Yet, I just wanted to go back to the RV and hide today. “I know what I should be doing today,” I said. “I just don’t know if I’m up for meeting anyone else right now.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “And actually, I’d say don’t. Not with your father’s father. Better if I go in and look and talk to him. We don’t know if he’s ever sent updated photos at all. It seems like that’s a no, but let’s not risk you showing up and pushing our luck. I’ll carry a camera and you can see the whole thing. I’ll ask whatever you want to know. And I’ll come back later to check the house if there’s anything about you in there. It might take me a while. But there’s no reason to for you to meet anyone you don’t want.”

  I nodded slowly, grateful for the reprieve. While I was wearing makeup and had changed my hair, it was far riskier to meet this grandfather.

  It was years ago of course. I remembered watching baseball, the only thing my grandfather would watch. I didn’t remember the conversations much. Maybe I was too young.

  “I wish I could remember why they stopped showing up,” I said.

  “We could make a guess there was some disagreement,” Luke said. “But I can ask. If I can think of a way...” He smiled a little. “I kind of wish Dr. Green was here now. He’s got that way of smoothly sliding in questions no one else dares to ask.”

  Luke went on to talk about Dr. Green and stories about different times he’d utilized this talent.

  Sadly, I wasn’t paying attention, even if I wanted to distract myself. I was zoned, still sleeping, and yet I was awake.

  Luke eventually stopped talking and when we got to a stoplight, he turned to me, looked me dead in the eye and said, “Your meter is empty, isn’t it?”

  I blinked repeatedly, trying to figure out his meaning. “What?”

  “Or rather, your meter is full and you need to empty it.” He pushed a finger toward his brow, scratching lightly. “There’s like an internal meter inside people. When we’ve had enough of strangers and other people, it’s filled and we need to get away. Introverts do. Like you and me.”

  “You’re an introvert?”

  “Yes,” he said with confidence. The light changed then and he redirected his attention to driving but continued his point. “Only, when I’ve gone off for too long, I need attention again, so I go find someone to ‘fill the meter’ so to speak. You sound like your meter is too full.”

  “I don’t want to be away from you,” I said.

  He smiled a little. “No, I don’t get enough time with you either. That meter never seems to fill. But I think that’s why we get on so well, don’t you think? I can hang around you for a good long time and still want more.”

  It was like that for me with them. There were days and days when I was around one or more of them now. I was rarely alone. Usually only while in a bathroom or on rare occasions if I’d gone to bed early before the others, or woke up alone in the room when the others got up early to start their day.

  In those moments when I was alone, I often didn’t want to stay there long. I’d do what I needed to do and then go find one of them. It was very rare that I lingered anywhere alone for long.

  “Can you be an introvert and still want to be around certain people?” I asked.

  Luke nodded emphatically, right before using a turn signal to make a right on another road. “I feel I’m like that. As much as I care about North, I can’t be around him for very long. We get on each other’s nerves a little bit. I wish it was better between us. We can get along for hours and hours, you know, but we need a break. But with Gabriel, and you, and Dr. Green and Victor or some of the others, I can get along with just fine for days. Weeks even.”

  “You just get along with certain personalities better over the long term?” I asked.

  “I do. I think it’s more than that though. I think certain people give off certain energies. I don’t know if there’s any science behind that, but certain people, they drain my energy, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly over time. And then some people I can hang around with and they refill the energy. The meter.”

  “And strangers?” I asked. “Like meeting people here?”

  “I imagine strangers, at least for introverts, they drain the most energy. It takes energy to meet someone new, to gauge how to talk to them and what they are like. And after yesterday, it sounds like a lot of energy was drained right away.” He turned back to me, his dark eyes brightening. “You don’t have to meet anyone else. In fact, you don’t have to go back to your grandfather’s. You can do whatever you wish.”

  I didn’t think I wanted to stay away from my grandfather’s too long. It pained me a bit that I’d met him under false pretenses of who I was. However, I was glad I was a secret, too.

  He hadn’t mentioned he had a granddaughter in his conversations. Had he forgotten about me?

  I wasn’t sure I could ever find a way to ask about me, unless he brought up the topic about me, and so far, there was no hint of that.

  ♥♥♥

  My father’s father lived just off the main central road of Winchester.

  The neighborhood stretched behind a tire store, a gas station and other shops. But the moment you got behind the commercial road, there were quiet streets.

  We took a right after passing a small church. Old, cracked sidewalks lined both sides of the road. Lawns were tidy but small. Most were simple ranch-style brick homes, some two-story ones had siding on the second floor. A few homes had Valentine’s Day decorations hanging off of doors, or signs dotted along their walkways.

  Our destination was a single-story brick house with a drive and no garage, with a shiny, gold-colored framed glass front door, and a majestic black horse head atop the mailbox.

  Luke drove by slowly, gazing at the house. “The horse head is bugging me.”

