Harkham's Corner (Harkham's Series Book 3) (30 page)

“What’s that one, Daddy?” he heard his own little kid voice say.

“It’s an octopus. See its wings?” Thomas answered.

“Wings? Can they fly?” He squinted. Oh yes! He saw it. They were wings with round little O ghosty rings on them that suctioned them to the air.

His dad laughed. “When they’re in the water, they can fly as high as they want. They’re better than a bird that way, because birds have limitations. Gravity tells them what to do. Not an octopus.”

A band started up on the outdoor stage, and Adam sat up and clapped along.

He looked around for his mother, but she was missing.

“Hey, I told you no!” Dustin bounded toward them and wore a red look on his tight, twisted up lips. His eyes were brown like a dusty storm.

“I don’t care! He’s my son!” Thomas stood up and scooped Adam into his arms. He weighed next to nothing.

“No—he’s mine! I told you this before. Stop this insanity!” Dustin yanked at his arms, making Thomas hand over an Adam, probably only three or four years old.

“Daddy!” Adam hugged Dustin.

But . . . Thomas was his daddy, wasn’t he?

Why did he have two of them?

“I thought you’d left and finally gone anyway,” Dustin said with a huff at the end, turning to the side so Thomas would have a harder time getting at the little boy.

“I did, but I came back to get my guitar and piano. Sarah said I could spend the morning with him, so what’s the problem?”

“She didn’t say a word to me about it, and you’re not permitted to—”

“I know, I know.” Thomas groaned and stomped his foot, dropping his head back so he was staring at the clouds again.

Adam looked up, too, but that winged octopus was gone. Ohhhhh. He liked that one.

“There are times I don’t know why I put up with you and your lies,” Thomas said.

“You’re calling
me
a liar? After all the false information you gave police when I caught you breaking into my home?” Dustin’s voice caught. “He’s my son, and you don’t have any say any longer.”

“You didn’t adopt him,” Thomas said, dropping his head to level and looking Dustin straight in the eye. “And I think we both know why.”

“You don’t know a fucking thing.” Dustin leaned toward him, speaking through his teeth in a quiet-hissing whisper. “Don’t you come around my boy again, or the law won’t matter anymore. A restraining order will be the last of your worries.”

“I was trying to save him from her! You don’t know what she told me she was going to do with him and his abilities.”

“Yes, I do. I know a helluva lot more than you think I do. She won’t ever hurt him again. He’s safe with me—a lot safer than he ever was with you. I take care of my children. My music doesn’t come first. Never did.” Dustin patted Adam’s back.

Thomas barked a hysterical laugh. “Now, we both know that’s not true.”

Both of his fathers shouted until Adam was sitting on the grass crying, and some police man had to break them up because they were actually harming each other with their fists.

Adam’s mind spun from that vision to one of Thomas waving at him on the bus as it drove away, and Adam was left behind with his sobbing, hysterical mother.

His heart shattered into white and black pieces, like piano keys.

“You can do this,” he told his mind silently. “Morph it into a person. Walk through the door and find Mari. Control this like she controls her dreams.”

The piano keys of his broken heart gelled into a person. Only it wasn’t either of his fathers—it was Meg.

His sweet little girl. “This way, Daddy. I’ll show you how to get to Bopbop. He said you’re his, and he doesn’t lie.” She took his hand and marched him straight into a tree.

It was the tree that Samara had been leaning up against when she was in the mental hospital where he’d visited her in France.

Only this one was hollow. It opened a hole to him and swallowed him up, until there was nothing but a soft, velvet bark caressing his skin, humming and telling him it was over.

“Adam! Speak to me!” Mari cried out, shaking him.

His eyes opened to his wife kneeling over him with Dr. Harkham at her side, along with his dad.

“This is the worst one ever,” Mari told Dr. Harkham over her shoulder. “We were in the middle of an upsetting conversation, and his eyes glazed over, then he lowered himself to the ground and it was almost like he went to sleep. Only, he was awake, and even talking to me a little bit.”

“Did you say the keyword? Did he go into a trance?” Amelia looked him over.

His dad felt for his pulse.

“I know you don’t like this, but I’m not your son,” Adam told Dustin, his voice hoarse. “I’m Thomas’s.”

Dustin’s eyes flashed with extreme pain.

He helped Adam sit up and coaxed him to standing and then moved him over to the couch in the living room.

When his dad sat down, he positively sagged into the cushions, looking utterly defeated.

“I saw you,” Adam started to say, but his dad cut in.

“You mom was having an affair,” Dustin said.

“I know. You’ve told me this before. I’ve heard it from Thomas, mom and you. This isn’t news.”

“No.” His father dropped his head, shaking it like he hoped it would roll off onto the floor. “I mean, she had an affair with me when she was still married to Thomas. She did to him what she did to me later on. She said she loved me, and I believed her. That day, after you fell and hit your head on that piano bench and she brought you to me—it was for a reason—and not the one I thought.”

“I don’t understand . . . This sounds made up.” Adam blinked and tucked his legs up under him.

“I mean . . .” His father sighed, and his shoulders rounded forward, then his knees knocked together. “She saw me at one of my concerts a few years before you were ever conceived. Thomas’s band was playing there, too. She introduced herself to me, and we slept together backstage before we even knew each other’s names.”

Adam shook his head. “That’s not how it happened,” he said, as if he knew the story and it had been told to him a thousand times.

“We didn’t use protection. Hell, I didn’t even know what color her eyes were—it all happened so quick. And it didn’t stop there. She hunted me down. She pursued me at every gig I played. We slept together a lot. I had no idea she was married, and then suddenly, she stopped coming around. It wasn’t hard to figure out why—I’d gotten her pregnant. When I went to confront her, I found her sleeping with my lead singer. His name was Rafe, and she was supposedly in love with him, too. She was a mess. I just had no idea she was sleeping around like that. There was no way for me to know until I caught her actually doing it.”

