“Why don’t you go up and talk to her, Reese?” Liz suggested.
“Um, no, I’m not doing that. Dad, will you take me to Lil’s?”
“No, Reese. Your sister has been here for less than an hour. We’re spending the evening here tonight.”
“Why? Can’t you tell that she doesn’t want to be here? She doesn’t want me to be her sister. She doesn’t want you to be her mother and she doesn’t want a dad. Why would you try to force that? She doesn’t even want to be Shelby. She wants to be called something that makes no sense at all. You can’t expect her to come home after all of these years and just be Shelby again. She’s not Shelby.”
“Reese, she is going to be here. You are her sister and we are her family. Don’t make this any harder for her than it already is,” Liz demanded.
Seri knew everything Reese was saying was true. Quill didn’t want to be there anymore than Seri wanted to be there. Fuck, why couldn’t this just be easy for her?
“Reese, Quill isn’t like your typical kidnaped quarry. She never knew she was kidnapped until a couple of days ago. I know this is hard for you too, but try to recognize what it’s like for her to lose the only father she has ever known and be taken from her home to a family that she never knew existed. She’s going to need you to be there for her,” Seri explained.
Reese shamefully dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sure it is very difficult for her. I’ll try to be there for her, I just don’t know how.”
Seri smiled and patted her hand. “Just try to understand.”
Reese finished her sandwich and reluctantly walked upstairs to her sister’s room. Aquilla was sitting on her twin size bed trying to get logged onto the purple laptop.
Fuck, I don’t know how to get in, Julius. Nothing she tried worked. She needed on that laptop. She knew there was a journal that he kept on there that would lead her to him. How the hell was she supposed to find him without it? 2-16-22-8-13-13-1 what the hell does that mean? That was the password hint to log on. She tried the numbers, she tried to change the numbers to the number before and the number after. Nothing, fuck.
Now what? She closed the laptop when she heard the tap on the door.
“Come in.”
“Hey,” Reese spoke, sitting on the other twin bed.
“You don’t have to be nice to me. It’s okay, I don’t plan on being here very long.”
“Where you gonna go?” Reese asked, ignoring the nice comment. She didn’t have any intentions of being nice to her. She was just messing everything up.
“I’m not sure yet. I have to locate someone before I know that, but don’t worry. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
“Is it your boyfriend?”
Nosey bitch. What the hell? How was she supposed to explain Julius? She would never understand, no one would. “Yeah, sort of,” she replied.
“Is he cute?”
Aquilla smiled. “Yes, very.”
“Do you have any pictures?”
Aquilla thought about it before she showed her Julius’s picture. She could flip to the back of the photo album and show her the one with him and her at her graduation party. She took the album from her duffle bag and turned to the back page, the very last pictures that were taken of her with her family.
“Holy crap. He is cute, but he’s kind of old for you, isn’t he?”
“He’s older than me, but only seven years. That’s not too bad, I don’t care about that anyway.”
“Can I see the rest of them?”
Aquilla started to protest when Liz stepped in. “You girls doing okay?” she asked, sitting beside Aquilla. Aquilla wanted to pull away when she moved her hair to the back of her shoulders. She didn’t want to be touched by her.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking at the photo album that Quill held with a death grip.
“Just some photos of me,” Aquilla nonchalantly explained, hoping she didn’t want to see them. They were her private family photos. She had wanted to remove the ones of her father and Julius before giving them to her.
Aquilla moved her hand when her mother reached for the book.
“Are you sick?” Aquilla asked when her mother flipped opened the book. It was her baby girl at the age she was taken. She couldn’t breathe and could feel the wheeze creep tightly into her chest. She breathed in the medicine.
“Just a bit of asthma, I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine, she was pissed. She was infuriated that she was watching her baby girl grow up in photos that somebody else had taken. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.
“Hey, isn’t that your sort of boyfriend?” Reese asked, pointing to a photo of Julius when he was just a boy.
Stupid girl, shut the hell up. “Yeah, sort of.”
“Was he like your brother or something?” Gross.
“Yeah, can we do this later? I’m kind of tired. You can take the book if you want,” Aquilla offered. They needed to get out. She had to get on that laptop so that she could get the hell out of there.
“Sure sweetie, is there something specific that I can make you for supper? I’m not really sure what you like. You’re gonna have to help me out,” Liz smiled.
“No you don’t have to make anything special for me. I’m fine with just vegetables and rice.”
“Chicken? Do you eat chicken?”
Yuck. “No, I really only eat seafood as far as meat goes, but really, you don’t have to make anything special for me.”
“I’ll send your dad out for some fish, how’s that sound?”
My dad is dead, they killed him. “Sure,” Aquilla replied. Whatever, just get out.
Chapter 10
Seri couldn’t believe what she was seeing, that son of a bitch. “Turn it up,” she requested from Manny as she sat on the edge of the sofa. It was agent Dick Face, right there in front of the cameras, taking every last bit of glory from Aquilla’s rescue.
“That lying son of a bitch,” she said aloud. “Sorry,” she offered to Manny.
“No worries. Why do you say he is lying?”
“He’s making it sound like he has been investigating her case all along. We were investigating a drug cartel. We just happened to find Aquilla in the middle of it.” Agent Malone was the one to call in the press. He was retiring. He wanted to go out with a bang, stupid fucker. He didn’t care about how hard this was for Quill or her feelings one iota.
Seri walked over to the window to see the massive amount of press still lurking.
“How long do you think this will last?” Manny asked.
“I’m not sure. I can’t say that I’ve ever been in this situation before. I would imagine they won’t give up until they talk to her or you guys,” she explained.
“Sarah?”
“Uh?” she said stupidly. She hadn’t even noticed Liz walk downstairs.
“Can we talk?” she repeated the question, holding the photo album.
“Yeah, sure,” Seri replied, following her to the dining room.
“I need to know what Shelby’s relationship with Julius was like. I’m worried that she’s a little, um, I don’t know. I just need to understand what went on in that house. I’m kind of creeped out about the two of them being raised as brother and sister and how it became more.”
“Quill led a very sheltered life. She never got to go to school like normal kids. She never had friends. She spent a considerable amount of time with Julius. I don’t think it became intimate until the last few months. Monica will be here Tuesday to talk to her. I’m sure she will dig deeper into that. Quill hasn’t really disclosed much of that to me.”
“But you know for sure that he actually did things with her?”