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “Decapitated horse isn’t stylistic to me. I don’t like it.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that before he said it, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  He made a circle in the neighborhood, going by the house a couple of times. There was a red sports car in the driveway, but other than that, it was hard to tell if anyone was home.

  Luke pulled into the church, utilizing the parking lot. There was one other car nearby, empty, and one of the tires flattened.

  Luke parked in the back of the lot, out of view of most of the neighborhood. He breathed in deeply and then out in one quick breath. “Okay, so...” He clapped his hands once, but stared off into oblivion as he did that thing where he was picturing stuff in his mind but not really looking at anything. “I’m going to wear a camera. I’m going to pretend...” His eyes squinted. “What am I going for? I only get one shot. Otherwise, we have to do this again tomorrow.”

  “We need to find out if they have any paperwork about me,” I said. “So it has to be something where he’ll show you paperwork if there is any.”

  He nodded. “How feasible is it that I’m sent from the court system in South Carolina to inquire about your dad and then...” He whispered to himself after. His fingers shifted in the air, his lips moving, working out the language and details to himself.

  I’d seen him do this before. He was in full-fledged dream mode. He worked out what he was going to say, reworked the direction he was taking. The more I was around him, the more he openly talked to himself in front of me in preparation.

  Getting used to me being there. And knowing I didn’t think anything of the way he prepared for different situations. This was something they were taught, to practice your lines and what you’d say before going in to a situation, even if it looked like you were just talking to yourself.

  It warmed my heart he was getting comfortable with me.

  I noticed, too, I was slowly, over time, letting go of the nervous side of me that didn’t know how to act around them. More and more, I was becoming myself with them.

  I simply gazed at him, amused how one blond lock of hair reaching his chin, crossing over one of his dark eyes. He didn’t seem to notice it.

  He was handsome. I’d often thought he could become a model. Out of all of them, Luke had this look I’d seen in magazines. If he gazed just the right way, and I snapped a photo, I imagined I could send it off to agencies and he’d be picked up in a heartbeat.

  He caught me staring and stopped. “What?”

  I thought to say it, but my tongue again tripped up, feeling like it swelled in size in seconds.

  Abashed, I rolled my eyes and looked away. “I wish I wasn’t so tongue tied around people.”

  He chuckled. “Say what you want to say.”

  “I can’t sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  I gritted my teeth, baring them at the window, refusing to look at him. “I don’t know. I get tongue tied.”

  He sat quietly for a moment, as if waiting for me to finish what I wanted to say. When it was clear I couldn’t continue, he reached out, taking my hand into his.

  Instead of speaking, he simply kissed my hand, the knuckles, and gently held it.

  “It’s very cute, if you get tongue tied because you want to say something sweet to me.”

  I turned back to him to be sure he was teasing me.

  He met my gaze and warmed his smile. His fingers rubbed gently across the delicate skin of my hand between my thumb and first finger.

  “I want to say things sometimes,” I said. “I can’t always... I don’t...”

  “I know,” he said. “I do the same thing with you.”

  I bit my lower lip. I hadn’t thought about how not all of them probably say exactly what they want to say to me either. Things I’d love to hear but perhaps sometimes they couldn’t find the words.

  “But also, maybe talking isn’t the best way you can relate how you feel,” he said. He tilted his head and continued to warmly gaze in my direction. “I don’t mind. You communicate in other ways.”

  “I do?”

  “You check in with me all the time. You’re always interested in what I’m doing. Sometimes you write nice things to me when you text me.” He let go of my hand to drift a finger across my jawline. “And I have to say, you have an amazing way of kissing.”

  I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was grinning like an idiot after he said that.

  He grabbed my hand again before it drifted away too far. “You can talk to me all you want, but don’t feel like you have to. There’s no expectation here. Just spend time with me.”

  Being able to talk with them was something I could work on. But I was glad he felt I cared for him, and I was able to show him in other ways that he seemed to appreciate, like simply spending time with him and being interested in how he was doing.

  They needed different things from me to show I cared.

  I needed to take the time to learn those ways.

  ♥♥♥

  I remained behind in the car with a laptop open, the screen showing the view of the camera Luke was using. I was in charge of monitoring and making sure things were being recorded. I also had to drive the car off if anyone should come asking about me sitting alone in the parking lot.

  I really hoped I didn’t need to. So far, driving had been disastrous. Two for two with accidents, and only one had been on purpose.

  Outside of my job, I had to call Victor on one of the phones and keep him with me. Victor would relay messages to Luke as well. Something about protocol to keep a separate entity on the line. If Luke didn’t hear from Victor on a regular basis, he would exit and come find me quickly. The same would be done if Victor said he lost communication with me.

  It was the only way to get things done without requiring other Academy members to come in.

  Victor was on speaker while I monitored the laptop. “Everything recording?”

  The large red recording ring around the open computer window was vivid and easy to monitor. “Yes,” I said. “Anything I should be looking for?”

