Insanely, my first real reaction to finding Tabitha on the doorstep was utter mortification; what could she possibly be thinking, finding her old boss wearing a tight ALIENS! band tank-top, low-slung cargoes, and big stompy boots? As if any second she’d see right through April and gasp “David! What are you wearing?” When I just stared at her open-mouthed, she scowled.

  “Well?” Her familiar I’m talking to an idiot, scowl unfroze me at least enough for one word.

  “Carrrrrrrrrl!” Mom had left only minutes ago for an appointment, the reason for my planning on taking the rail.

  A minute later, Carl came down the hall with the goblin on his shoulder. He blinked when he saw Tabitha in the doorway; the two had never met, but he’d certainly seen pictures. “Ms. Clark? What can I do for you?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course. Right this way.” Turning, he led Tabitha into the living room, laying Steph down in her crib to gurgle at her hanging mobile and inviting our guest to sit. I closed the door and stood in the living room entry, my brain a very, very strange place. It felt like two diametrically opposite realities had suddenly crashed together to coexist in front of me. Carl and Tabitha didn’t belong in the same universe and with them in front of me I was suddenly, inexorably, two very different people. He gave me a moment to make up my mind, and then nodded to the couch beside him.

  “Mr. Seever—” Tabitha began as I sat.

  “Call me Carl. I’m April’s stepdad.”

  “Carl. Where is David?”

  “Traveling,” Carl calmly dropped our prepared story as my stomach sank and I felt myself almost floating. We’d decided that my just up and moving away would seem too sudden to inquiring neighbors, so I was traveling, a world tour. Eventually I’d fall in love with Tuscany or something and decide to stay, opening my house as an Airbnb short and long-term rental managed by the Seevers. In a few years, David would die and be buried abroad. “He’s currently in England doing a walking tour of London.”

  Tabitha’s mouth tightened. “He has his phone on him, I presume?”

  “Of course. I spoke to him yesterday.”

  “Bullshit.” Just one word as they looked at each other, Tabitha sitting straight, professional, and hostile in her crisp business suit and Carl easy and relaxed in jeans and a t-shirt. He’d been working on his laptop at the kitchen bar when I yelled. He looked at me, and whatever my face looked like, the mess in my head had him patting me on the knee and turning back.

  “True,” he said. “Can I ask how you know?”

  That made Tabitha sit back, bewilderment softening her glare. “We haven’t spoken in five months. That’s my fault but I thought that was his wish, to move on from the business. We last texted three months ago, he sent congratulations on the quarterly report. He always texted a response when I sent him any query or news. Until last week, when I texted a question regarding a long-term client. David didn’t respond. Nor did he respond to the rest of my texts or my attempts to call, or to my voice messages. None were apparently received. His social accounts, such as they are, are inactive. He doesn’t answer his door. I hired private investigators and provided them with David’s information, and they were able to access his cellphone GPS information up to the day his cell went dead a few weeks ago. I have informed them that my next step is to file a missing person report if I don’t learn anything today, and David is still not answering his door.”

  As she drily recited her facts, her hand rested on her leather shoulder bag which lay open in her lap, the small pistol I knew she always carried there close to hand. Despite my almost dissociative state of duality I had to admire her all over again; there was a reason I’d decided to sell her the family business. “And now you say you spoke to him yesterday,” she concluded. “Just what the hell is going on?”

  And oh God, if we didn’t explain then my former favorite employee and marketing manager was prepared to draw on us if we so much as moved wrong as she exited the house to go to the police.

  Because David’s digital footprint had all but disappeared, and I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about my old phone. My unlimited-minutes service plan was on monthly autopayment, and I’d left it in my dresser drawer to lose charge and completely die after getting my new phone on the Seever family plan. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I wanted to vomit and Carl’s hand settled on my knee.

  “Deep breaths, old man. This isn’t the end of the world.”

  That spiked Tabitha’s bewilderment. “You need to be talking to me right now, Mr. Seever.”

  “I don’t think I do, ma’am,” he said. “I think April needs to talk to you, but we may need to give her a minute. Would you like a drink? We have sweet tea.”

  “Fortify mine,” I croaked. “Half a shot.”

  “You got it. Ma’am?”

  Tabitha took her eyes off me long enough to nod. “Virgin for me,” she said, lip twitching. “This isn’t the office.”

