Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
All the questions floating in her thoughts made unease twist in her chest until it was hard to breathe. Her dorm room was small, but somehow the cabin felt smaller tonight than it ever had, and so dark inside, with all the curtains pulled tight. She used to marvel at the construction of this new home, how much bigger and more modern it was than the old one had been, the cabin they tore down to make room for the barn, but Ren couldn’t help but see how rustic it was, really, and for the first time imagined how the small rooms would look through the eyes of everyone back in Spokane. She imagined Miriam with her phone and her frown, lamenting over the lack of Wi-Fi. How her composition study partners would look crowded around the small coffee table in the cloying warmth of the living room. What would her Mandarin professor think if he saw her practicing conversational Mandarin with a pig named Frank?
And, for a bewildering flash, Ren imagined Fitz at the table beside her, sitting in the empty fourth seat. In her mind, he leaned casually in his chair, one arm flung across the back as he gazed at her with that mysterious gleam in his eye. Imaginary Fitz pointed to the food on his plate. Did you shoot this bird yourself? he asked, whiskey eyes teasing and warm. He seemed outsized for the chair, outsized for this entire cabin. His feet would hang off the end of her bed—
“Ren?” Steve leaned into her line of sight. “You listening to your mother?”
She blinked hard, clearing her trance. “Yes! Sorry! Just tired.”
“Well, you can be tired tomorrow night after you finish your chores. You’ve been studying on a cushy sofa in a library all week, I expect you to be rested up.”
Nodding, she scooped up a forkful of casserole. “I am, sir, absolutely. I had the best week, too. You would not belie—”
“I was saying we need to get the last of the winter greens from the hothouse,” Gloria cut in. “The front garden needs to be cleaned out and prepped before we take you back on Sunday. That’s on top of your other chores. If you can’t handle it then maybe—”
“I can handle it,” Ren assured them, nodding at her plate and recalibrating how the weekend would go. If there would be no discussion of school tonight, there would certainly be no discussion of long-lost relatives.
Gloria put a hand on her arm. “I’m just trying to help bring you back home. Mentally. Spiritually. I sense that you’re getting more and more tied to that place, but here is what matters.”
Ren smiled gratefully and tried to mask any panic before it bled into her expression. And then she forced her attention back to her plate, because the longer she stared at her mother across the table, the more aware Ren became that this new suspicion buzzing in the air had just changed something in her forever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
Sunday night, back in her dorm room bed, Ren stared at the ceiling, hating the gnawing panic that festered in her stomach. Her parents had dropped her off two hours ago, and she’d been immobilized with anxiety. The longer it ate away at her insides, the more she knew it wouldn’t go away until she’d seen for herself whether Audran had handed her the correct results.
She couldn’t wait until morning. After the profile in the student paper, Ren felt like she was living under a spotlight. She couldn’t dig into this with an entire classroom of her peers there to witness her realization that her genetic history wasn’t what she thought it was. The last thing she needed was to be a spectacle and for any of this to get back to Gloria and Steve somehow. No, if her world was indeed falling apart, she wanted it to happen under the cloak of darkness, where she’d be completely alone.
She sat up and, without thinking about it too much, pulled on her boots. Moving on instinct, she walked to the door, opened it, headed down the hall and out of the dorm. Every step loosened the tight feeling in her chest.
But as she walked across the quad and her panic eased, her rational mind peered back in. What on earth was she doing? Gloria would be furious. Furious about the test, yes, but Ren was also out after curfew. How many times had her parents said that bad stuff happened to people when they were out doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing? The world was full of robbers and murderers, and hadn’t Steve and Gloria kept her safe until now? Almost twenty-three years old, and she’d never been robbed or murdered once! What more proof did she need that they were right about everything?