Indestructible. Cassie Miles
She’d forgotten about the apple pie. Not exactly a healthy breakfast, but it did contain fruit. “I’ll have some of that.”
They dished up pie and settled on the sofa since he didn’t have a dining table. With her fork, she pointed to the three pictures on the television screen. “Is all this security really necessary?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “And it’s also entertaining. See that? On the camera that shows the parking lot? It’s the anthropology professor who lives across the hall from you.”
“Her name is Katherine Bidwell.” Melinda watched the spry elderly woman whose gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Bustling to her car, she juggled a plastic water bottle and a satchel of books. “Some people say she’s a genius.”
“She was smart enough to call 911 last night.”
He’d gotten dressed while he was in the bedroom. In his white T-shirt, worn jeans and running shoes, he looked sane and normal. But he was still cuckoo. The evidence was all around. Her packed suitcase. The guns. The surveillance equipment.
She finished off her pie and considered licking the plate, but decided she was full. Leaning back on the sofa, she studied his classically handsome profile. “You said it was smart for Professor Bidwell to call the police. Why can’t you do the same thing? Tell the police about your enemies.”
“They’d never believe me.”
“So you know that your story sounds a little bit, um, crazy.”
“But true.”
If he really wanted her to run away with him to a cabin in the woods, he needed to give her a far more thorough explanation. “Convince me.”
“It all started when I was ten years old. A couple of months after I moved in with Belle and Harlan Anderson …”
Never before had Drew told anyone about what happened to him while he was growing up. As a rule, he avoided close relationships, a lesson he’d learned as a foster kid. If you don’t have friends, you won’t be hurt.
But now there was Melinda. And a baby. He had to prove to her that he was trustworthy, and that meant telling the truth.
“At the Andersons’ house, I was the only kid.” Before that, he’d been in group situations. “I had my own bedroom. A place where I could close the door and be by myself.”
“Did you like being alone?” she asked.
Though he was capable of spinning a convincing lie to make himself sound like Johnny Normal, he stuck to the truth. “I was pretty much a loner.”
An encouraging smile lit her face, and he decided that she was especially pretty in the morning. “Tell me about this room of your own.”
“The privacy was exactly what I wanted. I had secrets.”
“Like what?”
“Even when I was ten, I liked writing.” He composed pages and pages of dorky poetry about trees and sky and the parents he barely remembered and how they’d come back one day. “I had to hide my poems and my beat-up copy of The Little Prince.”
“I love that book,” she said. “Why would you hide it?”
“It’s okay for a girl to like a book like that. But a guy? No way. With my own room, I didn’t have to be so careful.”
Still, he kept his book and the spiral notebook filled with his scribbles hidden behind a drawer in his kneehole desk. He didn’t trust the Andersons. The rumor was that they’d lost their own children, three boys. If so, they never told him about it, never talked about themselves and they never showed him family photos.
Sometimes, he caught Belle looking at him with a strange longing in her eyes. Mostly, she was cold. Sparing in her conversation, she regulated his day with terse commands. Get up. Supper. Bedtime.
Harlan was a better companion, but his job as a salesman meant he was on the road a lot. On weekends, they’d watch sports on TV. Drew started memorizing baseball stats, and Harlan would test him. That was when his interest in sports started.
“It was an okay setup. I had food, clean clothes and a roof over my head. The house was on the outskirts of town, next to a forest. I’d pack a sandwich for lunch and spend the whole day tromping through the trees.” He remembered long afternoons when he lay on his back and stared up at the peaceful clouds as they rolled across the sky.
“All in all, life was pretty good, until a Saturday near the end of May. I woke up and got dressed. The next thing I remember was the sun going down while I walked back to the house. The entire day was a blank.”
“You had amnesia?”
“I don’t want to put a label on what happened.” Not yet, anyway. “It was like the daylight hours got erased. I wasn’t hurt so I didn’t say anything about it. Pushed the whole incident out of my head and didn’t think about it until it happened again during summer vacation. That time, it was two days.”
“Did you tell your foster parents?”
“Yeah.” The look on Belle’s face was sheer disgust. For a minute, he thought she was going to throw him out, and he didn’t want to leave. He liked his private bedroom and watching baseball with Harlan. “They didn’t believe me. Told me I was there at home and ate dinner, just like I always did.”
Her forehead wrinkled with concern. “You should have seen a doctor.”
“Harlan took me to a specialist in Rapid City. The guy ran tests and told me that I had a form of epilepsy that caused blackouts. He gave me pills.”
“Did that help?”
“The blackouts stopped. Harlan warned me not to tell anyone about my illness. If the foster care people found out, they’d send me away to a hospital.”
In one of her few lengthy conversations, Belle had described the horrors of a place she referred to as the “asylum.” She made it sound like a dungeon where he’d be locked up in a cage. The authorities couldn’t let crazy people like Drew run around loose. He might hurt someone.
So he kept his mouth shut. “When I was fifteen, the blackouts came more frequently. Sometimes, they’d last for a day. Sometimes, just for a couple of hours. Since I never knew when they’d happen, I missed a couple of practice sessions for the football team. Rather than explaining, I dropped out.”
“What position did you play?”
“Running back, and I was pretty damn good. But team sports weren’t for me. I started skateboarding, running, riding my bike off-road.” He cast a sidelong glance in her direction. “Are you with me so far?”
She nodded. “Everything you’ve said makes sense, and I’m glad to know about the epilepsy. It’s something to watch for in the baby.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve had tests run. I’m not epileptic.”
She left the sofa and went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. “What caused the blackouts?”
“I don’t know.” With his own cup in hand, he followed her. “One of the reasons I moved back to South Dakota was to do research. I hoped to find answers.”
“What have you found out?”
“Not much.” It was frustrating as hell. He was a journalist—not necessarily an investigative whiz but he knew how to fact-find. “There’s no rational way to explain what happened to me. Or the results.”
“Results?”
“My physical abilities. Or disabilities. I’m not sure which