Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

‘Genevieve?’

‘I wanted to trace the genetic disorder she had. It was the only way that we could understand what we were up against. That’s how I found out.’

I stare at Jonah, at the shape his mouth is making as he speaks. I start to get the sense that I’m not really here, my body is not my own. I shiver and coldness drops through me.

‘Found out what?’

‘You know her as Maia. Evie discovered it. When she was going through your father’s papers. That’s how she got Jakob back. Genevieve was an extracted child, she was taken from a family… she was taken from your family.’

‘Maia.’ I whisper it. I can barely say her name but my gaze focuses on the small girl on the photograph. My eyes frantically search her familiar face. I’ve spent so many hours studying her, finding details for Jonah’s life document, but now I’m looking for something quite different. I search for any sign of a sister I’ve never known.

‘I can’t remember her,’ I admit. ‘Dad told us she died when she was tiny. Just before my mother passed away.’

‘She didn’t die. She was extracted. She was one of the very first to be taken. And your mother committed suicide not long after that, because of the extraction. It was a huge shock, especially being one of the first. That’s what really happened. Evie learnt the truth. She came to see me here.’

I’m trying to put together the words that Jonah’s speaking. Everything around me feels like it’s moving; the floor shifting beneath my feet, the walls distorted, at wrong angles to the floor, somehow.

My mother. She left us. She chose to leave us. There’s a small voice telling me that. A photograph I have of Evie and me, taken not long after her death, lingers in my mind. We were so young.

I know so little of her. The small details that Evie would present to me were more real than any actual memories I had of my own. But now I feel close to her. It’s as though I can touch the burning pain she must have felt when Maia was taken from her. I can picture her despair. It is something solid; it cast long shadows on everything around her.

‘She committed suicide. Because of Maia being taken,’ I repeat, dully. But still I can’t absorb it. ‘Why didn’t Evie…? Why didn’t my dad—?’

‘Your father wanted to protect you from the truth. He didn’t want you to grow up knowing what she had done. He thought it was better that way. And Evie wanted to protect you from that too. At first.’

‘But how did she find out about Maia being Genevieve? Did Dad know that too?’

‘When Genevieve got sick when she was a toddler, I started to investigate fully how the XC programme operated but I didn’t get anywhere. I ended up starting a relationship with someone who worked there. That’s how I learnt the truth. Because Genevieve was one of the first, they made a mistake. They didn’t screen her. What happened to us would not happen now, they’ve learnt from their mistakes. I confronted OSIP. I had to know who Genevieve’s birth family were. I had to find your family and so I could fully understand the condition she had and if it could be treated. But they refused to help me and so I had to track down your father myself. It took time, bribes, money, but I found him in the end.

‘I told him it was part of a genetics study that I was running, that your family had been selected because he and your mother were able to conceive naturally. He gave samples willingly. You were still very young at the time, about five or six, I think. I discovered the rarity of her condition – neither you nor Evie are carriers.

‘He was struggling with everything that had happened, raising you and Evie on his own, losing his wife and daughter. We got talking. I don’t think that he had anyone else to confide in. He told me about what had happened about Genevieve – Maia – and your mother…’

‘And you listened. When all the time you had his daughter—’

‘It wasn’t lost on me, Kit. I’m not… proud of it. But he needed someone to talk to. And I could listen. It was the least that I could do.’

‘And me… I’ve been writing your life document, I’ve been watching her, hearing her.’

‘I wanted to keep you close,’ Jonah said simply. ‘So I could be sure you had no idea who she really was.’

I trip over myself remembering Genevieve, Maia, through the lens of the Sphere. She tumbles towards me, seemingly so close but always out of my reach.

‘Does everyone know – everyone who… who has an XC?’

Jonah doesn’t rush to fill the silence. ‘No, not everyone. I only discovered it myself because of Genevieve getting ill. Some others may have found out but it’s not general knowledge.’

‘And so you were stringing Dad along, listening to him, letting him tell you everything… Did he ever find out why you were really so interested in him? Did you, did you,’ I almost stumble over the words, ‘…introduce him to Maia?’

‘No. We never met each other, only wrote. It went on for years. Sometimes I didn’t hear from him for a while. It got less frequent as time went on. But I was in touch with him, right until the end. Evie found our correspondence. That was how she discovered that your sister had been extracted, and the truth of your mother’s death.

‘And then she came here, after Jakob was taken. Just turned up one day. Got the address from my letters. Said that she needed to get away from everything at home. And with all that had happened to her, she wanted to talk to someone who knew what your father had really gone through. She told me about Jakob, about your dad’s death and learning what had happened to your mother