Page 52 of Moros

“Sloan’s phone pinged from here a few days ago.” He explained.

He turned the engine off.

“We couldn’t find out what this place was so I asked Tex to do some digging.” Khadri turned in his seat. “It used to belong to your parents.”

“Why would he come here?” I asked. “And are you sure my parents owned this and not worked here?”

“I’m sure.” He confirmed. “For some reason, they abandoned it about two years before you were born. I was hoping something here would tell me why Sloan was here.”

I didn’t move.

“This place doesn’t jive with my father being a brain then leaving to work at some factory.” I pointed out. “Something feels off.”

“That’s precisely what I’d been thinking.” Khadri agreed. “But I didn’t want to worry you—my gut feeling alone isn’t proof.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

Ever since I was a baby, I clamoured for something that belonged to my parents. But they’d left me nothing—not a blanket made in preparation of my birth, not a necklace—nothing.

Yet here this house was, a three-and-a-half-hour drive north of Toronto on the most beautiful piece of land I’d ever seen.

But all I felt standing in front of it was darkness, almost like a cloud draping itself over everything.

“You can stay in the truck.” Khadri was saying.

I shook my head to find him standing in front of me, tipping my chin up with a tender finger.

“What? No.”

“If it’s hard for you, I can go have a look around.” He glanced over his shoulder then back at me. “The truck is secure.”

“It’s fine.” I assured him. “I’ve never gotten this close to anything that belonged to my parents before. Um—can I ask a favour?”

He nodded.

“Can I hold your hand?”

Khadri smiled and took my hand in his.

Together we walked around the vast house.

It blew my mind my parents could have owned something like this.

I remembered what Khadri said about them abandoning it and I wondered the reason behind that decision.

It didn’t feel as if it was them—even though I didn’t know them.

Sometimes I felt things that I was sure wasn’t a part of my nature. I often wondered if those sensations came from my father or my mother’s DNA.

Sometimes they hurt my soul—the not knowing.

The not being able to reconcile those feelings with a location and origin. Often, I would shrug it off as just a strange case of repeated paranoia.

Other times I sat with those demons, I communed with them, and the conversation left me feeling lacking and definitely wanting.

A step inside the main hall crumbled under my weight. Khadri caught me against his chest and held onto me even after I was steady on my feet again.

“Be careful.” He chastised.

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