Evolutionary Romance- The Complete Trilogy

by Sarah Biglow

  Dad smiled. “We’re not blind. We noticed you brought her to the restaurant the other day.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, when can we meet her properly?” Mom pressed.

  “Uh, I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. It’s still really new.” They had to know I didn’t have a great track record with dating. Besides, I wasn’t sure I still had a girlfriend. “I promise I’ll introduce you when I’m ready.” After a moment of chewing, I looked from my mom to my dad. “So, how long am I grounded?” I didn’t want to know the answer.

  “We’re going to let you off with a pass this one time,” Dad replied.

  “Seriously?”

  “You said it wouldn’t happen again. We trust you.”

  My mood improved instantly, and I devoured breakfast. With a full belly, I bounded upstairs to get cleaned up. Hiding the bloody shirt at the very back of my closet, I pulled on a clean one and heard my parents whispering in the hallway.

  “You know he’s in over his head,” Dad hissed.

  “He has a purpose. We can’t ask for more than that for him.”

  “We didn’t agree to this.”

  “Of course, we did. We’ve known this was going to happen for years.”

  “It doesn’t mean we agreed to let him be put in harm’s way.”

  Floorboards creaked beneath my weight and betrayed my position. The conversation died, and footsteps told me they were heading downstairs. Out of normal eavesdropping range. What did they mean I was in harm’s way? They couldn’t possibly know my secret. I’d never done anything to give them reason to suspect I had powers. And what had they agreed to?

  Add those questions to the information Marisol had unearthed about Tina’s parents. That was a mystery I could solve without outing myself to my parents. I did a basic search on Clayton Kirkpatrick, not expecting to find anything of note.

  A list of hits popped up, including a page for Professor Clayton Kirkpatrick on the West Coast. I skimmed his information. Professor Kirkpatrick had been a professor in California in the Science department. Apparently, he’d left about five years ago. There was no update on his whereabouts. My eyes glazed over as I read the titles of his various publications. It translated in my head as “science gibberish” until the last article caught my attention. Nearly twenty years ago, he had co-authored a paper on genetic manipulation.

  I dug my phone out of my pocket and sent Marisol a message.

  Next_Gen_Prof_X: You were right. There’s definitely something to what you found.

  I downloaded the paper’s synopsis and settled in to read. From what I could gather, Professor Kirkpatrick and his co-author—Helena—put forth the theory that babies could be created with extra senses and enhanced genetics. It certainly lent a grain of truth to my own existence. But it didn’t actually answer the host of questions we still had. For starters, this had to be theoretical. Gene editing wasn’t real. And even if it were, why would they do it to their own kid? How could they get other people to let them do it their kids, too?

  I would have to be patient and wait until Monday to find out what was really going on. I had a sneaking suspicion a lot of our answers awaited us in Room 804.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marisol

  I got Spencer’s message about Tina’s parents just before Papi’s truck pulled into the driveway. I didn’t have time to pester Spencer with follow-up questions. I greeted Papi in the kitchen with a hot cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal. He kissed the top of my head and sat down.

  “Thank you, mija.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied and sat across from him. I focused on him, testing my powers. I still didn’t know my limits or all my triggers.

  He looked up from the bowl. “How was your night?”

  “Okay. I hung out with some new friends.”

  He arched a brow. “Just friends?”

  “Yes.” I wanted to say that Spencer was more than a friend, but given the revelations of last night, I wasn’t sure where we stood, and Spencer had left things in my court. “There is someone that might turn out to be more than a friend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Spencer. We actually were friends online before we moved here.”

  “Bring him around. I’d like to meet him.” His tone conveyed the reasoning all too clearly.

  “Don’t scare him, please. He’s a good guy.”

  “I just want to be sure you are safe, Marisol. It is a father’s job to protect their daughters.” His guilt clouded my emotions.

  “You didn’t fail me,” I said before I considered how my words sounded.

  “Yes, I did. And for that, I am so sorry. I thought moving here would make things easier.”

  “I am settling in. I am starting to make new friends. It is even starting to feel like home.”

  A different flavor of guilt hit me, and I tried to decipher it. He wasn’t feeling ashamed at coming here with me, but he knew my mother wouldn’t have approved. “Would we have come if Mom was still alive?”

  “I … I don’t know. Why?”

  “You haven’t talked about her much since we came here. I thought, maybe, she’d want us to live somewhere else.”

  “Your mother would have liked it here.”

  His words sounded insincere. He’d never lied to me before. Why would he do it now? I wanted to press him for answers. I needed to know what he wasn’t telling me. It would mean admitting there was something different about me and I wasn’t ready for that. For all my arguing when Spencer showed me the truth, I would come off crazy if I shared this part of myself with him.

  “I’m going to work on my history exam,” I announced.

  Better to remove myself from the situation than sit there awkwardly. Papi nodded without comment and I left him, the strange conversation replaying in my head. A part of me wanted to be mad at him for keeping things from me but the rational part of me knew I was being hypocritical.

