eyes, and when you told us you were adopted, of course I wondered, but I didn’t know.”
Melanie. The name hit Colt like a bullet in the chest. His mother’s name. How many times in his life had he heard it without even blinking? Without knowing what it meant to him?
“And you didn’t make any attempt to figure it out, did you?” Colt asked through gritted teeth.
“You have every right to be furious,” Susan said, holding his gaze. “I would be if I were you, but there are things you need to understand.”
“I’m listening.” It was hard when all he wanted was to be out there looking for Jason, but he knew they might hold the only key to getting him back alive.
“I thought you were both dead,” she told him. “By the time I accepted that it could be you, it was already too late. Telling you the truth would have only complicated things.”
“Bullshit,” Colt snarled.
“She’s telling the truth,” Stan chimed in. Colt wasn’t surprised he’d come to his wife’s defense, but he wasn’t sure exactly how far Stan’s role in all of it went.
“Did you know, too?” Colt demanded.
“I had my suspicions,” Stan admitted.
“And how did you know her?” Colt asked, turning back to Susan.
“We were friends. Childhood friends,” she said softly. “We grew up next to each other and shared everything, just like sisters. Evelyn, too.”
“You’re fucking kidding me. She knows, too?”
“No,” Susan said quickly. “Evelyn had nothing to do with any of it. She and Mel were close, but not like we were. She told me everything, except…”
“Except what?” Colt pressed.
She worried at her bottom lip. “When Melanie told me she was pregnant, I was confused. She wasn’t seeing anyone. She hadn’t said a word to me about being interested in another ghoul, and when I asked her, she would only say she couldn’t tell me. Months passed, and no amount of pleading or arguing would change her mind.”
She paused, taking a deep breath. “She was afraid, I knew that much. She tried to hide it, but I could see it in her eyes.”
“Afraid of what?” Colt asked. He had already checked out emotionally. It was the only way he was going to be able to get through the conversation without losing his mind, and he needed to be focused right now more than ever. The past only mattered in the effect it exerted on the present. He had to keep reminding himself of that.
“I don’t know,” Susan answered, shaking her head. “For twenty-six years, it’s haunted me, but I don’t know. Your father, maybe. Or maybe somehow she knew, even then.”
“Knew what?”
She looked over at Stan and he nodded, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
This time, when Susan looked at Colt, he realized it was the first time she’d ever looked him in the eye and told him the truth. “You had a brother, Colt. A twin. Or...have. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” he asked, struggling to keep his tone in check. “How can you not know if he’s alive or not?”
“Because you were all supposed to be killed,” she said shakily. “I was there when Melanie gave birth to two healthy twin boys. One was perfectly normal, and the other… he bore the mark.”
“The mark?” Roland’s words came back to him as the pieces began to fit together. “The mark of a changeling.”
Susan’s silence spoke volumes. “She was terrified for both of you,” Susan said quietly. “She knew the Plague Doctors would kill all of you, and she planned to run. I knew she’d never get out of the state alive, so I came up with a plan. When the Plague Doctor came, I took the baby with the mark, and Melanie kept you.”
“They’d know there was another child,” Colt protested. “You could never keep something like that a secret in the Kinship.”
“No, but we had help,” Susan said, glancing over at Stan with a faint smile. “I knew a kind, if foolish, doctor who was always getting into trouble helping people. Foolish enough to fake an infant’s death certificate without asking too many questions.”
Colt stared at them both in disbelief. “And they believed you?”
“There was something of a baby boom going on at the time, and the Plague Doctors were stretched thin,” Stan answered. “There’s only a handful of them alive at any given time, and only one or two in each region. By the time they showed up to verify the death, I had the necessary evidence to support