Cecily awoke when the rumble of the RV stopped. She squinted against the light.

Something was off.

She looked around.

Everyone in the RV was looking back at her.

“Hey guys,” she said, mystified.

“Hello,” Solo said, smiling at her. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Um, okay.” Cecily tried to imagine what that could be.

After last night, the only surprises she could think of were definitely not the kind to be shared in front of her friends.

The view out the window hit her.

She was home.

Not the studio in Queens - her old home, Greenfield.

“Why are we here?” she asked, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

“I wanted to see the place where you grew up,” Solo said. “I thought you might like to visit as well.”

“I told you I didn’t want to come back here,” Cecily said.

She began to get a panicky feeling. Tears prickled her eyes.

“We were passing right by anyway, and we left so early. I thought we could afford a detour for a few hours,” Solo said.

“Let’s stretch our legs,” Kate said softly to the others in the back.

Cecily bit her lip and gazed out the window as her friends exited the RV.

Solo had pulled the RV in beside one of the town parks. Cecily remembered rollerblading around it when she was a kid, with the family dog on a leash. She had come home with so many skinned knees. Birds sang in the maples that lined the perimeter of the park, just as they always had.

“You waited until I was asleep and then you did something I asked you not to do,” she said as calmly as she could.

“I thought that you might really want to do this,” Solo said. “I thought that you might want to explore your past.”

“There’s nothing to explore in my past,” Cecily said bitterly. “It’s all gone.”

She turned away from him to gather her thoughts. She would go retrieve the others and they could get back on the road and try to put this all behind them, in every sense.

“Cecily, there’s something I need to tell you,” Solo said earnestly.

His calm voice was even deeper than usual.

She turned back to him, curious in spite of her anger.

“My brothers and I have certain… gifts,” he said carefully.

“Sure you do,” Cecily said, rolling her eyes. “Look, you’re good in bed, but that doesn’t mean you can play games with me.”

“Oh,” he laughed nervously. “That’s not what I meant. But thank you.”

“Go on,” she said.

“These gifts are more like… well, I guess you would call them powers,” he said. “Things no human can do. We think that they may have manifested as a vestige of our personal strengths on Aerie.”

“Super powers?” Cecily asked incredulously.

“Well, some are more super than others,” Solo said. “But yes, enhanced abilities.”

“So what’s yours?” Cecily asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “But I guess I would describe it as reading object memories.”

“What are object memories?” Cecily asked her anger almost forgotten in the face of this new discovery.

“Well, for example, I grabbed your backpack the other day instead of Kirk’s and I touched the keychain,” Solo said. “And I saw… I saw your mother give you the bracelet.”

Cecily stared at him. He appeared to be telling the truth.

“Wait, no, I told you about the bracelet,” she said.

“You were crying in your bed the night before Father’s Day breakfast,” Solo said softly, looking down at his hands. “And your mother told you that your uncle would come to the breakfast with you. And you asked her about your father and she wouldn’t answer. Instead she gave you the bracelet.”

Cecily froze.

He had described the scene exactly, with details she certainly hadn’t shared with him, or anyone for that matter.

“Dr. Bhimani said we should not tell anyone about our gifts until we were mated,” Solo said sadly. “But I don’t feel I have a choice. You have a right to know.”

“Thank you,” Cecily said automatically. She was still processing what he had said.

“And I’m sorry that touching your things can be an invasion of your privacy,” Solo continued.

“That’s why you didn’t want to hold my stuff,” she said, putting it together.

“Most times I can control my gift,” Solo told her “But when it comes to the people I care about, sometimes the object memories just happen, whether I want them to or not.”

She nodded, trying to imagine what it would be like to see memories by touching things.

“At any rate, I saw that you want to know more about your father,” Solo said. “And with my gift, I thought if we came here, maybe I could help you find what you want.”

Cecily looked out at the park again.

A little girl and her brother were trying to fly a kite, leaves dancing on the tree branches above them as their dad looked on from one of the benches.

She had longed to see her own dad on that bench once upon a time. Would she still want to see him now?

The feelings bubbled up in her chest again, as strong as they had ever been. Anger, loss, and a burning curiosity. The only way to stop the volcano of emotion was to not think about it.

“If you knew about him, maybe you would feel better,” Solo said softly.

She wondered if that could be true.

“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?” Solo asked.

“Okay, let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s look for him. Let’s try to figure this out.”

“Really?” Solo asked, his eyes dancing.

“Really,” she replied. “But we’ve only got a day, so let’s not get too optimistic.”

“We’d better get started,” he pointed out.

“Not yet,” Cecily said. “There’s something you have to understand.”

“Okay,” Solo said. “What is it?”

“You can never do this again,” she said.

“Never use my gift?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Your gift can be invasive, but it’s part of who you are. I’m talking about the fact that I told you I didn’t want to come here and you tricked me. That’s not okay. From here on in, you need to be honest with me, and know that when I say no I mean no. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Cecily” he said, nodding solemnly. I will not try to trick you again.”

“If you do, it’s over,” she told him, giving him a stern look to make sure he knew she wasn’t kidding.

He nodded again, reproachfully. He looked so much like a sad puppy that she had to resist cracking a smile and undermining her own message.

“Okay,” she said, hopping out of the RV.

The other four were huddled together on the sidewalk opposite the park. They looked up at her as one, like a herd of startled deer.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Get back in and we’ll explain on the way to my storage unit.”