The Thought Readers (Mind Dimensions #1)(29)

A wave of panic washes over me. I try not to phase. I want to hear this.

“I want to know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Right now.”

I look at them in turn. Daring them to try to wiggle out of it. They know they have to spill the beans now.

“You were adopted, Darren,” Lucy says quietly, looking at me.

“Yes,” Sara whispers. “I’m not your biological mother.” She starts to cry, something I’ve hated since I was a little kid. There’s something wrong, weirdly scary, about seeing your mom cry. Except—and the full enormity of it dawns on me—she’s not my birth mom.

She never has been.





Chapter 13


How would anyone react in my shoes?

I don’t know if it’s seeing my moms so upset or the news itself, but I can’t take the flood of emotion for long. I phase into the Quiet. Once the world around me is still, I pick up the coffee cup and throw it across the room. It shatters against the TV, coffee spilling everywhere. I get up, grab the empty chair next to the one where my frozen self is sitting, and hurl it across the room after the cup, yelling as loudly as I can. I stop myself from breaking more stuff, though; even though I know it will go back to normal after I phase out, it still feels like vandalism.

Then I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to pull myself together.

This explains things—things that Eugene and Mira told me about. Sara didn’t lie to me. She never had my ability. She reacted to my descriptions of the Quiet as a normal person would. I should probably feel relieved. I feel anything but.

Why would they not tell me? After all, it’s not like we haven’t had conversations about being adopted. We had them all the time. Sort of. We talked about how Lucy didn’t give birth to me, but loves me just as much as Sara who, allegedly, did. This would’ve been just more of the same.

I take more deep breaths. I sit on the floor and perform the meditation I have used four times already today.

I begin to feel better—well enough to continue talking, at least. I look at the shocked expression on my frozen face. I reach out and touch myself on the elbow. The gesture is intended to comfort the frozen me, which, once I do it, seems silly. The touch brings me out of the Quiet.

I take a deep breath more demonstratively in the real world. “If you’re not my biological mother,” I manage to say, “then who is?”

“Your parents’ names were Mark and Margret,” Lucy says. To my shock, she’s crying too—something I’ve almost never seen her do. A knot ties itself in the pit of my stomach as she continues, “Your uncle might’ve told you stories about Mark.”

I’m almost ready to phase into the Quiet again. She said ‘were.’ I know what that means. And I have heard of Mark. He was the daredevil partner who worked with Lucy and Kyle.

“Tell me everything,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m trying my best not to say something I’ll regret later.

“Before you were born, we really did go to Israel, as we always told you,” Sara begins, her voice shaking. “It’s just that what happened there was different from what you know. Our friends Mark and Margret approached us with a crazy story, and an even crazier request.”

She stops, looking at Lucy pleadingly.

“They said someone was out to kill them,” says Lucy in a more even voice. “They said Margret was pregnant, and they wanted us to raise the child. To pretend it was our own.” She gets calmer as she tells this, her tears stopping. “We always wanted a child. It seemed like a dream come true. They were the ones who came up with the whole sperm bank story. They said the danger they were in could spill into your life if anyone ever found out about the arrangement. I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for not telling you, but when they got killed, just as they moved back to New York to be near you . . .”

“Lucy and Mark were close,” Sara jumps in, wiping away the moisture on her face. “Back then, they worked in the organized crime division together. Lucy and I just assumed the unit where they all worked had something to do with why Mark was killed, which is why I begged your mother to switch to another division.” She looks at Lucy again, silently urging her to continue with the story.

“I investigated their deaths,” Lucy says. “But I still, to this day, have no idea who killed them and why. The killer left no clues. The crime scene was the most thoroughly investigated one in my career—and nothing. All I know is that Margret was shot in the back in her own kitchen, and it looked like Mark was killed a few seconds later when he tried to attack the person who shot her. There were no signs of a breakin.”

My mind’s gone numb. How am I supposed to feel about something like this happening to the biological parents I never knew existed? Or about them giving me to their friends to raise, even though they knew they’d be putting Sara and Lucy in danger?

I can’t take it anymore, so I phase into the Quiet again.

Once everything is still, I walk up to Sara, whose face is frozen in concern. I still love her, just as much as I did on my way here. This changes nothing. I’ve always loved Lucy the same as Sara, despite knowing we’re not related by blood. As far as I can tell, this is no different.

I put my hand on Sara’s forearm and try to get into the state of Coherence, as Eugene called it. I’m so worked up that it’s much more difficult this time. I don’t know how long it takes before I’m in Sara’s memories.