The Key to Fear - Kristin Cast Page 0,64

and ready, armor coated.

Gwen slowly rounded the island. “You are in denial. You’ve been traumatized and your mind has blurred the entire event so you don’t …” she waved her hands in the air like she was batting flies, “end up with a terrible mental disorder. You’re not seeing this clearly.” Her stilettos whispered against the marble as she cautiously approached her daughter. “You can’t be. I know you are no sympathizer.”

Rhett huffed. “Of course she’s not,” he said, each word punctuated by a crunch as he resumed eating. “She’s confused. The whole mess has her rattled.”

Elodie was confused. Very confused. But she knew one thing for sure—what she’d witnessed was not an attack. “Maybe neither of you know me well enough to know what I am.”

Add that to the list of what she knew to be true.

“El—” Rhett began.

“No! I don’t want to hear it.” Elodie’s heartbeat clapped inside her ears.

Gwen stiffened and opened her mouth to speak.

“From either of you.” Elodie spun around and marched toward the stairs.

Gwen clicked frantically after her. “Elodie!”

Elodie stopped short of the top of the stairs and steeled herself before she faced her mother.

Gwen’s eyes glistened with tears. Real tears this time. “I worry about you so much. I want to be sure you’re safe. The Key is safety—the right path. Please don’t disappoint me and turn down the wrong one. Think first, my darling. Think.”

“Disappoint you?” Her mother’s display of honest emotion would have been sweet, touching even, but Elodie saw the snake coiling just beneath the surface. “How? By having my own opinion?”

“Dammit, Elodie!” Gwen snarled and struck the bannister. “When your father and I made the decision to bring you into this world, the lead in the Gestation Unit asked if there were any traits we wanted enhanced or stunted. I told him to let nature run its course.” Gwen climbed two steps at once, her long legs flicking out like a praying mantis. “Of all the things you’ve done, and you’ve done plenty, becoming a sympathizer is the one thing that will make me regret turning those natal programmers down!”

Her mother’s words hung in the air, stifling Elodie’s breath and eating away at her flesh.

Rhett leaned into the stairwell, still chomping away.

Elodie’s soul retreated, curling into the depths of her heart. “I need to go change.” Her legs were putty as they carried her up the final few stairs.

“I didn’t want to say any of that, but someone had to tell her the truth,” Gwen loudly whispered to Rhett. “You’re naïve, Elodie,” she said, descending the stairs, “but I love you. I’m trying to protect you.” Her mother’s voice echoed within her, far away and paralyzingly close at the same time. “I had to tell her, Rhett. I had to.” Gwen’s heels clicked on the marble as she slipped past Rhett and made a noble retreat to the kitchen.

At the bottom of the stairs, Rhett cleared his throat and flicked an orange chunk from his pristine white tee. “We can, uh, go someplace when you’re ready, El. No rush.”

Elodie’s chest heaved a dry sob as she reached the second floor. She forced herself to walk in slow, even paces to her room. Tears breached her vision as she closed the door behind her and ran to the window. She threw it open and inhaled the sun-warmed evening. The branches of the pink magnolia tree reached out to her, its verdant leaves whispering with each gust of crisp air.

She couldn’t go back downstairs. She wouldn’t. But it would only be a matter of time before Gwen’s impatient footsteps brought her to Elodie’s door. Her mother wouldn’t let those words stain her home. She’d wring her hands and click her stilettos and pout those lips until the need to cleanse the space overtook her desire to ignore the distressing blemish. Elodie had seen it over and over again between her mother and her father until the only things that proved he lived there were his clothes and the faint scent of cedar that haunted the hall outside of her parent’s room.

Daniel Benavidez was in a constant state of leaving. Elodie understood the impulse all too well.

Rhett’s laughter wafted into Elodie’s room in muffled bursts. Her stomach soured, and she caught another refreshing breath of fresh air. Her fiancé had stood there, watching as her mother chipped away at her. Then he’d offered to take her someplace after she changed. And where was he now?

Elodie’s eyes burned.

He was supposed to love her.

They