Adam moaned, and his eyes stung, then filled with water. “Not true.”

“It is true, Son. All of it. I wish for your sake and your peace of mind it wasn’t. Though, I’ll never regret having that paternity test taken from the DNA samples you gave Amelia and me all those weeks ago. I’m glad I found out once and for all.”

Adam turned away from him. He’d never thought to ask about the results from his samples, and Amelia never said, so he had figured it all came back fine and there was nothing physically wrong with him. He had no idea they were using it for a paternity test, too.

“I’m your father—your
biological
father. I have the evidence now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I found out, but I wasn’t sure how to tell you.” Dustin sighed, his throat sounding almost clogged. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. It’s one of the reasons I had Amelia get all those samples. I had DNA tests done to make sure we ruled out any inflammation of tissues that might be triggering your episodes, but I also had a paternity test done. You’re my flesh and blood, and you got your love of piano from me, not Thomas. He’s terrible with instruments. Singing is what he does. I’m the musician that composes, plays various instruments—piano, drums and guitar. He only thinks he can play the guitar and piano, but it’s not very good at all.”

Adam blinked, and tears dropped onto his lap. “I can’t hear this.”

“I know it’s hard, but believe me—he didn’t want to hear it either. This is why he kept putting you on the piano. He knew he wasn’t any good at it, and he hoped you’d be able to play someday while he sang. It was his dream to have his family form a band.” His father took a deep breath and blew it away.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I know this is hard.” Mari sat next to him and brushed her lips up against his cheek.

“Who else knows this? Who knows I’m your child?” Adam’s eyes wanted to scrunch up and block them all out, but he kept them opened.

“I suspected right away. It was the only reason I could come up with for why Dustin would take custody of you after Sarah left.” Harkham circled around them and took a seat on the opposing couch.

“Why didn’t I know?” Adam searched his memory for clues—some glaring evidence that he should’ve seen all these years.

“Does it matter, though? Does this change anything? I love you, and I always did, even when I was unsure whose genetics you came from.” His dad tried to smile, but it looked pained.

Adam’s head hurt. It was all so confusing.

“She told me you weren’t mine, and I wasn’t sure what to believe, but once I’d found out she was married, I let it go. Well, until after you got hurt, then we started our relationship back up again, and she divorced Thomas. I kept thinking about having a paternity test, but I couldn’t bear it if the answer came out that you weren’t mine.” His father got choked up, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes at the same time. He looked completely worn down. Worse than when he’d worked a hard day at the office.

“Adam, did you see something about this when you were having an episode?” Dr. Harkham asked.

“Yes, I . . . Well, I think I did. There weren’t any numbers at all this time. It went straight into a memory at the park with Thomas and dad fighting over me. I was little, but I felt how angry they were.” Adam shifted into the arm of the couch, leaning into it, rather than Mari. His skin felt like it was hot, as if someone had been holding him tight. “I did it this time.” He wanted to smile, but how could he after all this crazy news?

“Did what? Did you interrupt it and wake yourself up?” Amelia’s eyes filled with hope.

So did Mari’s.

“I don’t know if that’s what the result was, but I pretended like it was a dream, and I used the principles you taught her to get out of her nightmares. I made it shift into a person and then it led me away from the bad memory.” Adam blinked hard, tried to remember if that was all that happened.

“You mentioned a tree at the end. Do you remember that?” Mari asked, her tone soft.

“That’s where my dream Meg led me. I walked inside it, and it turned into a blanket of a hug.” He sniffed. Why was this making his heart feel all swollen and squishy? His legs were heavy, too. It was as if that blanket was still with him that the tree provided. All at once, Adam wanted more proof.

He turned to his father. “Why did you turn away from music? How come I never knew you played this well? You never touched our piano at home with the exception of playing the wedding march the day Mari and I married, and you never taught me how to play it or guitar. Why?”

His dad took a deep breath and held it, then said, “I didn’t want to be anything like Thomas. Music seemed to cause problems with your mother—feeding her addiction to it. So I wanted to turn away from her past and have her stop flinging herself at me solely because of my music. I wanted her to love me for
me
.”

Adam held his hand up and examined it.

His father seemed to clue in on what he was doing and held his up as well.

Same slightly crooked ring fingers, and similar shape, same nails and piano fingers.

His father stood up and walked over to the piano in the room.

He sat down and gave Adam a look as if he was asking his permission.

Adam nodded.

Moments later, the most exquisite music Adam had ever heard filled the room from corners to walls.

In the middle of it, Adam blacked out again, and this time the moment he fell into a memory of Thomas demanding his mother let him see his son, Adam made it melt into Meg again, and this time they got in their van, and he drove
her
away—protecting her from the chaos.

His eyelids fluttered open, and his head was in Mari’s lap.

“How long was I out?” he mewled.

“Two minutes. That’s the shortest one I’ve ever seen.” Mari stroked her fingers through his hair. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, I’m . . .” He looked over at his dad, sitting at the piano, but no longer playing.

“It’s the music,” Dr. Harkham said, her tone confident. “You keep slipping when the music plays. Mari told me earlier that it happened when Meg started playing, and now with Dustin. It’s triggering you. Do you want to know what I think?”

He nodded and swallowed past the lump in his throat, then stared up at his wife, pleading with his eyes for her to make it all okay.

“I think this is probably the last of them.” Harkham sighed and smiled. “You’ve not only learned to control them, but you know the truth now. Your mind isn’t going to be throwing memories at you when you no longer need them. You know why.”