Secrets in the Attic (Secrets 1)

"Are you sure you really want to do this?" Jesse asked. "It's all my fault."

"It's not all your fault. Most of it, maybe, but what are you going to do about it, Jesse? Stop going to college? Take some menial job to pay for diapers and bottles? No, it's decided," Daddy added. "You return to college. You, Zipporah, return to school and, when you can, help out."

"Okay," I said.

"It's all right, Jesse," Mama told him. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was right and if I didn't want to do it."

He nodded. He was crying, but he sucked back his tears, rose, and walked out. We heard him go upstairs to his room.

"We're going to be all right," Daddy told me. "We're going to take care of each other better from now on, too."

I left them. I was probably just as numb, as stunned and afraid, as Jesse was, but there was nothing more to say about it. I sensed they had made an irrevocable decision. Their, firmness once they had made up their minds gave me pause and strength. It gave me hope as well. Maybe we would be all right.

Of course, as I lay there thinking. I wondered about Karen now, lying alone in some institution where there were bars on the windows. What was she thinking? Did she hate me? Hate Jesse, too? Maybe she was talking to herself or to an imaginary person like me, talking about traveling.

"When we get our licenses, we'll leave this hick town," she was saying. "We'll see America. We'll have adventures, so when we're older and stuck in some marriage, we won't regret it. We won't think we missed anything We'll take your convertible. We'll ride with the wind in our hair, and we'll think of nothing but tomorrow.

"Will you do it? Will you come with me, Zipporah? Can we be together again and forever?"

"Yes," I whispered in the darkness of my own room. "Nothing but tomorrow."

Through my bedroom window, I saw the moon fool a cloud and slip free. It poured its golden light over the treetops like a promise.

Karen was returning, I thought. She was returning in her child. Ironically, she wanted us to adopt her. In a real sense, we would. What had bonded us before hadn't weakened, after all. It had tightened and strengthened and wrapped itself around me.

Around all of us, actually.

And what that would mean for all of us lay cloaked in the mystery of the same darkness that made ancient peoples hug each other. Like them, I wondered if we would be safe, if we would ever be safe again.

I could only wait to know.