Hidden by Marianne Curley Read Free Book Online

apart, she’ll start crying and, like usual, I’ll get no explanation. ‘This is what you always do. You play diversionary games so you end up telling me nothing.’
    They remain silent.
    ‘Please answer my question.’
    They stare at me with their mouths both clamped shut.
    ‘One of you, answer the damn question!’
    They avoid looking at each other. They stare straight ahead, Dad over my left shoulder, Mum over my right.
    Arrrgh, this is pathetic!
    ‘I’m sorry, parents, if my question is a little difficult. Let me help you. It requires a yes or no answer.’
    ‘You don’t have to be sarcastic,’ Mum says. ‘We understand the question well enough.’
    ‘Then what’s the problem? But, please, the truth. Was Ben really my brother?’
    Suddenly Dad opens his mouth, but before a word comes out Mum yells at him, ‘John, stop! What do you think you’re doing?’
    Dad sighs. ‘It’s time, Heather. Our girl needs to know. We can’t leave her in the dark any longer.’
    ‘But we have to,’ she hisses, giving him a warning glare colder than an arctic snowdrift.
    ‘Dad.’ I wait until he looks at me. ‘Mum’s scaring me. What’s going on?’
    He peers at her earnestly and Mum’s lips turn white as she presses them together. But then she sighs and nods. She reaches out to me. I take her hand and notice it is trembling.
    ‘Your birth didn’t exactly occur the way we’ve led you to believe,’ Dad says finally.
    I pull my hand out of Mum’s even though she’s tightening her grasp. I don’t want to be touching her when she finally reveals the truth.
    ‘Ebony,’ she whispers in a shaky voice, ‘I was never pregnant with twins. I was … never pregnant with you.’
    And as I sit back and brace myself, a minuscule part of me, the part that always knew I wasn’t a Hawkins, is sighing with relief.
    ‘Why would you tell me I was a twin? Why couldn’t you tell me that you’d adopted me? Heaps of people adopt kids. You may not have heard,’ I mutter sarcastically, ‘apparentlyit’s less damaging to our psyche if we’re raised knowing the truth.’
    Dad’s eyes turn sad as he rests them on me. ‘We had no choice, darling.’
    I don’t accept his excuse. ‘Everyone has a choice.’
    Mum says, ‘You’re right, and we chose to protect you.’
    ‘Protect me from what? The big, bad bogeyman?’
    Mum closes her eyes against my hostility. I glance at her and wait, but inside I’m so rattled I could scream. ‘It was in the contract we signed.’
    ‘An adoption agreement?’
    ‘Sort of,’ she says slowly.
    Dad says, ‘We were warned off telling you the truth.’
    ‘So, I’m a black-market baby? Is this what you’re saying?’
    They deny the accusation emphatically.
    My mother told me once that people lie because the truth is too ugly to bear. She was probably referring to this truth, this lie. I wonder how ugly this is going to get. It’s obvious, though, what happened. ‘You bought me after you lost your own baby.’
    Mum starts to cry. ‘He told us that if we told you the truth, his people would come and take you away, and we would be punished for breaching the contract.’
    ‘Along with our neighbours in the valley,’ Dad says, adding to my confusion.
    Mum whispers, ‘We were scared. Surely you can understand that.’
    ‘Someone blackmailed you into silence! What happened to your brains? This man didn’t want you to expose hiscrime so he could go on selling more stolen babies.’ I pause to let this sink into their heads – and mine.
    Mum and Dad are not my real parents
.
    ‘I … I promise you both right now, nothing is going to happen to me, or the neighbours, just because you’re finally telling me the truth. But you’re going to have to tell me
everything
’.
    In a sad voice Dad says, ‘A strange man came to our door unexpectedly. He was tall, impeccably dressed in a black suit with a matching long coat and a smart black fedora.’
    ‘His name was Zavier. He was extremely