Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil Love and Hope Read online

  But Darci wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that, maybe, he planned to wait until she was asleep, then go to the tunnels himself. She wouldn’t put it past him to lock them in the motel room and leave them without transportation. She knew that Adam had always been a lone soldier, and this time was no different. She couldn’t risk his trying to save everyone by himself. Snuggling closer to him, she used her True Persuasion to soothe him and make him sleep.

  But now, hours later, he had wakened her with his thrashing and his moaning.

  “Is he all right?” Taylor asked as he leaned over the bed. “Can you calm him?”

  “No,” Darci said, frowning. “I’ve tried, but he’s in some sort of deep trance, and I can’t reach him.”

  “Adam,” Taylor said, leaning across his daughter and trying to wake him. He could see that Darci was concentrating, trying to reach Adam with her mind—whether to soothe him back to sleep or to wake him, Taylor didn’t know. Behind them, Boadicea stayed silent in the other bed, not stirring in spite of the commotion.

  Adam suddenly struck out with his fist and barely missed hitting Taylor on the jaw.

  “Wake him!” Taylor commanded his daughter. “What he’s reliving must be horrible.”

  Darci had spent her life using her power in only the most superficial of ways. Making the moonshiner want to buy a dog hadn’t taken any seriously deep concentration. But now, reaching Adam inside the sleeping trance that he was in took great effort. Her head was already aching from where she’d banged it on the tree—not that she’d told anyone that—and using her True Persuasion made it hurt more. But she stamped down the pain as she reached deep inside herself and concentrated until the room seemed to disappear. She was no longer in a body but was only energy, the energy of her mind, and this energy could move where it wanted, do what it needed to do. She found Adam’s mind and entered it as best she could. Even though the pain in her head was increasing from this great effort, she pulled away from the discomfort for fear that Adam would feel her pain. Instead, she concentrated on soothing his tortured mind. She thought of a golden light covering his body and making him tranquil.

  “Darci!” her father said. “Darci! Come out of it.”

  Slowly, she opened her eyes to look up at her father. He had her by the shoulders, and he was shaking her. When she opened her eyes, he embraced her and pulled her close to him.”I thought I’d lost you. Darci, you looked as though you were dead. I couldn’t feel your pulse. You didn’t even look as though you were breathing.”

  Turning slowly, for her neck hurt, Darci looked at Adam. He was sleeping peacefully now, but she sensed that he was close to waking up.

  “Are you all right?” Taylor asked, looking at her in concern. “I’ve never seen anyone go into a trance as deeply as you just did. I think a train could have run over you and you wouldn’t have felt it.”

  “I’m fine,” Darci said, trying to smile and alleviate his worry. “But I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Sure,” Taylor said, pulling back the cover to allow her to get out of bed.

  It took all Darci’s strength and concentration not to fall down as soon as she put a foot to the floor. But she didn’t want to add to her father’s worries. The bruise on his forehead was very dark now, and he was holding his left arm closely to his side. “Really, I’m fine,” she said again. “Just. . . .” She made a gesture toward the bathroom door, and he stepped aside.

  Darci had to control herself to slowly close the bathroom door, and when she was alone, she fell to her knees and emptied her insides into the toilet. And when there was no more to come up, she gave dry heaves that racked her body, making her stomach contract until it felt as though it were next to her backbone.

  She took her time washing out her mouth and trying to clear the air of the smell of her vomit. She didn’t want the others to know that she’d thrown up. Nor did she want them to know how hard she’d hit her head on the tree branch last night. In the car, while Adam was driving and arguing that he didn’t want to go on, Boadicea had sat silently next to Darci, and she was glad that his sister’s presence had distracted Adam. He didn’t see Darci blotting blood from her head with a box of tissues she’d found in the back of her father’s car. And when they’d entered the motel room, Darci had been the first to go into the bathroom so she could wash the blood from her hair and scalp. But now, hours later, the cut was still oozing blood and still causing her a lot of pain.

  But she wasn’t going to let an injury stop her from participating tonight any more than her father was going to let his arm stop him. And, even though Adam pretended he was all right, Darci knew that Adam’s ribs were injured. Of the four of them, only Boadicea seemed whole.

  When she went back into the room, Adam was sitting up in bed. “Sorry to make such a pest of myself,” he said, and she could see that he was trying to sound lighthearted.

  In the other bed, Boadicea was lying quietly, eyes open, and Darci had an idea that she was used to being quiet and listening.

  “I want you to tell us what happened to you when you were a child. I want you to tell us how you got that mark on your chest,” Taylor said. “I think we all deserve that much.” When he said this, his eyes included Boadicea in his statement, and the way she nodded made Darci wonder what had gone on between them during the night. Had her father told Boadicea about himself? About Darci? Adam?

  Whatever had gone on between them, Darci could now feel that a bond had been formed between this beautiful woman and her father. Darci wanted to ask him about what she was feeling, but her father was right: Now there was a need for a different type of information. It would help all of them, give them courage, perhaps, if Adam told the whole story of what had happened to him when he was a child.

  At first Adam protested, but one look at Taylor’s eyes and he stopped. Even after he agreed to tell, it took Adam a moment to begin because he had never told anyone the whole story.

  “When I was three years old,” Adam began, and his voice was weak, shaky, and full of emotion, “I was told that my parents had died in a plane accident, so I was sent to live in a huge house in Colorado with my noisy, prolific Taggert relatives.” He took a deep breath. “But the truth was that when I was three, I was kidnaped, and as a result of that, my parents died.”

  Here Adam had to pause, and Darci had to work to keep from saying something about how he must have felt carrying such a burden of guilt for his whole life. No, she wasn’t going to interrupt him. But she used her mind to try to comfort him, to tell him that he was safe and among people who loved him.

  “To this day, no one knows what actually happened,” Adam continued. “I’d always been an independent child who loved to play hide-and-go-seek, and I’d hidden from my mother while she was buying me clothes in New York. Later, my mother told the police that she could see my shoe sticking out from under a rack of clothes, so she’d felt safe. She could see where I was, so she kept shopping. But after about ten minutes or so, when she was ready to check out, she tiptoed over to the rack, flung the clothes back, and said, ‘Boo!’ But only my shoe was there.”

  Darci could only imagine the hysteria his mother must have felt, the terror. Reaching out, Darci took Adam’s hand in hers.

  “After an hour or so of the entire store being searched, the police were called in, then the FBI. But a couple days went by and nothing happened. There was no ransom request, nothing. No contact was made by the kidnappers.

  “But after three days of waiting, my parents sneaked out of the apartment and disappeared. To this day, no one knows why. Did they receive a message from someone? If so, who?”

  Both Darci and Taylor waited in silence for Adam to continue, both of them feeling the many years of agony that Adam had felt in so desperately wanting to know who? Why?

  “After my parents’ disappearance, everyone on the police force was questioned. A policewoman said she remembered my parents stepping into their bedroom and closing the door for a few minutes.