Chapter Seventeen
At Tyson’s appearance the twins had given up on reading the letters. They’d lost interest and hadn’t come over to be put to work. When Ty sat down in the chair beside me they both got up and followed Dash back into the living room.
I hadn’t minded them bailing. I didn’t like that one of them had thought Rain to be nuts and figured if the one thought it the other probably did as well. The more they read, they crazier they would think him to be, I was sure of it. I didn’t know how I would react if any more rude comments were made about him. And I really did not want to be mean or rude to any of them because they’d said something about a man I had never met before.
I mostly looked through the pictures while Ty and Quint read through the letters. No more rude comments were made. They did both comment on the photos and how much Rain and I looked alike and about how identical our eyes were. I had to bite my lip from pointing out that Vivian and I had looked very similar as well. Neither of them mentioned her once.
It took them two hours to read through all of the letters and examine all of the pictures.
I didn’t re-read the letters, but I did look through the pictures again. Some of them I had only glanced through.
There were pictures of Rain and Vivian sitting across from each other at a table while playing a game of chess. I hadn’t known she’d known how to play chess. I’d never even known she’d known how to play Monopoly. There were other pictures of them standing together with their arms wrapped around each other in their bathing suits on a pool deck. Pictures of them sitting on a log in front of a campfire.
In the photographs they looked so happy together. I couldn’t understand how she could have done what she did to him. I couldn’t fathom it. I wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing to a person because I didn’t have a vindictive bone in my body.
What scared me, though, was that there were two sides to every story. Vivian was dead. Therefore, she would never be able to tell her side of the story. Rain seemed to have a love/hate relationship with her. I would never know if his side to the story was the truthful one. But, I did know Vivian. And the woman I knew versus the girl and teenager in the pictures baffled me.
What had happened to her to make her such a vile human being? I didn’t know and, honestly, wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It wouldn’t excuse her behavior. It wouldn’t excuse anything she’d ever done to me.
Even if the story he had to tell me was false, I still wanted to meet Rain and hear what he had to say.
I desperately wanted to meet him. What scared me was that I wanted him to love me in real life as he had seemed to love me in the letters. I didn’t want to be let down if I did get to meet him. I desperately wanted and needed him to be as fiercely loyal in real life as he had seemed to be in his letters. I didn’t want to be disappointed in him and I really didn’t want him to meet me and wonder why he’d wasted so much of his time and energy on searching for me.
I wanted a real parent who loved me unconditionally so badly it was almost a physical hurt. I was extremely worried about getting my heart broken because of this.
Quinton folded up the very last letter he’d read and placed it atop the neat stack in front of him on the table. His body was rigid, and he looked extremely unhappy. I didn’t like his posture and I really didn’t like the look on his face. What did he have to look so unhappy about? This was the family I had been born in to, not the one he had. If anyone had a right to be upset, it would be me.
“I don’t get it,” he said absently. “How does the Council not know about this or about who you are? If your family is as big as they sound like they should be from these letters, then the Council should know of your existence. They sure as hell should know of your kidnapping. Yet, they’ve said nothing. I told them we’d found you. I told them your history that I had been aware of with that woman. They know your name. How have they come back to me with nothing? After reading these letters, it doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Those fuckers have to be hiding something from me.”
I didn’t get it either.
“Do they keep records of every family with magic?” I asked him out of curiosity.
“They keep records of everyone,” was his reply.
I didn’t like his answer.
If what he said was true, then why did no one know who I was?
What little faith I had in this Council of Elders dwindled at this knowledge.
“I need to go home,” Quinton said abruptly as he stood up. “There are a few books I have there from my father’s library that should help me with location spells. I need to look through them and find what I need to bring back here.”
Quinton looked me over with an assessing eye. He looked spooked, something in the letters had really gotten to him. And now he was practically running away from me.
“Unless you want to come home with me and save me the hassle of having to drag all of my shit back here,” he taunted.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t running away from me.
I shook my head in the negative. I did not want to go home with him. I did, however, want to know what had spooked him.
Quinton nodded absently, like he had expected this answer from me. He turned and, without so much as a goodbye, walked away. Normally, he would have ordered me around a bit and touched me in some way before walking away from me.
His actions had me worried now more than ever.
“Damn,” Tyson muttered, and my gaze shot to him.
“What?” I asked him almost frantically.
“You’re a mystery,” he said. “I’m not sure if I should be frightened by this or excited by it. I’ve never known the Council to not know what’s been going on before with one of our own.”
He sounded excited, like we were about to embark on a great adventure and he could not effing wait for it.
I hated it. The whole thing.
Too many things in my life were unknown at the moment.