Monica’s words won’t stop looping through me as we walk back to the conference room. My father killed himself when Mom was pregnant with me. She never wanted to talk about it. I don’t even know how he died–just that he did.

Depression, anxiety–they’re genetic. They run in families.

Why is she bringing this up now?

As we walk back into the room, Lindsay looks at me, then down at my left arm.

“What’s that?”

“The doctor drew enough blood to fill a vampire’s backup supply before he tried to give me a pap smear and a free colonoscopy.”

“What?”

I look at Monica, who remains impassive. Lindsay’s reaction, though, is unfiltered horror.

“Quit exaggerating,” Monica says to me, then pulls gently on Lindsay’s arm. “And stop talking to her like she isn’t a traitorous fiend.”

“I don’t talk to her like that because she’s not, Mom.”

My heart leaps into my throat, jumping for joy.

And then I get the shakes.

They start in my arms, hands going tingly, my legs unstable. As I sit in a chair at the conference table, I grip the edge with more tension than usual, leaning on it. My feet don’t exist any more. My ribcage is stuck in agitation mode, like I’ve become a washing machine that never quite finishes its spin cycle.

Silas notices immediately and looks at my hands. I pull them into my lap and try to just breathe.

“Jane,” Lindsay says quietly. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

Silas has pulled Drew aside and is furiously whispering, Drew’s blank face going emotional with astonishment, then cold, tight anger.

“That wasn’t authorized,” Drew says.

“What wasn’t authorized?” Lindsay’s frown deepens and she moves toward me. “Jane, what just happened in that exam room?”

I can’t stop shaking.

She touches my shoulder and feels it, eyes widening. “You’re shaking. And pale. Oh, Jesus, someone get her a glass of water. I think she’s about to faint.”

Silas breaks away from Drew as the room starts to swim. What I see has broken into twenty parallel lines that all turn into waves before my eyes. My teeth chatter. I’m cold.

So cold.

“Here,” says a very kind Silas, whose hand is on the back of my neck, his other holding a glass of water. “Breathe slowly and sip.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he says definitively.

Drew speaks in a low, angry voice with Marshall, who seems shocked.

“Bloodwork and a skin check. Nothing more,” he tells Drew as Silas and Lindsay help me.

“Who the hell was that quack, then?” Silas says, his voice becoming louder as I focus, coming back to some sort of baseline.

“You are an icicle,” Lindsay says, taking her sweater from around her shoulders and draping it across mine. “What did that doctor do?”

“He tried to do a full cavity search,” I say robotically.

“WHAT?”

Monica walks out of the room, Marshall on her heels. My head is down, so I can see behind me, to my right. They’re just outside the doorway, conferring. Whatever Marshall is saying is pissing her off, but he’s holding steady.

They return to the room. Silas takes a seat next to me, his hand still on the back of my neck, but then it migrates to my shoulder, like he’s holding me up.

“I’ll make it brief,” Marshall says. “Blood work’s been sent to a private lab for tests to be run, including blood markers for known implant reactions and paternity testing.”

I gasp. “Paternity?”

“It’s routine.”

“Not for me!”

Monica is looking at Marshall with a tight, controlled expression that makes me fear for his life. “Paternity? You never said that was part of the deal.”

“Given the new rumors we have, it’s critical.”

“Rumors? Rumors about my father?” I gasp.

“Rumors about who your father might be.”

And just like that, I get it. I get it.

I know why Monica hates my guts.

Because once, a long time ago, I was teased at school for being illegitimate. For being the love child of my mother and Senator Harwell Bosworth.

It was a half-assed joke someone made in ninth grade, some bullying rich guy named Desmond, who tried to get me to go to a football game with him, overtly telling me he expected a blowjob under the bleachers during halftime. I told him no, and the next day the rumors began.

I’d come home in tears and told my mother, who condemned Desmond and told me in no uncertain terms that guys like that weren’t worth the flesh on their bones.

But she hadn’t disputed the rumor, I realize.

Does Monica think I’m the senator’s love child? Is that why she mentioned my real father, why she seems so involved in my body check? Why she’s so aggressively mean to me?

