Page 27 of Lovely Darkness

When I get to the front, I go up the porch steps and enter the house through the front door. I pause in the foyer, listening. Nothing. No sound at all. So I walk down the hallway to the kitchen and see there is already a plate of pancakes under a glass dome waiting for anyone who wanders in.

That was not Adam’s doing, so must’ve been McKay’s.

So. Breakfast is made. I will warm the pancakes up and take Wendy a plate once she gets back from the woods.

But now I have nothing to do and I don’t want to go looking for her in the woods because I’d like to stay as far from Nathan as I can until it’s absolutely necessary.

He and I have unfinished business and we both know it. That business needs to be discussed in private. So I snoop a little. I wander over to the far side of the family room where there are tons of built-in shelves, but then I notice there’s a door. It’s not out of place in this house. There seem to be random doors leading to new places everywhere I look. But I’m curious, so I open it and find a little room set up like a school—a chalkboard with some math problems on it, an old wooden table, and a neat stack of books on a shelf.

There are four wooden chairs around the table and when I pull one out, the seat has a well-worn curve to it. Like generations of Company kids have been sittin’ their asses in these chairs to be taught lessons.

I grab the stack of schoolbooks and take a seat, reading the covers of each one. They are old textbooks from the eighteen hundreds. A couple of them are familiar.

A smile creeps up my face when I find the language and grammar books. Because the pictures and stories are also familiar. I used these books. Harper wasn’t expected to study the way I was so she wasn’t there when the tutors went over things with me. But I would go over things with her afterward. Everything I learned, she learned too. Everything. When I was learning to read, I taught her to read too. When I was learning numbers and math, I taught her numbers and math too. When I was learning to kill, I taught her to kill too.

Harper was my purpose when I was a kid. And I was lucky, I think. None of the other Company people I know got the gift of their twin. I miss her. I want to see her. I want my family back. And everything about this little room suddenly hurts. Not just because of Harper, either. But Wendy, too.

Because I can’t help but compare her life to this life that little Maggie has—or even the life that I had.

Chek taught Wendy things. She’s well-read, and smart, and she can do math, speak a few languages, and she understands enough science to get by. But she didn’t get a place like Old Home and if anyone deserves a place filled with family, it’s Wendy.

I didn’t really get this either, but Harper and I, we had the yacht and we had each other. We always knew we were children. And that’s a big deal.

Wendy and Indie, they never got to be children the way Harper and I did. They didn’t spend years floating around the tropics swimming, and diving, and playing on a beach. They were working. And I was working too, but I didn’t go far and I always came home at night. I wasn’t taken away from Harper and I suddenly wonder how that came to be.

It’s not like my father was paternal, or whatever. He didn’t give a fuck about us. Whatever childhood I had with Harper was part of his plan.

So why did he let us become so close?

This reminds me of Adam’s declaration last night. That we’re brothers.

Maybe. I mean, the pedigree kinda lines up and it’s not exactly unheard of. But you know the most interesting thing about Adam, if we do turn out to be brothers? It’s McKay.

Adam was given McKay and I was allowed to keep Harper.

It feels very… planned.

Damn, my mind is wandering today. I put the school books back where I got them and refocus on Wendy. She didn’t get a yacht. She didn’t get a built-in best friend like McKay and Harper. She didn’t have a whole family of people around her the way this little Maggie does. The way Merc’s kids do too. And hell, the whole reason I gave Lauren to Sasha was so that she could have a life like this as well.

Maggie has this.

Lauren has this.

Daphne, Avery, and Lily have this.

Indie had this.

Nate had this, by proxy.

I had this.

Sasha had this—even if the last part of her childhood was not in the plan.

And I can only assume, since this fuckin’ place belongs to Adam, that he and McKay had this.

Hell, I don’t really know where Donovan fits in, but sure as fuckin’ shit, he had this too. Because no matter what he is, he’s still Donovan Couture, grandson to a very important man.

Everyone had a little bit of family except Wendy.