"Are you talking about me again?" a sleepy, irritated voice asked from the doorway. "And what's on fire that I have to be out of bed at this ungodly hour?"
Rowan turned to see a tiny slip of a girl with wild red hair and a huge stomach standing in the doorway, glaring at Linden – or it might have been a glare, had her eyes not been so glazed by sleep and masked by red ringlets.
"Ah, Cecily," Linden said brightly, going to wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her further into the room while tucking her hair back behind her ears. "I was telling them about my father's accident, yes."
In her tired state, Rowan noticed something – but he couldn't decide what – flash through Lady Cecily Ashby's eyes as she glanced away from her husband, muttering something about how tragic it had been.
"Anyway, love, I need to ask you something about Jenna and Rhine," Linden said cheerfully, guiding Cecily into the chair that he had just vacated, taking her hands in his as he knelt before her.
"What?" Cecily yawned.
"Did they ever mention having any siblings?"
Rowan glowered at the back of Linden's head as Cecily answered innocently, "Jenna never talks about life before here; it makes her sad, I think."
That made sense, Rowan reasoned, considering the fact that to the best of Jenna's knowledge her sisters had died in the back of that gatherers vehicle.
"Why couldn't this wait another hour or two?" Cecily complained.
Linden ignored her question, posing one of his own instead, "What about Rhine?"
"Nuh-uh," Cecily said, shaking her head. "The closest thing she does to that is tell me stories about…" Cecily's eyes rose slowly from Linden's to Rowan's as she finished slowly while it dawned on her, "a set of twins." Her eyes darted back to Linden's as Cecily demanded, "Linden, what's going on?"
"I'm not sure," Linden admitted with a sigh.
"Mrs. Ashby," Rowan spoke up softly, realizing that if he could get Cecily to believe him, her husband would cave in as well. He spoke carefully, hoping that something he said might strike a chord in the girl's memory. "My name is Rowan Ellery. I have a twin sister – that would be Rhine. I'd be willing to bet that the twins in her stories are her and I. Our parents died in a laboratory explosion when we were ten. Before that… my mother grew flowers in front of our house, my father played the piano…" Rowan was scrambling now to dredge up memories that he knew that Rhine had immersed herself in just as much as he had tried to forget them. "My mother had a necklace with a globe on the end of it, and during the solstice, my father would play songs on our piano that he called Christmas carols. One time, our parents made a carnival in our house – decorated the whole place and made a cake for Rhine and I just so we could get a taste of what a real carnival was like."
Cecily was nodding rapidly now, fully convinced. "That's right!" she said excitedly, suddenly jumping up out of her chair.
Linden almost toppled over in front of her, but caught himself, trying to get her to sit back down as he said, "Now, Cecily, don't get yourself worked up, love. Think about the baby."
"Oh, shut up!" Cecily snapped, pushing him away as she began to yell, "I'm fine, and so is the baby, and this – Rowan – is saying the first piece of truth that I've heard ever since I was brought to this place!"
"The sitting room?" Linden asked stupidly, looking entirely lost.
"Do you even know what a gatherer is?" Cecily screamed at him suddenly.
"A what?"
It was then that Rowan realized that there had been a story all its own unfolding here while he had been looking for Rhine and Jenna. How could this man not know what service – what very, very prevalent service – had been used to bring his wives to him?
"A gatherer! They trick girls, grab them off of the streets, drug them, and stuff them in the backs of horrid, pitch black trucks for hours on end and then – if you're lucky – they sell you off! If not, they do the same thing to you that I did to Vaughn!"
"Cecily, calm down! You have to think about the baby!" Linden begged, looking reasonably worried now. "And what do these 'gatherers' have to do with anything?"
Cecily opened her mouth, looking fully ready to scream at her confused husband again, when Ella shoved Frankie into Ava's arms and stepped forward, putting her hands on Cecily's shoulders soothingly, saying, "It's alright, Cecily, we can explain the gatherers to him. He really doesn't know, does he?"
Cecily shook her head, suddenly falling wearily into the chair behind her. "It's all Vaughn's fault. He lied to him all the time to keep him here and 'safe' under his thumb. He never told him anything that was the truth. We've all tried to tell him so, but he won't believe us. Maybe you can convince him."
"Gatherers," Rowan said carefully, "Are exactly what you're wife just told you they are. They grabbed her, Rhine, Jenna, and every one of my wives. Every one of the girls who were in that lineup that you chose your brides from had been kidnapped by gatherers and driven to Florida all the way from New York."
"You don't know that," Linden said weakly, looking unreasonably afraid as he stumbled and fell back into a chair beside Cecily.
"I do know that," Rowan rebutted, suddenly feeling patient pity for this man. "Because I followed that very vehicle here in an effort to get my sister back. My wives and I have been in this city since March looking for Rhine and Jenna. Last night, two of my wives saw Rhine with you at an expo and followed you back here to your estate."
"You cannot prove that," Linden said fiercely. "You cannot prove that you are who you say you are."
"Look at his eyes, Linden!" Cecily cried in exasperation. "You know Rhine's the only other person anywhere with eyes like that! You know that he's telling you the truth!"
Linden bit his cheek in an effort to keep his lips from trembling as he whispered brokenly, "It's all true, isn't it?" He looked at Cecily with wide eyes, suddenly seeming more childlike than she ever could have. "Everything that you and Jenna and Rhine have tried to tell me about the world?" His voice broke on the words, "Even about my father."
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