by Sarah Noffke
“We need to talk,” Haady said, looking more composed than his brother. He always handled Padmal better. Always more patient with her bratty attitude. He joked it was because he was more mature by a few minutes.
“I’m listening,” Padmal said, smacking the gum in her mouth, her eyes on an outfit in the magazine.
“You know how Titus said Dave gave everyone what they needed rather than wanted?” Haady said.
“Get to the boring point,” Padmal said, turning the page.
“Did you even stop to consider how this applied to you? How Dave gave you what you needed all these years?” Haady said.
The girl flipped her head up, centering her cinnamon-colored eyes on Haady. “Honestly I didn’t. I only heard half of what that skinny dude said.”
“Titus,” Nabhi said, gripping the door frame tighter. “Titus is his name and you know that and should have zero beef with him.”
“The way I see it is he was Dave’s lousy sidekick and deserves less respect than the dead fat man,” she said and smiled when Nabhi’s eyes narrowed at her. “Are we done here?” she said to Haady.
“No, we aren’t. We,” he said, motioning to Nabhi and himself, “think we’ve figure out what Dave gave you that you needed.”
“A miserable existence and cramped living quarters,” she said in response.
Haady shook his head. “He gave you a life you would have missed out on.”
“I’m not following you,” she said, flipping another page in the magazine.
“You wanted him to leave you in the orphanage so our mother would be able to come back there and adopt you, right?” Haady said.
She rolled her eyes and blew a bubble with her gum. “What are we playing? The obvious game? Of course that’s what I wanted. And I didn’t want to be forced to work for some power crazy mad man.”
“He never forced you to work for him,” Nabhi said. “You’re imagining that, along with your other dreams of grandeur.”
“Nab,” Haady said, holding a steadying hand out to his brother, who reluctantly nodded back at him, surrendering his compliance.
“Padmal, Dave could have left you at the orphanage,” Haady said in a calm voice. “He could have listened to your request to be returned there after he adopted you. He could have acquiesced to your demands, but he didn’t. Instead he gave you not what you wanted, but what you needed.”
“Where is this going?” Padmal said, her voice rising into almost a yell.
“My point is, you would have rotted away and gone crazy waiting in that orphanage. Dave gave you a life even though you didn’t want it because he knew,” Haady said.
“Knew? Knew what?” she said, sitting up.
“Knew that you’d waste your life waiting for a woman who would never show up,” Haady said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Titus gave this to us after the ceremony. Apparently it was in our file that Dave was given when he adopted us.”
Padmal grabbed it with a greedy look on her face. Her expression dropped to one of disbelief when she unfolded the paper. Her eyes raced over its contents, finally stopping on the title at the top:
Certificate of Death.
The paper was an impressive forgery the brothers had created which stated that Komal Sharma had died one year after the triplets were born.
“I don’t believe it,” Padmal said, dropping the paper to her lap, but her voice wasn’t suspicious as Nabhi had feared. His sister’s voice was one of shock. Her lost eyes focused forward, not seeing. “Dead. My mother is dead,” the girl said.
“I know,” Haady said, real sympathy in his words.
“She was never going to come back for me because she couldn’t,” Padmal said, holding the piece of paper to her chest now.
“I know,” Haady repeated. “I’m sorry.”
Nabhi blew out a breath, unsure why his brother was apologizing to someone who didn’t deserve it.
“And Dave,” she said, her tone shifting.
“Yeah, he gave you a life. One you would have wasted,” Haady said.
“Yeah,” she said, the old spite returning to her voice, plowing over the grief the girl truly felt for her deceased mother. “And Dave made me suffer with my dreams when he knew. Knew our mother was dead and could have saved me the torture of pining for her.”
Haady’s eyes widened in disbelief and Nabhi turned, putting his forehead against the trailer wall. Neither brother saw things going this way.
“If anything I hate Dave more for this than for making us do child labor. He knew our mother was dead and that is unforgivable,” she said and bolted to a standing position before stomping out of the trailer, leaving her brothers to wonder how their deceitful trick had backfired.
And in truth their mother wasn’t dead. What none of them knew was she had returned to the orphanage a year after they’d been adopted, but not to adopt her daughter. She could only afford one child and her heart told her it should be her firstborn, Haady. If he was still there at the orphanage where she had left him eight years prior then she’d break her own rule and separate the triplets. But thanks to Ian’s vision, Dave knew this and adopted all of the orphans. And now only Ian knew that if Padmal had remained at the orphanage with her brothers then she would have been devastated when Haady, and not she, was adopted by their mother. Dave knew this and he gave Padmal what she needed. He kept her heart whole and the triplets together.
Chapter Seventy
For the second time in two days Finley stepped out of Zuma’s steamy bathroom wearing Matteo’s too large clothes. Finley was tall but much leaner than Zuma’s father. He took his clothes straight to the hamper, his concerned eyes on Zuma. She sat crossed-legged on her bed, her brow furrowed, her eyes on the phone in her hands.
“What is it?” he said, walking back to her, his hands now empty.
