The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,27

off to Chicago, but it was the only thing I could think of. Within minutes I’d concocted a story: I’d ridden Becky into town for bag balm. The cows’ udders were often chapped in winter. I’d taken Becky instead of walking, hoping to beat the approaching storm. Addie Nell, arriving in town to find her mother’s relations, had immediately spotted me as family when I passed the train depot. Then the rain hit and we headed straight back to the farm to stable Becky and pick up fresh dry clothes for Addie Nell. It was plausible. I’d taken Becky on mid-week errands a couple of times.

Addie Nell Hardin. It could work. No one had heard from Doris since she left when my father was a teenage boy.

Giddy with relief, I laughed into the cold rain and urged Becky toward the Starneses’ land.

All my life, I’d been a good daughter. Except for my nights with Cole, I’d never lied to Momma and Daddy, never done anything of importance that I knew they really didn’t want me to do. But the lie would, I thought then, be easier than the truth. For everyone. Especially me.

I worked the details of my story, clinging to it like a drowning woman, while I made my way to Cole’s family. I imagined Addie Nell at the train station and how I would phrase my story. I repeated the story of Addie Nell to myself as I crossed the Starneses’ pasture. Wild fear pressed into the core of me, guarded by my desire to keep that bright gaze safe. By the time I got to Cole’s house and saw his mother’s worried face at the door, my teeth chattered violently. But internally, I was iron-calm, steady as a rock. As Mrs. Starnes opened the door and the warmth of her kitchen embraced me, I remembered her first name—Nell—and realized that Cole had heard the name Nell because he was familiar with it. We hear what we expect to hear. We accept things in the terms we can understand. That’s what I was hoping for—that everyone would, like Cole, see what they expected to see and believe me.

From that point on, Addie Nell was just Addie to me.

We rode back to my house. Cole’s father, his two brothers, and me. We squeezed into the front of their truck, with me sitting on the younger brother’s, Reese’s, lap bunched up against the door. We drove as far up the road as we could, then walked and slipped the rest of the way. The sky had grown even lower and darker, a hand slipped between us and the sun. Mr. Starnes fell coming up the bank and muttered something about his son being a fool. Otherwise, we were silent and hunched against the thick, cold rain. I feared this first meeting: my strange new twin and these quiet men who smelled of tobacco and cold leather.

Inside, Addie rose from the floor where she had been lying next to Cole. I was the first in the door and heard that soothing faint bell tone withdraw like a wave back toward the two of them. The skin along my forearms tingled. Cole did not move; he seemed to be asleep or unconscious.

The men filled the room awkwardly, watching Addie get up and then glancing at me for an explanation. “This is my cousin, Addie Hardin.”

Without question, they nodded politely at her, then turned their attention to Cole, who had begun to moan as soon as they touched him. Only Reese looked back, his eyes going from her back to me, as they began to lift Cole.

His face blanched again and he twisted his neck to see me. “I just wanted to know if you were all right. You have wood and food?” The men stopped.

“I’m okay. We’ve got plenty of both.”

“She’s got better sense than you, Cole, going out in this weather,” Mr. Starnes said, then they continued maneuvering him toward the back door.

“Bye,” I told him and pulled the oilcloth over his face to keep the rain off. “I’ll come see you as soon as I can.”

Addie and I went to the front of the house, returning to the bedroom window to watch them ease down toward the road with Cole, and then reappear at the truck. Covered like that with his brother crouched beside him in the rusted truck bed, Cole resembled a dead man.

Alone again, Addie and I turned to each other. She was flesh and blood. Undeniable, impossible