Dark Choices - I. T. Lucas Page 0,51

himself to get influenced by supposed ghosts and his wife’s premonitions.

While he didn’t dismiss those things, Kian was careful not to base his decisions on them. Prepping the lots had been a good business decision that in the long run would save the clan a lot of money, and the voice in his head had most likely been his own.

34

Edna

“I need to escort Jacki and Kalugal back to the house.” Rufsur offered Edna a hand up. “If you want, you can come with me, or you can go home, and I’ll join you later.”

“I’ll come with you.”

His handsome face lit up with a big smile. “I hoped you would say that.” He leaned to whisper in her ear, “I want to spend every moment I can with you.”

As Rufsur wrapped his arm around her waist, Edna wondered why he felt the need to accompany his boss home. Did he fear a sudden mental attack by the mysterious ghost?

She stifled a chuckle.

Edna hadn’t mentioned the voice in her own head, and after what Nathalie had said, she was glad about it. Kalugal and Kian’s experience could have been easily explained as their own inner musings, but she had a harder time dismissing hers as her alter ego.

Why would her own inner voice sound male? And what about that ‘you said it, girl’? Her subconscious was a cheerleader? That wasn’t the way Edna talked.

Could it have been Robbie’s ghost?

After his death, she’d prayed to hear from him in her dreams, and she had, but those dreams had been manufactured from her memories of him. In some of them, they’d built a life together, and in others, she’d found out over and over again about his death.

It had taken many years until the dreams had stopped tormenting her, but even before that, Edna had never heard him talking in her head while she was awake.

Besides, she would have recognized his accent and speech pattern. The voice in her head had sounded American.

Robbie, if this is you in my head, tell me something that only you would know.

Her answer was a resounding silence.

Yeah, that was what she’d expected. Evidently, her inner voice was a male, who was also a romantic and an optimist. Edna wondered what Vanessa would make of it. Perhaps she had a masculine side with feminine undertones that needed to express itself?

Edna suppressed a snort. Given the way she usually dressed, that would probably be Vanessa’s conclusion. Her business suits were made for women, but they were shapeless, and the colors she picked were dark and conservative. She also didn’t try to soften the look with makeup or a nice hairdo to make it more feminine.

Nevertheless, Edna had never felt masculine and had never wanted to be perceived as a man. Her goal had been to take gender out of the equation. Even in today’s world, female professionals had to work twice as hard as their male colleagues to prove themselves.

Still, even as a young woman, Edna had never been a girly girl. She’d had no interest in pretty dresses or other frivolities that girls her age had obsessed about. But she’d been all woman with Robbie, and she’d loved that he was hard while she was soft, that he was tall while she was smaller, and all the other ways in which his masculinity contrasted with her femininity.

Gender equality was a goal worth fighting for, and the clan had been striving for it since its very beginning, but blurring the distinctions between men and women was not the same as equality. It was forcing both genders to give up on their individualism and conform to the same ill-fitting mold.

It was a bit hypocritical of her to oppose something that she did herself, but there was a difference between choosing to appear genderless for professional reasons and giving up her gender identity altogether.

Life would be very boring without the yin and yang of dualism. The seemingly opposite forces of the masculine and the feminine were not at war. They were complementary and interconnected, and their dance was the spice of life.

“We are here.” Rufsur’s hand tightened on her shoulder.

“Oh.” Edna lifted her eyes. Apparently, while she’d been deep in thought, their group had reached the house.

As Jacki, Kalugal, and the others climbed the steps to the front porch, Rufsur and Edna stayed on the path.

“If you don’t mind,” Rufsur said. “Edna and I are leaving.”

“Of course.” Jacki smiled knowingly. “Have fun.”

Edna expected either Jay or Theo to follow her and Rufsur,