  “Check in the camera for anything related to you that you might be able to spot. Mostly because you’ve met this side of the family before so it’s far more likely there could be something. Also just keep an eye on Luke. Let me know if he’s getting too caught out and I’ll call the phone he’s carrying and give him a good reason to get out of there.”

  So far Luke was still walking along the sidewalk, taking his time. My heart raced for him, trying to imagine the story he’d come up with for this, worried he’d be found out quickly.

  Also, did he look too much like a normal teenager? Too young to be doing the sort of thing he was planning to say?

  Victor made a bustling noise on his end. “Hey, let me get you on video chat.”

  I was looking for the button to push when a confirmation button popped up. I accepted and within seconds, his face—too close to the camera—was looking at me.

  The tiny window that showed what he could see displayed the roof of the car. I adjusted it, and placed it on the dashboard, still within view but distant enough it didn’t feel like he was looking up my nose.

  “Tell me how it went yesterday,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure I was totally ready to tell the full story again, but since I had a little time before I had to focus, I gave him the quick version.

  “Yikes,” he said.

  I agreed.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked. “I can recommend some cameras to set up in and around the property if you want to do that.”

  “I don’t know...” Suddenly, I realized he was the best person to be talking to right now. “Can you dig around and see about if there’s any information on my grandfather? If he was in the newspaper for any reason? Like this robbery? I feel like we’re missing something big here.”

  Victor hesitated, his lip adjusting like he wanted to say something but didn’t.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’ve already looked, Sang,” he said. “When we first learned about... you. And what happened to you. We never found anything in newspapers across the country. We even tried globally. Granted, there were a lot of Sorensons, but nothing that could have been remotely related to you. And then nothing has popped in on any searches since, there hasn’t been any notifications that fit. We would have heard about a robbery in this region.”

  “I know,” I said. That’s what was bugging me. I just wanted to be absolutely sure. This robbery was never written about in the papers. “Maybe check in the last few weeks for robberies nearby?”

  “That’s probably something to look in to,” he said. “It’s unlikely he’s the only one, but if there are others...”

  It also bothered me there were no police records, including whatever caused him to not be ‘allowed’ to have guns. Was it on official record anywhere? The robbery at least clearly happened, there was evidence. “It’s just so hard to believe nothing was reported at all about it.”

  “I can double-check, but I’m pretty sure there was never even a police report filed with his name or that address. If there had been, we would have double-checked for a connection to you. There’s been nothing.”

  “No police reports when my mother died, either?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Was there even an obituary?” I asked him.

  He didn’t look into the camera as he answered me. “Nothing that fits.” He typed a few things into a computer near him. “No obituaries for the month you were born or the first year after for the name Sorenson anywhere around Kentucky. It’s like she simply disappeared.”

  “Can you check for a birth record for her?”

  He smiled warmly into the camera. “If you’d like. Now that we know where she hails from, it should be easier to find. That one might take a minute. Not all birth certificates are digital yet. We might need to send you to the hospital if we figure out the most likely one.”

  If there was one. There was still a possibility of a home birth. If my own mother was never born in a hospital, and then I wasn’t, it was looking even more like there wasn’t going to be anything to find. “What about school?” I asked him. “She went to school around here, didn’t she?”

  He perked up at this. “There has to be one, right? I mean your grandmother was a schoolteacher, he said?” He snapped his fingers a couple of times and rubbed his palms together. “Sang, you’re brilliant. They’d have to have one on record. It might not be digital... I don’t know how long they hang on to the paperwork, but it wasn’t that far back. But that’s something we can certainly find.”

  It wasn’t needed, but I wanted to see it. With how mysterious her death was, I was starting to question her existence at all.

  I just needed to know she existed, outside of one photo and people talking about her.

  But more worrisome, it was my grandfather’s circumstances that had me troubled. He was robbed, and he never called the police about it. I’d started to learn how dangerous it was going to be for me and how careful I had to be when it came to things like police and hospitals, to be able to keep my identity a secret. But what was his reason, if there was one, and how had he managed to accomplish having no record whatsoever?

  Luke was finally to the door of the Sorenson house, knocked, and then pushed the doorbell once.

  No more time to think about other things. I needed to focus on Luke and my grandfather, my father’s father that was still alive.

  I steeled myself, trying to be ready for anything.

  It was only a few moments before an older man appeared at the door. He was tall, with a dark mustache but his hair was wispy and white over his head. He wore a robe, with brown pants that showed his ankles, and a white T-shirt, though it had yellowed a little at the edges.

  My grandfather. He’d aged since I’d seen him. He didn’t have the white hair before. There was suddenly a distant memory of his face. I couldn’t even recall when, only that it was at the old house in Illinois. The baseball games he would watch while he visited. I sat with him often to watch. He never said much to me, just to the TV screen about the game.

  My grandmother, Sangrida Sorenson, was much more faded to me. While she had visited, she kept to the kitchen mostly.

  My grandfather bent forward to hold open the door, which seemed heavy enough to swing back in his face unless he held it securely. He clutched at his robe as he stared down Luke. “Can I help you?” he asked.