  I tried to work on my final exam. I was halfway done when I couldn’t focus anymore. Spencer’s message was drawing my focus. I scooped up my phone and dialed his number. It rang once, twice.

  “Hey. I wasn’t sure you were still talking to me.”

  “I said I needed time and I do. But we still have a mystery to solve.”

  “You saw my message?” Spencer said.

  “What did you find?’

  “I’m pretty sure I found him, Tina’s dad. He’s a science professor on the West Coast. Or at least he was until five years ago. After that, he disappeared.”

  “How do you know he’s her dad?”

  “His oldest paper was about gene editing and creating extra senses. He wrote it with a co-author named Helena Kirkpatrick.”

  “Like empathy or magnetism,” I said, focusing on the gene editing part of his comment.

  “Exactly.”

  “Spencer, I know you want to protect Tina’s feelings, but you’re the one who said she’s been looking for answers since this started. She should know both of her parents are involved somehow.”

  The line went quiet.

  “Are you still there?” I prompted.

  “We shouldn’t tell Tina yet. I just found something else. I just sent you the link in our messages.”

  I set my phone on speaker and logged into my laptop. The link led to a news article from what looked like a local paper headlined “Local Researcher Turns Mad Scientist.”

  “What is this?”

  “Just read it.”

  I scrolled down to read the brief article attached:

  Rumors began circulating that Kirkpatrick Industries is no longer a simple research company. Its founder, Clayton Kirkpatrick, is said to be conducting illegal experiments on unsuspecting families.

  According to an anonymous source—whom some suspect to his business partner and wife—Kirkpatrick and his team offer couples the opportunity to start a family through their organization. This author questions whether they are even licensed for such practices. This
same source also shared that Kirkpatrick is using these families’ hopes for a child to conduct experiments in gene editing, a concept not yet recognized by the wider medical and scientific communities as viable.

  If you haven’t seen Kirkpatrick around town of late, you aren’t alone. When contacted for comment, the company spokesperson stated that Mr. Kirkpatrick had left town for a sabbatical. Our source shared that Kirkpatrick and his wife underwent an acrimonious split and he’s been chased from town. Couples who used Kirkpatrick’s company for fertility treatment failed to respond to a request for comment at this time.

  I saw why Spencer was hesitant to share his findings. Still, I didn’t think it right to keep the truth, however ugly, from Tina. “She’s going to find out eventually. Isn’t it better she learns about it from someone she trusts and who understands what is at stake?”

  “I don’t want her to take my head off about it,” Spencer said.

  “It’s unavoidable.”

  “We could tell her together,” he suggested.

  “If I were her and two people dropped this bombshell on me, I’d feel ganged up on.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I can still be there when you tell her,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you get home okay?”

  “My parents caught me.”

  The fact he was able to talk to me told me he hadn’t been punished too harshly. “Did they see the wound?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Good.”

  “I did overhear a weird conversation,” he said.

  I spun my chair in slow circles. “About what?”

  “They said they didn’t agree to something and they were worried I was putting myself in harm’s way.”

  "I had a weird interaction with Papi, too. He was glad we moved here, but I got the sense we wouldn't have if my mother was still alive. Like he betrayed her wishes somehow."

  "I get the feeling they know more than they're letting on."

  I skimmed over the article again. It didn't have a lot of concrete details but did give me a sinking feeling. "Have you ever asked your parents whether you were conceived normally?"

  "No. Why would I ever ask that?"

  "It isn't a coincidence Kirkpatrick Industries was doing infertility treatments twenty years ago and that it seemed to shut down right before we were born. It could be another piece of the puzzle."

  "Say it's true, it still doesn't explain how you got powers," he pointed out.

  "Maybe it does. I need to look into some things. I'll talk to you later."

  I ended the call before he could say anything else. I had no idea what I was going to do if my hunch was correct. I knew Papi kept important documents in a file cabinet in the spare room he set aside for his office. For once, his odd work schedule paid off. I stopped by his bedroom to see the blinds pulled. He snored lightly in bed. I eased the door all the way closed to muffle as much sound as possible and crossed the hall to the office.

  The cabinet wasn't locked, not that it would have stopped me. I rifled through file folders neatly identified as tax documents for the last ten years along with other expenses. At the very back was a folder marked "Marisol". I pulled it free and opened it. The first document was my most recent set of school records. Setting that aside, I continued down the pile, past old report cards and vaccination reports to the final documents. My social security card was secure in a page protector. The final piece should be my birth certificate but there was another stapled packet before it.

  My hands went clammy as the words on the letterhead translated in my brain: Kirkpatrick Industries. I left damp prints on the pages as I flipped through to the end. Both my parents signed it. I set it aside to read in more depth later before finding my birth certificate. It didn't bear the town name like I expected but that didn't mean I wasn't a product of Clayton Kirkpatrick's experiments.

  I yanked the staple free from the contract and ran it through the scanner, making myself a copy so as not to arouse suspicion. I would wait until Papi got up to ask the hard questions.

