was a powerful equalizer, after all. She could have found out aboutthem.
About what he and her mother might have done. She didn’t even know if her parents were criminals or not. WITSEC was for criminals, right? Well, Dylan was going to find out.
“I’m going to find them.” Dylan looked at her sisters. She’d taken care of them for as long as she could remember. That was what a good sister did. This…wouldn’t be any different. “And we’ll get our answers fromthem.We won’t stop until we have those answers.”
“In this together?” Dorie asked.
Dylan reached for her youngest sister’s hand. “We start it now, and then we finish it. Together.”
“Together, always. It’s what we do.” Devaney covered Dylan’s hand next. Then Dahlia’s went on top. “We will be okay. No matter what.”
Dylan made her sisters a silent promise—she was going to make sure that was true for all of them. WITSEC, that meant dangerous people had been after her family before. She wasn’t stupid.
That…could still be true now.
If her parents weren’t lying, anyway.