I wish Mom were alive. I have so many questions and no one to ask.

“I’m sure you ran the paternity tests a long time ago,” I protest.

“No,” Monica says in a firm, clipped voice. “Your mother put a stop to it. But she can’t stop anyone now.” Her eyes flit to Marshall, cold and dead.

While I process that gut punch, Lindsay jumps in. “Who do you think her father might be?” she asks, her voice hollow. She’s clearly thinking what I’m thinking.

Drew sighs and answers, looking to Marshall not for confirmation but as a warning. “Nolan Corning.”

That is not the name I was expecting.

“Nolan Corning? You think my mother slept with him?” Nolan Corning is the former high-ranking senator who was responsible for the attack on Lindsay nearly five years ago. He did it to discredit Senator Bosworth and eliminate him as a presidential contender. The plan backfired, but it took careful digging and a lot of luck on the part of Drew, Silas, and their friend Mark to nail him.

“We don’t think it. We’re investigating tips that it might be true.”

“Tips from whom?”

Drew goes silent.

“You can’t expect me to give and never get back information,” I say.

Silence.

“And after what that doctor just tried to do to me with Silas in the room, even I don’t trust you,” I spit out, livid.

“What about me?” Lindsay says, holding out her arm like she’s about to give blood. “How about doing a paternity test on me?”

Monica’s smirk fades, her skin turning a shade whiter underneath her makeup.

“That’s not funny, Lindsay.”

“I wasn’t being funny, Mom. Maybe I should have a maternity test.”

“Because you’re pregnant?” Monica’s eyebrows shoot up, overriding whatever Botox she’s using. “Because the timing is still terrible, but three months from now–”

“Because it would be a relief to know I’m not your daughter,” Lindsay smartmouths back to Monica.

“We don’t need to draw blood from you, Lindsay,” Marshall says. “We have your blood on file. Do you really want a paternity test?”

“I want a maternity test and a paternity test,” Lindsay says with a smile, but it fades quickly when she looks at me.

“Done,” Marshall says, tapping on his screen.

“This is ridiculous!” Monica declares. “She’s being silly,” she adds, pointing at Lindsay. “It’s a waste of resources and time.”

Drew’s got an amused little smile on his face, his hand on Lindsay’s arm. “You’re turning this meeting into a Maury episode.”

“Me?” she says, with mock outrage. “If anyone’s daddy isn’t who we thought he was, it’s not my fault. I’m not the woman who slept with the wrong guy.” Looking at her mother from under her eyelashes, she dares Monica to challenge her.

“Damn straight,” Drew says, his smile deepening. His eyes drift over her belly and he leans in to her, whispering something I can’t make out. Lindsay blushes and giggles.

I start to recover. Really recover.

Monica storms out, passing the senator at the doorway.

“Monica, I–”

She ignores her husband and soon her footsteps fade out of hearing range.

“What was that about?” the senator asks Marshall, looking around the room with a furrowed brow.

“Nothing important.”

“Monica looks angry.”

“Like he said, nothing important,” Drew reiterates. “If we gave you a field report every time Monica’s angry, you’d be buried in paperwork.”

Even Silas cracks a smile at that.

The senator gives Drew a weary sigh. “She may be your mother-in-law, but she’s also the future First Lady of the United States of America. You don’t want to be on her bad side.”

“Too late,” Lindsay whispers, looking at everyone in the room as she laughs, her eyes landing on mine for a brief moment of camaraderie.

“Lindsay,” he chides.

“But it’s true!”

“Anything else I need to know about, Marshall?” the senator asks. He’s distracted and irritated.

Silas speaks up. “We need a safehouse for Jane.”

“Jane–oh!” The senator looks at me. “I thought you were in Texas at the Mogrett ranch.”

“Change of plans, sir,” Drew says. “You called her back here for the exam.”

“Exam?”

Everyone in the room gives the senator a strange look, including me. “Yes, sir,” Marshall says. “The exam for implants on Jane.”

“Exam for what? You’re not making sense.” Senator Bosworth gives me a concerned look. “Implants?”

Silas and Drew share a dark look.

