“I don’t want to fight with you tonight, Kandy,” Gypsy breathed out roughly, reaching back to release the elastic band holding her hair back. “I’m really tired, and I just want to—”
“Go home and stare into the dark until dawn like you did while you were at home?” Kandy questioned suddenly, the quickness of the question catching her off guard, reminding her of why she stayed out so late most nights.
Gypsy flinched.
“Exactly. Good night.” She moved to the door.
“Do you know what, Gypsy?” Kandy’s harsh question stopped her as she opened the door and started through it.
“I’m sure I don’t want to know,” Gypsy sighed, keeping her back to her sister, aching at the bitterness churning inside her now.
“I didn’t just lose my brother that night in the desert, I lost my entire family,” Kandy whispered, the words, the grief in her sister’s voice driving a brutal, sharp-edged stake straight into Gypsy’s soul. “I became an orphan, and none of you ever realized it. Or maybe you just fucking didn’t care.”
Shock held her for long seconds, stealing her breath before she swung around to face her sister. But she wasn’t there. Disappearing into her bedroom on the other side of the room, her door closing quietly, Kandy had evidently said all she had to say.
Gypsy shook her head.
Kandy was wrong.
Their parents had held on to the younger child desperately after Mark’s death, terrified of losing their last, remaining favorite child.
They hadn’t objected as Gypsy drew further and further away emotionally. Sometimes they had watched her helplessly, but they had loved Kandy.
Giving her head a hard shake, Gypsy left the apartment, closing the door behind her and listening carefully for the locks to engage. When they did, she forced herself to move to the stairs that led to her own apartment, and the darkness that couldn’t be dispelled no matter how many lights she turned on.
She knew where her sister went on the rare occasions she stayed out late. Kandy liked to play poker and over the years, several of Mark’s friends had taught her how to play it with deadly skill. The small amusement had begun when Kandy turned twelve and Mark’s best friend, Jason, had arrived at the house to speak to her parents about the image consulting business that had been floundering sharply since Mark’s death.
Kandy had been playing poker with a dummy hand at the small card table where Mark had taught them both to play. From there, as she’d grown older, he’d sometimes taken her with him to his card games when her parents were busy. Her parents had never, not even once, asked Gypsy to watch her little sister.
Not that she blamed them after she’d failed her older brother.
Jason and his friends got together monthly now and had been known to play for entire weekends.
And they always invited Kandy.
Stepping into her apartment, she made a mental note to call Jason—maybe he would know what the hell was going on with her sister.
Because Gypsy couldn’t allow herself to figure it out on her own. If she did, she would have to admit that Kandy might not be an orphan, but in all the ways that mattered, she had definitely become an only child.
And the guilt of that would only open her to the nightmares she’d fought to put behind her so long ago.
...
The next two days were relatively free of Rule and his sidekick, as Dane Vanderale was being dubbed. Rumor was that Jonas Wyatt had flown with his fiancée and child to D.C. to attend a Senate hearing that had been called regarding the reorganization of the Bureau of Breed Affairs that was being speculated on.