  Papi finally made an appearance in the early afternoon. I sat at the kitchen table, the copy of the contract in front of me. I'd read through some of it, but the overuse of legal jargon became too frustrating.

  "What's that?" he asked as he rummaged in the fridge for food.

  "I don't know. Why don't you explain it to me?" I answered.

  That got his attention. He abandoned his fridge inspection to join me at the table. His skin turned a ghostly pallor at the letterhead. "You shouldn't have gone through my things without asking."

  "I was looking for my birth certificate and I found this. What is it?"

  He sat down and rubbed his face. "Your mother and I had some trouble having a child. This company helped us. We wouldn't have you without them."

  "Why would you not want me to know that?"

  "It's complicated."

  "Because they were experimenting on the babies?" I accused.

  "Where is this coming from?"

  "I found an article about this company that said they were conducting illegal experiments. Is it true?"

  "Of course not, mija."

  I didn't believe him and flipped to the final page with their signatures. "You wouldn't tell me even if it were. You can't because you signed a nondisclosure agreement."

  "Your mother and I wanted a child, so yes, we signed whatever forms we had to. I don't regret it for a minute."

  "This is why she wouldn't want us coming back here, isn't it? I saw my birth certificate. I wasn't born here."

  "We moved because your mother wanted to be closer to her family."

  The deceit wafted off him like over-applied cologne. "No, she didn't. If that were true, we would have seen her family after she died. We never saw them. Don't lie to me."

  "There were a lot of reasons we left, Marisol."

  "Why did you take this job here? Did you have a choice? Did the company force you to bring me back here?"

  "Stop this right now. I'm not discussing this with you anymore. I am your father and I made the decision that was best for this family."

  Anger bubbled over, flushing my body head to toe in uncomfortable heat. I grabbed the contract and stormed out the front door, unsure where to go. I wandered aimlessly through neighborhoods that felt foreign. When I finally stopped, I looked up to find myself at Declan’s house. I approached the front door and knocked twice. Declan opened the door and stared at me, mouth agape.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I needed someone to talk to."

  "You've got a boyfriend for that."

  "Please?"

  He studied me in silence for a good thirty seconds before he stepped back and pushed the door open wider. "Come on in."

  I made it into the front hall when a woman who could only be Declan's mom ambushed me. She was stocky like her son and had the same coloring. "Who is this?" she asked.

  "She's a classmate from school," Declan said, not making eye contact.

  "Oh, wonderful. You know, Declan rarely brings his friends around."

  "It's nice to meet you," I said and shook her hand.

  "We've got school stuff to work on," Declan said and shoved me toward the hallway to the right.

  "Let me know if you need anything," his mother called after us.

  "We're fine, Mom," Declan answered and slammed the door once we were in his room.

  When we were alone, I handed him the slightly crumpled contract. "Look at this."

  He flipped through the pages and handed it back to me. "So, what? Plenty of people have help having kids."

  "Most people don't use Kirkpatrick Industries," I quipped.

  "No, I guess not."

  I sat down at his desk and took in the lack of decor again. It didn't betray anything about its occupant, not like Spencer's room. Declan sat at the foot of the bed and watched me. I reached out, probing his emotions. Unlike Tina, he didn't fight me. I
picked up on the anxiety running a constant current below the surface.

  "Spencer found out some information about Tina's father. It isn't good."

  "You going to tell her?"

  "Spencer will. I don't want her to think we're ganging up on her. She doesn't like me."

  "She doesn't like a lot of people."

  "What about you? How do you feel about me?"

  My question earned a half smirk. "You're the empath, you tell me."

  "That would be an invasion of your privacy. I don't want to do that."

  "Like I told you the other day, I think you're good for Sorano. You don't seem like a crazy person. I don't see any reason to not like you."

  "Do you trust me?"

  "You had our backs last night. That counts for something."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "Sure, it did."

  I snorted. "Okay, I get it. You like me, but you don't trust me yet."

  "With everything going on, can you blame me?"

  "No. I show up out of nowhere with powers, too. I could be a spy or dangerous. I wouldn't trust me either."

  He nodded. "So, you think we were experiments?"

  "If people could spontaneously develop powers, we'd have seen it in the population a long time ago. Whatever happened to us, it was manufactured."

  "Spencer must love this."

  "Can I ask you something?'

  "I guess."

  "Why did you agree to be in Tina's crime-fighting operation?"

  "She didn't give us a choice in the beginning. She acted like she had her shit together and we fell in line. To be honest, I wasn't sure what was happening and the fact she wasn't panicking, made me believe her. After a while, when we started helping people, it felt good to keep going out there."

  "Do you think she knows about what her parents were doing and is keeping it a secret because it reflects badly on her family?"

  "No, Tina's not that devious or that good an actress."

  "Have you ever wanted to tell someone what you can do?"

  "Who would I tell? I don't have a lot of friends."

  "You're on the wrestling team," I pointed out.