“We received a credible tip that the people Jane allegedly works with may be using implants on her body to gather intel.”

He looks shocked, covering it quickly. “Jane. Is that true?”

“No.”

“You–you subjected her to a physical exam? Who ordered this? What were the results and what the hell was the purpose?” he demands of the room.

Drew and Marshall immediately look uncomfortable. Senator Bosworth looks at Silas and nods. “Take Jane to the guest house. Get her settled there. Lindsay, you must excuse us. Drew and Marshall and I need a closed session.”

Lindsay leaves first, casting Drew a curious look, then me, followed by Silas. We don’t say anything until I realize Lindsay is headed in the same direction. She opens the French doors that lead to the stone walkway to the pool. Behind it rests the guest house, a sprawling three-bedroom building larger than most homes.

I’m surprised to find it dark outside, my sense of time shattered by the rush of events. How long has it been since someone tried to fry me in my car back at the coffee shop? Has it really only been a day and a half? Time is elastic.

But the body isn’t nearly as much.

A wave of exhaustion hits me, and as Lindsay walks with us, I want to be attentive. I want to talk. She seems ripe and ready for some kind of breakthrough, like she’s here because she wants an olive branch, a peace agreement, an accord.

Instead, she opens the front door and just looks at me, worried.

“Sleep,” she says. “We’ll talk in the morning. The best bed is the one in the first bedroom on the left.”

I nod and she turns on her heel, walking away.

Without saying a word to Silas I take her advice, stumbling to the bed, not even kicking off my shoes.

I fall asleep in the guest house, the ocean’s waves lulling me to sleep, making promises of peaceful slumber that are just lies.

All lies.

---

I am naked, walking on the beach at night, the full moon shining down on the sand, the water, my body, like a searchlight, the moon making me glow. Luminous and otherworldly, I move like the moon has poured her power into me, all flow and dark heaven.

I am light.

I am dark.

I am all the shades between.

In the distance I see a couple, hand in hand, my eyes able to make them out in the night, their stroll lazy and unhurried. She’s short, he’s tall, and their linked hands bind them. Love floats off their bodies like an aura, strong and sure. Ocean salt air laps at my bare skin, anointing me.

I start to jog, then run, then sprint, my joy increasing as I get closer, their faces standing out, sharp and in focus.

Mom.

Dad.

Together.

My sprint is so fast, I take flight, wings sprouting from my shoulder blades as if they’d been there all along. Flying above them, I cry out.

“Stop! Wait!” I shout, my velocity too swift, my arc too high as I pass.

They don’t look up.

They don’t notice me at all.

My legs thrash, trying to stop, desperate to turn back and find them, but the night envelops me with inky blackness that chills my bones.

It’s hard to breathe, the darkness pressing on my breasts, my ribs, invading me from between my legs, making me gasp and choke.

“No, no, no,” I beg the unseen force. What had been joyful turns malevolent. It’s so fast, I cannot adjust.

“Jane!” Silas calls out from somewhere close, his voice hoarse and panicked, stressed and intense.

“I’m here!” I call back, but the darkness mutes me, eating my words like they are a tasty treat, a spoil of a war I don’t even know we’re fighting.

“Jane? Jane? Are you here?”

Yes, I try to say, but I cannot, suspended in midair, arms out straight, legs together now, pinned to an invisible cross that seems so familiar. There is no pain. No pleasure. No darkness. No light.

Just a void.

It’s all that is left of the world.

It is all that I know.

---

And then I wake up, the scream trapped in my throat, my neck turned to the right in spasms, the moon trickling just enough light through the window for me to see it was all a dream.

But it feels so real.

Tap tap tap.

I scream for real this time, the sound a strange blend of high and low notes, my heart hammering so hard, it feels like it’s on the other side of the bedroom door, knocking.

“Jane?” It’s Silas. “Are you safe?”

Am I ever?

No, I want to answer, but the word gets stuck inside me.

Like in the dream.

“Fine,” I lie. “Just a nightmare.”

He pauses on the other side, the wait long enough for me to know he doesn’t believe me.

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I cry myself back to sleep, trying to recall my father’s face from the dream.

I fail.