  “Be right back, you can start without me or not.” Rising with a look to check on Steph, he exited, leaving me with Tabitha. Silence settled. I hated it.

  “So,” I cleared my throat once it became obvious that she wasn’t going to throw out the next words. “You look formal for the weekend?” And she looked nice. Shorter than Carl, taller than Mom, dark hair in a low-upkeep but smart pageboy cut, the same as she’d looked my last day at the office.

  “My next stop might be the police station.”

  “Oh. The weather is nice?”

  She sighed. “April, yes? April. Why would your stepfather think that you need to talk to me about David? Unless—” Her eyes sharpened and even without my not-sensitive-enough-yet telepathy I could read the sudden speculation in her face. I’d told her all about Carl and May and their pregnancy; I’d never mentioned a teen daughter. So for me to appear and for Carl to say he was my step and I needed to talk about where David was . . . she’d added two and two and gotten five.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “No. No. David is not my father,” I said it with all the horrified sincerity I could muster, and I could see her provisionally accept that.

  “But you can tell me where he is. Is he all right?” The hard edge went out of her voice, and with Carl out of the room, her hand drifted from her bag. She couldn’t see where this was going, but wanted it to be all right for my sake.

  I nodded, throat dry. “He wasn’t, for awhile there. But he’s better now. I—” I swallowed the rest with no idea how to begin, and we sat there until Carl returned with three tall sweating glasses in his hands. He handed me the first, extending the second to Tabitha with as much space between them as their reach allowed, and then sat beside me with his. He’d gone all out, with ice and mint and lemon slices and sugared rims. Sipping mine I could taste the welcome half-shot of bourbon.

  We sat in silence until I lowered my glass to hold it with both hands on my knees, taking a shuddering breath.

  “Ms. Clark, Tabitha, I— I really don’t know how to start, so, well, I’m David.”

  She gave me a long, slow, blink. “What.”

  “It’s true, I’m a changeling. This is the change.”

  When Tabitha didn’t know what to say she didn’t talk until she did; it was one of her weapons and I’d bet her sons broke under the silence every time. Now she just stared at me.

  “It— It’s been about two months, I passed out with Changeling Fever and when I woke up I—I was this.” I could see the gears turning in her head. Both her teen boys were huge fans of all things changeling and possibly alien; she’d know about all the celebrity changelings, about changeling rejuvenations.

  “I’ve never heard of—”

  “I hadn’t, either. But it happened. You can see why I haven’t told anyone but my neighbors.” And she could see; she knew how intensely private I’d been about my personal life, and she knew about the not-so-happy changeling stories.

  Silence again, and finally she took a breath. “You’ll have to prove it.”

  “I have a DNA test? It shows I’m— David— I have half of my original DNA. The rest came with the second X-chromosome.”

  “Half— So genetically, you are David’s daughter.”

  I took a sip and nodded, gathering myself, my hands only shaking a little. “Yes. The Seevers took me in, I used one of our business contacts to give myself the paperwork I needed so I’m April Seever now. I forgot about my old phone, I’m sorry. It’s sitting dead in my dresser drawer upstairs.”

  She sat for a minute. “I’ll need to see that DNA test, but what other proof can you give me?”

  I squeezed my cold-slick glass. “I don’t know? I could ask how long that last plate of The Boss’s Chocolate lasted?” I’d left a huge covered plate of them at the office on my last day. “You could ask me anything you want about the business? Wait— You had a question? About one of our clients? Is there trouble?”

  That got a sharp laugh out of her. “You could say that. Doug quit with very little notice. And Mr. Hanrahan is dragging his feet on renewal of his biannual contract.”

  I almost lost my glass, tightening my grip when it slid. Doug was our—Tabitha’s—accounts manager, and Anthony Hanrahan was our biggest account. His construction company accounted for nearly twenty percent of yearly operations.

  “Doug quit?”

  She nodded. “He didn’t appreciate you selling the business to me.”

  “But I offered a good separation package—”

  “He thought it would be business as usual, that he could live with it. He didn’t appreciate the direction I’ve moved things since.”

  “And Anthony won’t close?” Had Doug moved over to a competitor? Was he trying to poach him?

  “We’ve offered the same rates as always, but he’s dragging his feet and I don’t know why.”

