And he knew about me, Gabi reminded herself as she faced him across the table in the visitors’ room. He knew the whole time.
“Honey.” Sam reached out his hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it. He withdrew with a sigh. “I’m so glad you came.”
“I wanted to. I—” Gabi stumbled over her planned speech, which was compassionate but firm. It was time for him to tell her the whole truth. But more than anything, Gabi realized, as she looked across the table at the man who’d raised her with such love and kindness, she wanted to forgive him. She needed to, for both their sakes. “Just tell me,” she said. The plea was all she could manage as she reached out and pulled the glasses from Sam’s face, cleaning them on the hem of her shirt. She needed to see his eyes when he told her.
Sam nodded wearily and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Where should I start?”
“Cleo told me about my real mom and her plan to give birth to a child with certain traits that would prove that humans evolved from nonhuman ancestors, and the whole Adam-and-Eve thing was a myth. She said someone in the FCC leaked the experiment to Messenger Nystrom, and that Unitas planned to kill us both. That’s why my mother wanted Cleo to take her to Alder. She didn’t think the FCC could protect her from Unitas, so she decided I would be safest if someone in the fellowship took me in. She didn’t know for sure if I would be born any different than anybody else, but she knew that Nystrom would come after us either way. She was a threat for even trying to discredit the doctrine.”
“I swear to you that I didn’t know about any of that, Gabriela,” her father said, leaning toward her with an urgent expression on his face. “We thought Artis was just another one of the Returned. The nurses took you as soon as you were delivered, at her request. She knew it would be harder if she saw you. It was pure coincidence that Artis ended up in that room with Therese while Therese was recovering from her miscarriage. We’d had a lot of Returned that week, so they put Artis on a fellows’ floor when she came in. It didn’t take much to convince us. Therese was heartbroken, and it was a second chance. Cleo came and took Artis away, and that was that. We didn’t know anything about her or what she had planned, though the letter I found tucked into your blanket hinted that there was something bigger going on.”
“So you’re the one who found it?” Gabi asked, blinking away tears.
“Therese was sleeping when they brought you in, so I saw the letter first. I couldn’t understand why Artis left it. She was so insistent that you never find out you were adopted, but I guess she hoped that someday it might be safe for you to know about her. Your gram was caring for Mathew while we were at the Care Center. When we came home with you, I gave the note to her for safekeeping. She wasn’t living with us then, so I thought it would be safely out of reach. I wasn’t thinking that clearly, to be honest. We were just struggling to figure out what to do about everything.”
“You mean me,” Gabi said with a note of accusation.
Sam flushed but kept going. “Dr. Tanako hadn’t seen anything like you before, honey. He assumed your mother was exposed to nuclear radiation during one of the meltdowns, and that’s why you were like that.”
“Are,” Gabi corrected, raising her chin defiantly to expose Cleo’s cuts, which had healed around the edges but remained open and pulsing.
Sam winced. “Right, of course. How you are. I never wanted—”
Gabi shook her head. “Just keep going.”
“We didn’t know what to do, so I called Ben Nystrom on the second day, before they let us take you home. He was the one who suggested that we find a way to keep your condition quiet. He said you could never hope to have a normal life as long as others saw you as defective. Therese and I were scared. We wanted what was best for you. We took you home and started brainstorming ways to hide your… your—”
“They’re called mammalian pharyngeal pouches, Dad. They work like fish gills. You had them too, did you know that? When you were an embryo. Everybody does at that stage, and vomeronasal organs up in their noses too, only mine got stronger instead of going away. It’s why I’ve always been so sensitive. I can smell the detergent on the guard’s uniform on the other side of that door and the tea you had this morning before you brushed your teeth. I can even smell how enraged the other councilmembers are at being locked up. It’s like burned hair. They literally stink.”
“Gabriela, I have never been ashamed of you,” Sam insisted. “That’s not what it was about.”
“Then what was it about?” Gabi exploded, knocking her chair over as she rose. “Because it sure seems like I’ve been your dirty little secret all these years!”
“You’d only been home with us a couple of weeks when Therese was murdered,” Sam explained. “I… we….”
Gabi slammed her hands on the table, causing Sam to jump. With her new vitality came a quick temper she was still trying to master, along with dozens of other new feelings that kept her on
