After We Were Stolen by Brooke Beyfuss

Author:Brooke Beyfuss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

“Avery?”

Amelia’s voice was distant and strange, like I was hearing her underwater. The words blurred, and I blinked hard, as though that would help me hear better. “What?” I whispered.

“When Noah and his parents are—”

“Cole.”

Her eyes, frozen in static sympathy, wavered a bit. “I know how painful this is.”

I laughed, one loud throaty bark. “No, you don’t.”

“I…I appreciate it, then,” she said. “But you have to realize that Cole—Noah—is their child. The last time they saw him, he was a baby. They spent fifteen years not knowing if he was cold, or scared, or hungry—they had no idea if they would ever see him again. Last night they got a phone call that hurt too much for them to even hope for. Do you understand?”

She wouldn’t look away. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Cole is my brother,” I said. My voice was strange. I barely recognized it, and I wouldn’t understand…I wouldn’t appreciate…that I was tapping into a level of fortitude I didn’t even know I had by even having words to speak until much later. “He’s been my brother since he was a baby. I spent fifteen years making sure he was never cold, or scared, or hungry. They’re taking him away, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. Do you understand?”

Amelia pressed her fingers together. “He needs to go home.”

I think we should go home.

The fire was still alive when he’d said that, still eating whatever we could have gone back to when we’d had one horrible chance to make one horrible decision.

“They’ve agreed to let you say goodbye.”

I nodded faintly. Goodbye. That word had never meant much, because I’d never had anything I wanted to keep. But now…

Goodbye, I thought. Goodbye, Mother; goodbye, Father; goodbye, sister; goodbye…

“Where is he?” I asked.

Amelia led me down the hallway with her hands on my shoulders.

“I’m going to call you Celeste while we’re in there,” she said as we approached a closed door. “Kate is very overwhelmed. Using your real name will make it easier for her to see your connection to Cole.”

“She already has the easy part,” I mumbled.

“No,” Amelia said, almost to herself. “She doesn’t.”

She opened the door. Cole was inside, huddled on a squashy green couch. Kate was next to him, practically sitting in his lap. He looked up when we walked in. She tightened her grip on his shoulders.

“Kate, I’d like you to meet Celeste Bishop,” Amelia said, choosing to erase any memory of our first meeting. “Celeste, this is Noah’s mother, Kate.”

Kate’s eyes darted toward me, but when they met mine, she looked away. “I don’t have to leave, do I?”

Amelia smiled smoothly. “I thought we could go down the hall.”

“No,” said Kate, her eyes tight and snapping. “She’s one of those…those people.”

“Kate, Celeste was abducted, same as Noah. She has no ties to the cult.”

“I don’t care. I’m not leaving him with her.”

“She’s my sister,” Cole spat, wriggling feebly in a cage of white sweater and gold rings. “Her name is Avery.”

“Honey, no,” Kate cried, cupping Cole’s cheek.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.