“No one at Vagabond Circus is answering their phone,” she said, looking up at him, scrunching up her mouth in frustration. “I know I should have called earlier because Titus wanted to know how the surgery went. And now I can’t get him to answer his phone.”
“I’m sure he’s busy, Zuma,” Finley said, taking a seat on the bed next to her. It felt so strange to be able to do that without earning a look of disapproval from her. So quickly things had changed with Zuma. But they had since the beginning. The evolutionary cycles of their relationship continued to shift. “They just had the memorial, right? I’m sure he’s just grieving,” Finley said.
She nodded her head and sucked in her bottom lip. “It just doesn’t feel right to leave a message for him or Fanny or Jaz telling them Jack is paralyzed.”
“None of them are answering their phones?” Finley asked, his voice now sounding concerned.
She shrugged. “Like you said, they are all grieving.”
“As you should be,” he said, reaching out and pausing his hovering hand above the phone in her hand. When she didn’t move he grabbed the phone from her hand and slid it onto the bedside table. “Don’t worry about this anymore tonight. Tomorrow we will be back at Vagabond Circus and Jack will have Fanny’s care. You’ve been overwhelmed with Jack all day, but now I would recommend you focus on you. It’s an important thing to do when you lose someone.”
Her eyes slid up to Finley’s. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience. Did you lose someone?”
“Not anyone I really cared about,” he said.
She continued to stare at him, staying silent, waiting for him to elaborate. This is when you share, she said over the telepathic link he was apparently allowing in that moment.
He sighed, showing his resistance, but this was part of their deal. And he’d do just about anything to earn Zuma’s affection back. To have the closeness they’d had over the last day. It already felt like it had mended parts of him, just knowing he could turn to her and walk into her arms. Just yesterday morning she was still furious at him.
Finally he said, “I learned early on that I shouldn’t
get close to anyone while one of Knight’s Kids. I grew up in a set of four and we were monitored. That’s how I was raised. Being monitored.”
“As opposed to?”
“Being cared for,” he said.
“But if no one cared for you then how were your needs met?”
Finley didn’t answer but his expression did.
They weren’t met, Zuma realized.
“Anyway, my set was soon split up when we came to Dream Traveler age. However, I had been raised with those three kids, so of course I’d recognize them anywhere or anyhow.”
“What happened?” Zuma asked. Then using her combat sense she spied something new in Finley. A tension that she’d never seen in his body triggered by the memory.
“One of the kids, number three, he’d been made an example,” Finley said.
Zuma popped her hand to her mouth as she gasped. “The chain?”
Finley nodded. “Knight left him there a long time,” he said. His tone was careful, careful to vault away the indicators of what he was really feeling.
Zuma knew most people would apologize right then. Say something about how Finley didn’t deserve that kind of treatment and abuse, and that no one did. But to Zuma those were wasted words. It was obvious in the look she was giving him that she was sorry. “Finley, we have to stop him. Knight. We have to find a way to alert the authorities. My mom might know people who can help.”
Finley had only then brought his eyes to hers and laced on his mouth was a bitter smile. “Zuma, I don’t mean to sound negative, but Knight can’t be stopped. He can curse people. He can give people a headache so horrible they have an aneurism. He has the strongest minds under his control.”
“But Finley, there has to be a way,” Zuma said.
“If there is, then I don’t know what it is. All I know is how to get away from him,” Finley said.
“But you!” she said, her tone excited. “You can’t get the headaches. Your mind shielding protects you. That’s got to be something. Maybe there are more like you and together we can fight him.”
“No,” Finley said with a force she’d never heard him use before, not even the hundred times he’d been furious at her. “You’re not fighting him.”
“Free choice, Finley. Remember. You can’t prevent me from doing something I really want to do.”
“Your parents’ rules don’t apply to me, Zuma.”
“Well, I am a free agent who can do what I want.”
“And as we’ve established, I’m currently the only one who can withstand his mind abuse and I’m not helping,” he said.
“Finley…”
“Look, we rescued Jack. Now we are taking him back. We are going to ensure Dave’s circus is a success. That’s what we are going to do,” he said with force.
“But Finley, if you can stand up to him—”
“Zuma, I can still be cursed. So can any of his kids. Why do you think the strong kids he controls don’t rebel? He has so many powers over his kids. Over everyone,” he said, standing and heading for the couch. The mention of this made Finley remember Zuma’s curse. The girl could smile, but not experience anything but a fleeting moment of almost-happiness. Even Finley with his endless love for her couldn’t make her happy. And he was no closer to lifting her curse. He threw himself on the couch still covered with sheets.
“Okay, fine,” Zuma said. “You’re right. We need to focus on Jack and the circus. Both will need a lot of support and mending.”
Finley didn’t realize until he stretched out on the couch how incredibly fatigued he was. He had slept at the hospital the night before but only for a few hours. Tonight he’d have to really sleep; his consciousness would be too exhausted to dream travel.
He pulled his head up and looked at Zuma, who was still sitting on her bed, crossed-legged. He had felt her eyes on him so he wasn’t surprised to learn she was looking at him, but the inquisitive expression on her face wasn’t expected.
“What?” he said.
