Down World by Rebecca Phelps (best new books to read .txt) 📕

“I’m so glad you brought him,” he whispered, and I could only assume he meant Robbie.

“I told you I would,” my mother replied.

“I’ll put on a pot of tea,” Sage said, her voice distracted somehow, and a bit too loud. It struck me that she was making a big show of the homey atmosphere she was building with John, as if she were trying to prove something to my mother.

He whispered something that I didn’t quite catch. But the word beautiful stuck out to me. Was he hitting on my mother with Sage right there in the next room?

I heard her protesting slightly, her voice coy and almost girlish, but she was clearly flirting back. Then they walked a bit closer to the door. I panicked, having nowhere to go. And so I simply froze by the wall. If they came out, I’d have to bury my face and run for it before my mother saw me. Despite her younger body, she was the same woman who had left me all those months ago, the night she had called me her warrior.

But thankfully, it didn’t come to that. They were simply moving closer to the door so that Robbie and Sage couldn’t hear them.

“Did you really bring the key?” I heard John ask.

“Yes,” Mom answered. “I told you I would. But John, I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Chamomile or jasmine?” Sage called from her kitchen area.

“Um, jasmine, please,” my mother responded, and then she lowered her voice again. “We don’t have to go through with it,” she said. “There’s nothing down there for us now. And we don’t even know what kind of portal this would end up being. We’ve been lucky so far.”

“We’ll be lucky again,” he insisted. “I already told my investor that it would be ready tonight. He’s meeting us here in a few minutes.”

“What investor?” my mother asked.

“Some Russian kid. His dad’s worth billions in real estate or something. They want to put money into the hotel. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” my mother said, her voice faltering. “I mean, I don’t think so. I would have remembered.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t remember.”

“I told him he could go for a joyride or two through the portal. That’s all. Just for fun. These guys love their thrills, you know.”

“Are you crazy?”

“It’s no big deal. Just for fun.”

“Listen to me,” my mother commanded, a certain hardness in her voice finally making her seem real to me. It was a tone I had heard many times, whenever Robbie and I were bad, or refused to brush our teeth or eat our dinner. “I don’t want a portal near my son. Do you understand me? Otherwise our deal is off. I only brought the key so you could help me dispose of it. For good this time.”

“You’re being paranoid,” John insisted.

“Yes, I am.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to Robbie.”

“You can’t promise that.”

A tense silence fell over them, and for a moment I wondered if they had silently walked away. But then John spoke, a vulnerability in his voice I hadn’t heard before.

“Is he really mine, Rain?”

Light years seemed to pass before my mother answered, and I could feel the walls of the hallway start to close in on me as the silence expanded and reverberated.

What did he mean, mine? That Robbie was . . . No. It couldn’t be that. Sage had told me that Mom had left John when she was nineteen. She moved back to town and met Dad. And Robbie was born the following year.

“I don’t know,” my mother finally returned. I clasped a hand over my mouth, knowing I couldn’t make a sound, even as the tears coated my cheeks.

“This was a mistake,” my mother continued. “I should have known better. You’ll never change. I need to get back to my daughter.”

“Rain, don’t. I still love y—”

“Stop it. Don’t touch me. Sage is coming back.”

“What can I do?” John asked, even more urgency in his voice. “What would make you stay?”

“Tea!” Sage shouted from the other room, and I could hear the bead curtain jangling as she approached.

My mother whispered intently, “If there’s no portal, I’ll stay. Otherwise Robbie and I are going home. I’ll find another way to protect him.”

As the footsteps headed away from the door, I stumbled backwards and staggered down half a flight of stairs before I couldn’t walk anymore. I plopped down onto a step, my head in my hands, trying to collect my thoughts in the quiet stairwell.

How could I not have known about Robbie? Did my father know? Or at least suspect? And is this why my mother brought Robbie but not me this time? Because John was willing to raise her son—their son—but not some daughter she’d had with another man? Maybe the whole reason Robbie had skipped this trip when I was five was because my mom didn’t want to be tempted to stay.

But did she mean what she said just now? Would she really stay if the portal was never built?

I remembered suddenly that Sage had said something else to me when Brady and I were here. The different dimensions were just different paths, formed when a decisive event caused life to veer into a new direction.

This trip had been my mother’s decisive event—the moment when she’d made a decision that would affect the rest of her life. I could see the two potential realities forming in front of my eyes. In the first, she and Robbie went back home to Dad and me, and her son was killed at fourteen. In the other, she stayed, abandoning Dad and me, and her son was saved.

It was that simple: Go and he dies. Stay and he lives.

I knew that if it was up to John, he would build the portal no matter what. He was too addicted to DW, to the power of it. And besides, there was some “investor” to consider now—a Russian investor. That could only mean one thing.

I wanted