  “. . . You’ve hosted him?”

  “Hosted him?”

  I took a gulp of my fortified sweet tea, making myself think about that other reality. “You came from the marketing side, Doug should have briefed you about each of our client’s styles?” When she shook her head as I’d expected, I sighed. “Anthony likes a personal touch. And likes to feel he’s won. After the initial contract is offered and amended a couple of times, you invite him over for dinner—he’s big on steak, I can give you his favorite recipes—and after you eat and share a bottle you tell him you’ve found you can knock off another five or eight percent. Show him the amended contract. He’ll sign. Also, during the year have dinner out with him at least a couple of times and find him some game tickets. I can tell you where to get those. Doug knew all that.”

  “Five or eight percent— Really?”

  I nodded. “We always highballed the initial offer by about the same because we knew we’d be doing that. Go back and look at the original proposals, you’ll see. Do you have the margin to absorb it, this year?”

  She looked like the sweet tea was unsweetened lemonade. “We didn’t highball. But since you sold the business for only its material valuation, my loan payment doesn’t eat up the margin. Yes, we can take an eight percent bath on his business without feeling it. Bonuses, including mine, might be a little smaller this Christmas, but it won’t impact operations. What else don’t I know?”

  “I can show you how to make my chocolate? I— I wanted to stay out of your way, once I’d stepped down. But I think I should at least sit down and go over everything Doug should have told you?”

  Tabitha didn’t say anything, throwing back the last of her tea like she wished it had been heavily fortified and sighing. “You really are David, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe? I honestly don’t know.” I laughed though it wasn’t funny at all. Through the whole conversation my feeling of splitting realities had settled, but I’d probably have the weirdest dreams over this. “It’s sort of a Ship of Theseus thing?”

  She cocked her head. “Ship of Theseus?”

  “Philosophical puzzle. The ship of Theseus’ famous voyage was beached and preserved by Athens for centuries as a memorial, with the old, decaying timber being swapped out for new over time. Well, after a hundred years or so, with none of the original timber left, was it still the Ship of Theseus? It’s a continuity puzzle. For me it’s, well, what if instead someone tore the ship apart and used the timber to build a new ship of a different design? Is it still the Ship of Theseus, then?”

  Because who was I, really? There were still times when, looking in the mirror, I saw David behind my eyes, a sixty-year-old man compacted into this slight teen girl body like someone wearing an impossible full-body costume. In those moments April felt so fake and fragile, a lie that everyone around me would see through at any moment. And yet even then I didn’t feel like David at all—easy to explain since while I had all David’s memories I wasn’t thinking with David’s brain. That, like all the rest of me, had been torn apart and reconstructed with a new design. And if the only thing still David anymore was memory . . .

  Tabitha broke the spiral of my thoughts. “God, David. April. I need to call you April, don’t I?” She stood up, handing her glass to Carl when he stood as well and I scrambled up after them. “And having busted in on your weekend, I’ll remove myself. But I’m glad you’re . . . all right. As you can be.”

  “I’ll recharge my phone and get your number from it,” I blurted. Obviously, she’d need time to go away and adjust to all this. “I’ll call, we can, maybe dinner? Here?”

  She nodded. “That might be best. I certainly want to learn more about your new family.”

  “And I’ll show you out,” Carl said smoothly when I again lost my words. Putting her glass with his on the coffee table, he escorted her to the door and closed it behind her with final low words I didn’t hear. Stepping back into the living room, he looked me over where I stood by the couch, and then he was in front of me, taking my forgotten drink from my hand.

  “You’ve got a couple of hours until your sisters-date. Why don’t you go and lie down and then I’ll drive you. If you’re still up to going.”

  I nodded. That was today. Pinky and Brain, April’s sisters. They’d be disappointed if she didn’t go.

  And Carl was still looking at me. “I think, therefore I am.”

  “What?” I knew those words, but—

  “I think, therefore I am. Say it.”

  I found myself smiling, an alien feeling given my uselessly churning thoughts. “I think, therefore I am.”

  Hands on my shoulders and leaning down, he touched his forehead to mine with a light knock. “Damn straight. And you’ll be okay.” My arms went around his waist and he pulled me into a warm hug. Face buried in his shoulder, I laughed when the goblin burbled in her crib.

  “I’ll be okay.”