The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,155

she surprised the hell out of me that night.” He turned his face sideways to look down into my face, smiling at the memory of her voice. “But I’ve always felt it was a possibility.”

I nodded against his chest.

“I’ve heard other things,” he said. “Once in the middle of the night when she was dreaming, Sarah muttered something—funny, almost like a warble of surprise, but she wasn’t speaking, her mouth was shut. And Rosie with the horses—there’s something going on with her since we moved to Florida. She uses a voice with them. But I’ve never heard anything close to what I heard the other night.”

All these years, I’d been listening and heard nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t answer, but I saw the response on his face, the memory of Jennie’s funeral. Again, I felt the crushing weight of that day and what I had asked of him.

Regret choked me.

“Evelyn, it’s okay. You were right. It is a powerful thing. For a long time I thought they were not vocal like me. But I decided to let them discover it in their own way if they were—I have to respect the vessel they are in. I’m happy to let them come to it in their own way. And they will. We don’t have to push anything. We can leave Gracie with her privacy.” He searched my face. “You’ve never heard anything from Rosie?”

I shook my head dumbly.

“Hers may be too high-pitched for you to hear. It’s like a whistle. But if you watch closely, you’ll know. The dogs and horses turn to her a split second before she speaks and sometimes they respond when she’s given no obvious signal.”

“This has been going on and I didn’t know?”

“No one’s been keeping anything from you, Evelyn. I think there are times Rosie’s not even aware of what she’s doing.”

All this time I’d spent with him and I still did not know him. One thing I was certain of: he was without guile and incapable of deception.

It saddened me to think of how he must long for company in his unique gifts. I understood that desire and its insidious burdens, for I had so often craved company in my longing to share what I knew of him. I wondered how much a similar desire had motivated him to take on my form so many years ago.

The world of my daughters seemed so different. Or rather, I had begun to feel my difference from them more keenly. All mothers feel that way to some degree as their children become adults, but I harbored those other questions about who they were and what they were capable of. But I began to realize Adam was right. The answers to those questions would be theirs, not mine, and they might carry the gifts of their father privately.

For the rest of that summer, all the girls spent more time at home. They sang together in the evenings. Their voices, carrying through the house or across the back porch to the garden, always filled me with a calm tenderness.

In the fall, Gracie moved into her own apartment, a large wood-frame house near downtown that she shared with a menagerie of hippies. Within months, Rosie was accepted at the University of Florida, in pre-vet studies. She followed Gracie, the center of her world shifting away from the ranch.

Sarah painted and Lil read her fantasy novels. Soon enough, they also had parties with their friends in the pasture. They both decided not to wear bras or shave their legs. But they were there for supper every weeknight. Their grades were good, their eyes clear, and their friends respectful.

Lil turned fifteen the following spring. Her birthday seemed to incite a restlessness in her. A new name began to pop out any time she discussed school: Bryce. I recognized the cadences of infatuation in her voice, but there was something else, something not said. I asked Sarah about the boy, but she’d never met him. He was a new kid at school.

Sarah and I were in the living room when Lil and the boy pulled into the driveway. She peered out the side of the window. “Incest,” she hissed just as the front door opened and they strolled in.

Not exactly identical, Lil and the boy were certainly strikingly similar. The same shade of red curly hair, Lil’s shorter by only an inch or two. The same green eyes, the same tall lankness. His nose was larger, his eyes closer together. Adam,