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch if it’s uncomfortable there, especially after sleeping sitting up last night. You can sleep here,” she said, indicating the other side of her bed.
He laid his head back down and stared at the ceiling. “No, I can’t, Zuma.”
She blinked at him, not having expected that answer. “What? Why?”
“Well, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to sleep in a bed with someone else’s fiancée. What would people think?”
An abrupt laugh fell out of her mouth. “Oh, come on, Finley. Don’t be like that.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the raised ceiling and crown molding outlining it, but did allow a pirate’s smile to wrap around his mouth. “And I’m also not taking you up on your offer because I’m fairly certain you’ll try something with me.”
A gasp followed by a huff jumped out of Zuma’s mouth. “How dare you?” she said, launching a pillow in his direction.
He blocked the pillow, knocking it out of the trajectory of his face. “You should know I’m saving myself,” he said, that smile still in his tone.
“Oh?” she said. “For who?”
He closed his heavy eyes and an authentic grin spread on his mouth. “For the girl who forgives me.”
She stared at him. He looked almost asleep already, his hands clasped over his abdomen. She couldn’t believe how patient he was with her. Before and now. Zuma hardly believed that she wanted to forgive Finley. The guy who was culpable for Dave’s death. But she did. With all her being. For some reason she thought the act would trigger something which had the potential to make her truly happy. The kind of happiness she heard in children’s thoughts when they were at the circus or the kind she knew her parents had. Pure happiness as real as spirituality, but just as intangible.
“Well, are you at least going to tell me goodnight?” she said after the long silence, having watched different muscle groups relax in his body. He had already drifted off. Still, he didn’t look annoyed by the wake-up. He immediately rolled to a standing position with a beautiful grace. His super speed was only slightly noticeable in the way he moved as he crossed the space, not fast and not slow. When he was at her bed’s edge he bent over and paused an inch from her face.
“Good night, Zuma,” he said, somehow suddenly not looking at all tired.
“Good night,” she whispered back. And she knew what was coming next, maybe before Finley knew he was going to do it. He sucked in a half breath and pressed his mouth against hers. It was their first kiss since Knight’s compound and one they’d both been anticipating but now were too tired to fully appreciate. His lips softly caressed hers, a sweet simplicity in the tiniest of movements. When he parted a few inches, Zuma’s eyes were still closed, an almost look of peace on her face. When she did look at him she smiled and it was the smallest of gestures but it made him feel overwhelmed.
I love you, Zuma, he said over the telepathic link he opened up and closed for just that one message. And again it struck Zuma how loving Finley could be, especially for not having been given affection all his life. It was like the act of unconditional love was somehow in his DNA. He was truly a marvel to her, she realized as she watched him walk away.
Chapter Seventy-One
Doom enveloped Titus. How could things have gotten worse? Dave’s death was his worst-case scenario. But his rational mind had never considered this happening. It was absurd. Everything in the miniature big top seemed to be mocking him. Laughing at his newest catastrophe. The man picked up a chair and hurled it across the space. It flew across the tent and banged into the wall. The mast in the center of the office leaned in that direction. Titus knew that had been a dumb move. Now the structure of the small big top was threatened. But did it matter anymore?
They had their first show since Dave’s death tomorrow. They had no acrobats. And a whole host of problems. Ones he saw no way to resolve. Even the look in Fanny’s eyes had carried defeat. She was the most hopeful person he’d known—well,
aside from Dave. And now the woman’s eyes were haunted, her words whispered ones of disbelief. Titus looked down at the only paper on the table. The rest riddled the dirt floor. It didn’t count because this was the only one that mattered. How had Dave, the smartest man he’d ever known, been so dumb? How had he made such a terrible error? How could he not have made a last will and testament?
Chapter Seventy-Two
“I haven’t been able to get ahold of Nurse Fanny with the number you gave me,” Dr. Chang said, his hands gripping the handles of Jack’s wheelchair.
“I’m telling you it’s her number and we know her,” Zuma said to the doctor, Finley by her side. “We live with her. I promise,” she added.
“They just had a memorial service for a friend,” Finley said. “She’s grieving.”
“But you’re certain she’ll be able to care for Jack?” Dr. Chang asked.
“Yes,” Zuma said. “She’ll be honored to. We will have her call you as soon as we get there tonight.”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, please do, and call if there are any issues, Jack,” he said, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
Jack swiveled his head around and looked up. “I’m so drugged, I’m not sure I’ll know if there’s a problem,” he said, his words slurred.
“Oh, you’ll know,” Dr. Chang said, scratching his clean-shaven chin. “I don’t like this at all. It’s very unorthodox.”
“But how many of your patients know a world-renowned heal—”
“Nurse,” Finley said, cutting Zuma off before she said something the Middling race would find laughable. Middlings believed in nurses and doctors. Dream Travelers believed in healers.
Dr. Chang didn’t catch the slip. His mind was too overwhelmed with the decision he’d approved to allow a vulnerable patient who had just had a major surgery to leave his care. But for Jack to have Nurse Fanny was the best-case scenario. If anyone could fix him, even just a little bit, it would be her. She’d performed miracles during her time. “I do have a curious question for you all,” the doctor said.
