Pedro was silent for a moment before responding, “I will be. See you soon, mi amor.”
She hung up the phone and sat on the edge of her bed. All she could do now was wait for Pedro to arrive. What she had to do in the meantime was decide whose side she was on...
Her dad stood at her door half an hour later and knocked. “Maddie?”
Maddie rushed to the door and opened it. She looked up at her dad with as much innocence as she could muster. “Yes, Dad?”
“Pedro is here. Did you ask him to come over?”
Maddie felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Yes, I did! Oh, sorry, Dad — I just realized that you had asked us yesterday to not invite anybody over. It’s just that I was a bit upset. I collided with one of those men outside.” She knew her dad had seen that but played it off like it was news.
“Yeah, I saw that,” her dad admitted, concern showing on his face.
“Anyway, I called Pedro and he wanted to come over to comfort me. In the excitement I forgot all about what you had said. Oh, I’m so sorry, Dad!” She forced her eyes to tear up slightly. “Please don’t let Pedro get in trouble.” She looked up at her dad with deceitful shimmering eyes but real concern.
“Oh.” He hesitated for a moment before awkwardly collecting his daughter in a hug. “Of course. It’s fine, Maddie. I’ll talk to the Captain. I’m sure it’s OK.” He repeated as he sought to reassure his daughter.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Maddie mumbled, clinging to her father a moment longer before releasing him with an expression of genuine gratitude.
Her dad nodded at her with a kind smile and turned away.
Five minutes later, Maddie was in the arms of her lover. They held each other for a full minute, not saying a word but finding comfort in each other. When they finally drew apart, Maddie checked outside her room to make sure nobody was there. Satisfied, she closed and locked her door, beckoned Pedro to the side of the bed furthest from it and told him all that she had seen and heard.
She watched Pedro’s eyes growing large; he had come to the same realizations as she.
“This is ...” He couldn’t find the word he was looking for.
“I know.” She hesitated for a moment. This was the moment she’d dreaded. She held his hands and looked into his eyes. “What do you feel about all of it?”
Pedro broke eye contact with Maddie. He looked out of the window for a moment, before turning back to her.
“This is evil,” was all he said.
To Maddie, he had said so much more with that statement. She felt the weight of uncertainty lift from her. “Yes,” she agreed.
“So, what do you think we should do, mi dicha?” Pedro asked. “Do you want to run away, like we talked about? I’ll come if you ask me to.”
She smiled at him. “I know. But now I feel like running away is not enough.” She frowned as she thought things through. “I think we need to do more.”
“Like what? Go to the media, or the authorities?”
“No. We don’t know who we can trust. And besides, nobody will believe us. No, that won’t do any good. But maybe we can steal some of the apples.” The thought made her eyes light up. “Yes! We can take apples and distribute them to as many people as possible.”
Pedro’s expression turned serious. “We’ll have to be careful. What if they catch us?”
“They will kill us,” Maddie announced with certainty.
“It sounds like we have a few weeks’ time to prepare.”
She bit her lip as she kept thinking. “I know —we disguise the antidote!”
“What do you mean?” Pedro looked puzzled. “How do you disguise apples?”
“By baking them into pies,” she said proudly. A small smile came to Maddie’s face.
Yes. We are going to do something about this. It might not be a lot. It might not be enough. But we are doing something. She was so deep in her own thoughts that she almost missed Pedro’s reply.
“I can add it into my cider.”
“Yes.”
They smiled at each other and drew close for a kiss. Lost in their own thoughts, they held each other quietly for a minute.
“So, we know that the apples contain the antidote,” Maddie said as she pulled out of the hug. “I knew that those injections into the trees meant something significant.”
She scrunched her brow as she tried to remember. “I overheard one of Sage Hohndahl’s Adepts saying that the apples would contain a chemical that... What was it? Something like ‘breaks down nanostructure’ I’m not sure if I heard that right, but the point is that the apples contain the antidote to whatever poison Brenin has released into the world.”
Maddie knew that the conviction in her eyes matched that of her voice as she spoke.
“We’re going to do something about it!”
Chapter 37
Tammy put the diary down as the people around the table tried to comprehend it all. Supper had been devoured, and the group was eating dessert consisting, fittingly enough, of fruit.
Michelle shook her head in disbelief at the story she had just heard. “Unbelievable...” The normally outspoken farmer was at a loss for words. “It’s unbelievable. They killed... Well, everybody!”
No one replied. There was nothing anybody could say.
Michelle continued, “I feel sorry for those kids. I remember seeing Maddie and Pedro at the farmers’ markets. To think that they were risking their own lives to try to save others. And we didn’t even know it.”
“Why didn’t they go to the police? They could have done something.” Abi shook her head. She obviously had a different opinion about Maddie and Pedro.
Michelle bristled at the comment. She huffed and was about to respond when Tammy interrupted. “Everybody is allowed to have their opinion. But let me tell you what else I have learned first, so that you know
