Free Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) by Esther Dalseno

things like that. My Mamma says that all the time.”
    “You don’t think it’s true?”
    “Of course not. But all Mammas say that little boys are handsome, especially their own. I bet you say that to Orlando all the time.”
    “You’re very observant and quite right,” said S. Khan, and looked impressed, although I could tell she was trying not to smile. “But all Mammas happen to believe their sons are the most handsome boys in the world.”
    And at the mention of my mother, I began to feel sorry for how I had behaved. I remembered that I loved her and I wanted to go home and tell her so, but then recalled I was angry too, and scared for Volatile.
    “Your mother is Blanca Laurentis, no?” queried Signora Khan.
    “That’s right,” I sighed. “Sorry.”
    “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
    My shoulders drooped and I shook my head. “Just sorry. You know. Everyone knows she’s a…”
    “She isn’t,” stated Signora Khan in a voice so loud it startled me. “She has a medical condition, that is all. It’s quite common, you know.”
    “But she’s the only one who has it!”
    “Yes, in this small town whose citizens believe is the center of the universe. But in the whole world, she is one of many. Don’t be too hard on her.”
    “Do you know my mother?”
    “I went to school with her,” said Orlando’s mother, and cleared her throat.
    “Was she always…you know…like that at school?”
    “Not always.”
    “Papa said something happened to her to make her like that.”
    Signora Khan looked distinctly uncomfortable and shuffled in her chair, choosing her words carefully. “Then your father must be right. Are you an only child?”
    And without thinking, I gushed, “I have a sister but she flew away!”
    “Don’t you mean ran away?”
    “Yes, sorry. She ran away.”
    “Well, that is very serious. I am sure she will be back. Your parents must be beside themselves with worry. I didn’t realize you had a sister.”
    I must have looked monstrously horrified, because Signora Khan stopped cold. My face turned white, and beads of sweat began to drip from my forehead, and I remembered why Volatile must be concealed; because there was a man with a shotgun who was looking for her, and there were people out there who would not understand and would scream, “Lock her up! Take her away!” And I had betrayed her, again. Just like my parents.
    “Please, Signora Khan, please.”
    “What is it, Gabriel?”
    I was paralyzed with the realization of what I had done. “Don’t…just don’t…”
    And S. Khan leaned over the table and I smelled ginger and fat yellow lemons. She looked me in the eye and saw deep inside me, to all my secrets sliding over each other in the pit of my stomach, like bloated worms. “I won’t tell a soul,” she breathed, “so you just rest easy.”
    She smiled at me, and the thought inanely crossed my mind what it would be like to slide a pencil between her two front teeth. She reached out a hand and smoothed back my hair. “At least you comb your hair,” she said, but her voice was different now: jovial, too loud. “I hope you can teach my son.”
    Orlando approached the table and kissed his mother on both cheeks. He nodded at me, and for the first time, appeared awkward as he shuffled his feet. I noticed the long, curved slippers he wore, and how he was slightly duck-footed. He was wearing a silk robe embellished with peacocks and roses. He blushed and said, “It’s Imelda’s,” and slid it off his shoulders, where it shimmered in a gleaming puddle on the floor. “Let’s go, Laurentis,” he said, grabbing my glass of coffee and swallowing it down like a shot of vodka.
    “ Ciao !” I called behind my shoulder to S. Khan, and before I knew it, I was being led up a flight of shining spiral stairs, and all around me hung the Khan’s laundry, shiny and satin and bold, that it seemed I was walking upward in a tunnel of leftover circus tents. There could have been rooms to the