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I move my next to c6.
“I assume this happened before you ran away,” she says, keeping her eyes on the chessboard. I nod, and her eyes flash to mine before going right back to the chess pieces in front of us.
Her knight to c3.
“How old were you, Syd?”
I move my knight to f16, silently sitting back. I don’t take my eyes off her hands as they hover above the board, planning her next move.
“Six.”
Her hand freezes as she places her second knight on f3. She stays there, hovering, as her eyes lock on me.
I don’t dare look at her.
Without waiting for her to back off the board, I move a pawn to e6.
“Did our parents know?”
I think about it for a second. “I don’t know. Sometimes I felt like they did.”
She lets out a deep, labored breath. The kind you take when you’re considering doing something horrible and you’re trying to force yourself to calm down. The kind that you learn about in therapy but don’t really work in real life.
Her pawn to e3.
“How long?” she asks, her anger barely restrained.
“Ten years,” I whisper.
My knight to d7.
Her fingers turn white as she grips her bishop, moving it to d3.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks softly. The softest I’ve ever heard her speak.
“Would you have listened?” I look at her.
I really look at her.
We have the same face, but hers is unarguably more aged than mine. Whether it be the stress of the job, the cigarettes, or something else, worry lines line her forehead as she frowns, her eyes sad.
I move my pawn to c4, taking hers.
“I don’t know why I took the job here,” she says suddenly, sighing. “I didn’t think I was cut out for it. Didn’t think it would be good for me, you know? I don’t know. I don’t trust the government. I don’t trust the systems that are supposed to work.”
She clicks her tongue, moving her bishop to c4, taking my pawn.
“I don’t either,” I tell her, thinking about how small I truly feel around her for the first time since I was brought here.
Maverick walks over to us, placing his pointed face in my lap, his brown eyes looking up at me. I look back at him for a moment before placing my palm on his head, petting him.
“The first time mom visited me was when I was moved to a new foster home,” she begins as I move my pawn to b5. She immediately moves her bishop back to d3, so I can’t take it. “Dad didn’t know. She did it in secret. She was away for something. I’m not sure what. I remember I was eight, though.”
I move my bishop to b7.
“I remember being surprised. I hadn’t heard much about my parents. All I knew was that the foster home I went to was terrible. All I knew was that I was being abused. I brought it up to a case worker and was ignored for quite some time until finally, one day, they believed me.”
Her pawn to e4, mine to b4.
