Secrets

My heart seems to stop beating as I stare at my girlfriend. She looks like she’s just stated that it’s sunny outside or that Liam’s feet are a size eight. Like she hasn’t just shocked all of us.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Niall finally breaks the thick silence, “what makes you say that?”

Molly captures her bottom lip in her teeth, her eyes fixed on the ground at our feet. “You’re going to think I’m crazy if I tell you,” she mumbles.

It takes me a second to decipher it. “Trust me, love,” I voice, stepping closer to her, “we’re not going to think you’re crazy, no matter what you tell us.”

“Unless you say that the voices in your head told you,” Louis elaborates.

Zayn punches him in the shoulder and widens his eyes warningly before mouthing, ‘Not a good time.’

“Ow,” Louis mumbles, but he doesn’t say anything else.

When Molly still doesn’t say anything, I walk over and put my hand on her elbow encouragingly. “Molly, come on. Just tell us.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to judge you,” Zayn pipes up.

“And I kind of have to know why you think we’re cousins,” Liam adds sheepishly.

Molly clears her throat and looks just at me when she says, “Okay, so I had this dream. In it, I was with my mom, and we were visiting a woman who my mom said was my aunt. And there was the little baby in her hands, who she said was named Liam. So I held the baby in my hands, and when he looked up at me, he had the same smile as you. It was incredibly creepy.”

“But,” Zayn broke in matter-of-factly, “couldn’t it just be possible that your mind fabricated the dream? It’s not like you’d never seen Liam before that. Maybe your brain just transferred his smile onto the baby. Brains can do that, I think.”

“Okay, braniac,” I heard Niall mutter indignantly.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” she denies. “There was something different about this dream. I’m almost positive that it was a memory that I’d forgotten, since I was so young.”

“Yeah, you couldn’t have been more than a couple years old, right?” Liam whispers. I have a feeling that he might know more about this situation than he’s letting on.

“Right. But then I just remembered it last night.” She starts chewing on her lip again before she says, “And I think that, when you had your complications after you were born, we moved to the U.S., and we broke communications with your family, so we never knew that you were alive.”

“But why would they do that?” Louis breathes. For once, his humor is gone, and he’s just as grave as everyone else.

Molly shrugs. “My guess is that my parents didn’t want me to get too attached to the baby that was probably going to die.”

A harsh silence settles among the group as the reality settles in. “Well,” I joke, “it’s a good thing that Liam’s alive. Otherwise, you might never have sorted out this mystery.”

Zayn shoots me a look similar to the one he gave Louis earlier when he wasn’t being tactful. So I keep my mouth shut.

“Look,” Zayn starts, tearing his light brown eyes away from me, “I really think we should talk more about the validity of this later, but we actually have to get to an interview right now.”

“Shit,” I mutter, “I totally forgot about that.”

“Yeah, and it’s kind of a big one. So we really should get going,” Zayn finishes.

“Molly,” I ask, turning back to my girlfriend, “do you want to come, or do you want to stay here?”

“Um, I think I’ll come,” she agrees.

“Awesome.” I smile widely at her.

“Do you think we’re going to stop for food on the way?” Niall mentions as innocently as he can manage.

“Shut up, Niall,” Louis laughs. “God, Molly’s questioning the whole meaning of her life, and whether she’s been living a lie for the past eighteen years, and you’re concerned about whether you get to eat or not?”

“Hey, if I don’t eat, I don’t even get to live a life that I could question,” he offers.

“Oh, God,” I groan as we head out the door to the TV station.