Page 107 of Our Last Resort

I missed him.

It took so much work, Annie. So much work to put together two existences from scratch. We tried, and tried, and tried again.

A social worker entered our lives. Then, a woman from an advocacy group that helped people who had left, or needed to leave, various cults. Together, they tracked down a former follower of Émile. In a previous life, she’d been a nurse, so Émile liked to have her present during the births. She was there when Gabriel was born and, six months later, when it was my turn.

That woman signed a document. Gabriel and I waited. We filed more documents. At the end of this trail of paperwork were our Social Security cards.

That was the most tangible sign I’d ever received that we might claim our spots in society.

We got IDs. We opened bank accounts.

If it occurred to Gabriel to track down his birth parents, he didn’t say it. I didn’t bring mine up, either. Those total strangers? What could they have done for us? I mean this literally. Yes, we were resentful, angry in ways we couldn’t have parsed out. But we also had no concept of how parents were supposed to act in the real world. If we had known, then maybe we would have grieved for the normal, loving childhoods that had been taken from us. But we didn’t know, and so there was nothing there for us to miss.

After a year in our respective shelters, we moved into an apartment. We paid what we could, and the city covered the rest.

We had proper beds, twins that we pushed to each side of our living area. We had regular access to food, showers. It was like our bodiescame out of survival mode. Every problem they’d been holding on to for the past two years rose to the surface. My shoulder hurt. Gabriel had hives. I needed glasses. He needed to get a true hold on his migraines.

We fixed ourselves, one body part at a time.

We got a small TV, the cheapest we could find. I watched it all the time. The news, sitcoms, medical dramas, police procedurals. Life was easier to understand distilled into the pithy, snippy language of Hollywood writers’ rooms.

In addition to TV, I took up smoking. Carmen, another waitress at the diner, was always asking me if I wanted to go out for a smoke. I said no, no, no, until I said yes.

It’s fine. I like smoking.

And then, well, you know this part, Annie. I transferred to Columbia.

I’m good with numbers. One day, I think—and it sounds absurd for me to say it even in my head, but this is what my life is like now—I’ll get a job somewhere. Maybe at a bank. I understand that stuff. Funny, right? After never having any of it, I understand money. Sometimes I think there’s a clarity that comes from looking at things as an outsider. I had to figure it out for myself—this world. Same with bank accounts and interest rates and stocks and bonds. No one walked me through it. I didn’t grow up with it. And so it slotted into my adult brain, unpolluted by the confusion of youth, the incomplete, incorrect bits of knowledge and bias we inherit from the people we love.

I know a thing or two about that.

I once revered a man who made up a lot of shit.

He did introduce me to math, though. In his office. That’s where my affinity for numbers became obvious.

Oh, and while we’re at it, Annie. As long as we’re talking.

I’m weird about fire. Gabriel is, too. We can’t tell you why. But I wish there was a story we could share with you, so you’d know there are some activities we’re not suited for.

Like this. Like s’mores.

I didn’t tell Annie any of that.

Instead, I did what she’d asked us to do. I gazed at the fire.I’m sure she could see the flames reflected in my eyes. Maybe, if she looked close enough, she’d see them spread all the way into my brain. Maybe she’d see the original embers, the ones that started them all, in my memories.

“It’s complicated,” I said finally.

She shrugged.

“Okay,” she said.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you.”

“I get it.”

But you don’t.

Annie cleared her throat.

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