Blood Brothers

“We’ve read them,” Cal pointed out. “Multiple times.”

“You’re not women.” She held up a finger. “And, yes, Essie is. But Essie’s a woman who’s a descendent, who’s part of this town and its history. And however objective she might try to be, she may have missed some nuances. First question, where are the others?”

“There aren’t any others.”

“I disagree. There aren’t any others that were found. Essie said these books were passed to her by her father, because she loved books. I called her to be sure, but he never said if there were more.”

“If there’d been more,” Cal insisted, “he’d have given them to her.”

“If he had them. There’s a long span between the sixteen hundreds and the nineteen hundreds,” Qui

“A library Gran knew inside and out,” Cal returned. “There couldn’t have been a book in there she didn’t know about. And something like this?” He shook his head. “She’d have it if it was to be had.”

“Unless she never saw it. Maybe it was hidden, or maybe, for the sake of argument, she wasn’t meant to find it. It wasn’t meant to be found, not by her, not then.”

“Debatable,” Fox commented.

“And something to look into. Meanwhile, she didn’t date her journals, so Layla and I are dating them, more or less, by how she writes about her sons. In what we’re judging to be the first, her sons are about two to three. In the next they’re five because she writes about their fifth birthday very specifically, and about seven, we think, when that one ends. The third it seems that they’re young men. We think about sixteen.”

“A lot of years between,” Layla said.

“Maybe she didn’t have anything worth writing about during those years.”

“Could be,” Qui

“She writes of him,” Layla said quietly. “Of Giles Dent. Again and again, in all the journals we have. She writes about him, of her feelings for him, her dreams about him.”

“And always in the present tense,” Qui

“It’s hard to lose someone you love.” Fox turned his beer bottle in his hand.

“It is, but she writes of him, consistently, as if he were alive.” Qui

“You’re not taking into account love and grief,” Cal pointed out.

“I’m not discounting them, but when I read her journals, I get the sense of a strong-minded woman. And one who shared a very deep love with a strong-minded man. She defied convention for him, risked shu

“Yeah.” He couldn’t deny it, Cal thought. “That’s what I felt.”

“Going off that, A

“It’s been needed for twenty-one years.”

“Cal, that’s your responsibility talking, not logic. At least not the line of logic that follows this route. She told you this was the time. That it was always to be this time. Nothing you had, nothing you could have done would have stopped it before this time.”

“We let it out,” Fox said. “Nothing would have been needed if we hadn’t let it out.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Layla shifted toward him, just a little. “And maybe, if we find the other journals, we’ll understand. But, we noticed something else.”

“Layla caught it right off the bat,” Qui

“Because it was in front of me first. But in any case, it’s the names. The names of A

“Pretty common for back then.” Cal gave a shrug as he pushed his plate away. “Caleb stuck in the Hawkins line more than the other two did. But I’ve got a cousin Fletch and an uncle Gideon.”

“No, first initials,” Qui

“Reaching,” Fox decided. “Especially when you consider I’m Fox because my mother saw a pack of red foxes ru

“You were named after an actual fox? Like a…release-the-hounds fox?” Layla wanted to know.

“Well, not a specific one. It was more a…You have to meet my mother.”

“However Fox got his famous name, I don’t think we discount coincidences.” Qui

“Qui

“What about your mother’s?” Layla asked.

“Wider mix. English, Irish. I think some French. Nobody ever bothered with a genealogy, but I’ve never heard of any Hawkins on the family tree.”

“You may want to take a closer look. How about Gage?” Qui

“No idea.” And Cal was more than considering it now. “I doubt he does either. I can ask Bill, Gage’s father. If it’s true, if we’re direct descendents, it could explain one of the things we’ve never understood.”

“Why it was you,” Qui

“I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS ME.”

With the house quiet, and night deep, Cal lay on Qui

“They helped trigger it maybe, but yes, me. Because it was my blood-not just that night, but my heritage, you could say. I was the Hawkins. They weren’t from here, not the same way I was. Not forever, like I was. Generations back. But if this is true…I still don’t know how to feel about it.”

“You could give yourself a tiny break.” She stroked her hand over his heart. “I wish you would.”

“Why did he let it happen? Dent? If he’d found a way to stop it, why did he let it come to this?”

“Another question.” She pushed herself up until they were eye-to-eye. “We’ll figure it out, Cal. We’re supposed to. I believe that.”

“I’m closer to believing it, with you.” He touched her cheek. “Qui

“Got another hour to spare?”

“Yeah.” He smiled as she lowered to him. “I think he’ll hold out another hour.”

LATER, WHEN HE WALKED OUT TO HIS CAR, THE air shivered so that the trees rattled their empty branches. Cal searched the street for any sign, anything he needed to defend against. But there was nothing but empty road.