Read Online The MirrorMasters by Lora Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

ears.
    "Yeah."
    "David didn't do anything, did he?" I sat down beside him, cross-legged on the fine, sugar-white sand. A gentle breeze caressed my skin, and the fading sunlight drew my gaze out to the aqua waters. The fierce daytime waves had calmed into an ocean of smooth, rippling glass.
    "What? No, it's...my dad. I don't want to get into what happened." Brian stayed quiet for a while, and I shared in the silence until he could no longer hold in what was bothering him. "He kept so much from me, Leah! You'd never believe how much he's kept from me my entire life!"
    "Woah." I knew exactly what he was going through, even without the specifics. How did people we were supposed to be able to trust do this? "That's a huge betrayal."
    He’s a stronger person than I am. When I went through it, I trashed my room. Probably would still do that even now.
    Brian shot me a look of gratitude. "The worst."
    I put a comforting hand on his shoulder, a little uncertain at first. To my relief, my effort was rewarded with Brian's warm hand covering mine.
    "If you want to talk about it, I'm here for you."
    "I will — I want to, but not yet. It's too much right now. It makes me so angry I can't think straight."
    "Oh, I hear you," I said, giving his hand a light squeeze. If only there were something I could do to help, but I felt inadequate to the task. "I know what it's like to feel so hurt and betrayed that you think you'll never get over it or be able to trust again."
    "You've been through this before?" Brian asked, his ice blue eyes widening.
    I winced. In letting him know how well I understood what he was going through, I’d revealed too much. I should leave it at that. We both should. But his hungry look, his desperation to connect with another soul who could share that pain, tugged at my heart. Our families were alike in silence, each deeply wounded by a secret. As far as I could tell, the only way to break its power and begin to heal would be to stop keeping it locked inside, to stop avoiding its existence. Maybe together, we could lead that change.
    "About five years ago, I discovered I was adopted,” I began, sparing him the details that seemed too overwhelming to speak aloud to anyone, much less to someone new. One day, I came across a copy of my adoption papers in a drawer in my dad's study. That was how I found out my parents adopted me when I was two. I'd gone in there to look for a pen for my homework but instead found out that I wasn't who I always thought I was. They’d never told me, and it changed everything. "For a while, it felt like my whole life had been a lie, that everything I'd based my life on wasn't the solid foundation I'd always thought. It had only been built on shifting sand."
    "Shifting sand. I feel like my whole life has been like that, too, after what I found out," Brian admitted. "Dad would never talk about Mom, no matter how much I begged him to. He —" Here, he paused, weighing his next words. “Well, let’s just say he dropped some major revelations today — about Mom, about why he and I have to move around so much. Why couldn't he have told me any of this before? And why now?”
    "I don’t know," I said, my voice soft.
    He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, letting my hand slip from his grip. "Why couldn't he ever tell me about her? Even now, he still won’t tell me anything else about my mom, and I want to know. I want to know what she was like. I want to know what her favorite things were, what she was good at, and what she was passionate about. I want to know..."
    Again, he hesitated and shook his head as though deeming his final thought too intimate to share, leaving it unspoken.
    A painful lump formed in my throat. I’d give anything to take away his pain. How could his dad keep so much from him? "I hate secrets!"
    "So do I." Brian's voice broke, and his body shook. I wrapped my arms around him, tears shimmering in my eyes as he clung to me like