I couldn't control any of it. Some force I didn't understand seized me and dragged me forward without warning, pulling me past Lewis so quickly it stirred his hair as I passed. Everyone's attention was fixed on Everett, but Lewis stilled. He turned, slowly, in the direction I was being pulled away — not looking at anything specific, just turning, the way you turn when something fundamental shifts in the air around you and your body registers it before your mind does.
"Riley?"
Nothing answered him. Everett sensed it first, his tiny eyes scanning the room with the alert, searching expression that newborns aren't supposed to have but sometimes do — as though they arrived already knowing things the rest of us have forgotten. When it became clear I was no longer there, both babies began to cry. Not the soft, manageable fussing kind. The deep kind, the inconsolable kind that fills every corner of a room and presses against your chest like something trying to get in.
