Chapter 10

The three of them ate their breakfast in silence. Everything felt so right to her as she

sat there eating with the three men. This was like her own little extended family. The only family that she really had. There was something about these men that made her feel so at home, and she knew that somehow they all belonged in her life. It was fate that had brought the three men to the farmhouse next door, and she had welcomed them into her home with open arms.

What would her father think of her living at the estate all alone for three years, then accepting three complete strangers to live with her? He would have been very upset. He would have told her that it was childish and dangerous to let these three men into her home. She had just acted on impulse when she seen that the men had bought the house not knowing what they were getting themselves into, and that now they had no where to stay. Something inside of her told her that she needed to offer her help to them and that they would be no harm to her. What was it that drew her to these men?

It was Sunday and she didn't have to work so she decided that she was long overdue for some cleaning and laundry. She had been busy for the last week and hadn't had time to clean for a while. She knew that the men would be busy working on the farmhouse next door and didn't want to waste her day lying around on the couch. After all, she had got more sleep in the last few days then she probably had all of the previous week.

She asked the guys to bring up their laundry from the cottage before they went to work, and they happily agreed. She set off to her room to get her own laundry and stopped when she seen the gift lying on her bed. She picked it up and turned it around a few times in her hands. It was a rectangular object and the edges of it were taller than the rest. The middle was a smooth flat surface. She placed the gift up to her nose and sniffed it. She could smell the wrapping paper and the tape. There was a smell of some type of wood, and a chemical. Maybe some type of lacquer over the wood she thought to herself. There was also the smell of ink and a different type of paper.

She tried to place it, racking through her mind of where she had smelled it before. A picture she thought to herself, it must be a framed picture. She smiled at herself for being able to figure out what was in the gift before she opened it. This was something she had always done as a child. Every time her parents would give her gifts on Christmas or her birthday she would always smell the gifts and try to figure out what was inside before she opened them.

She found she was really good at it; her sense of smell was way beyond what a normal person could ever expect to have. She would announce her guess then open the present. She was right about 90 % of the time. She noticed that her parents would frown when she would guess the present before opening it. She guessed that they were disappointed that they could never surprise her with a gift. As she got older she would stop guessing the gifts out loud and just pretend she was surprised at what she found when she opened them. She knew that she probably didn't fool her parents, but they at least seemed happier that she wasn't telling them what was under the paper before it was removed.

Although she had always known that she was a lot different than other people, her parents never seemed to mention it. It was almost like they didn't want to show that they knew she was different. They knew of course that she was, and she remembered the surprise and concerned looks on their faces when she would tell them about one of her new talents that she discovered.

She remembered when her parents were sitting at the table in the kitchen and she was in the living room playing with her toys. They were having a discussion about what they thought she would like for her next birthday party. Throwing out ideas about a clown, ponies, or a bouncy castle. She was way out of normal hearing distance, when she yelled into the other room.

'I want to have a princess party'.

Her parents both stopped talking immediately, and she could hear them whispering back and forth about there was no way that she could have heard them. She must have just came up with the idea on her own. She walked into the kitchen and looked up at their surprised faces.

'I heard you daddy, you were talking about what I would like for my next birthday party,' she smiled up at them. Her fathers jaw almost hit the ground in surprise.

After that her parents were always careful about what they said around her when they thought that she was in hearing distance. Although she could still hear them most of the time when they thought that she couldn't. She decided that she probably shouldn't push the fact that she heard things that she knew she shouldn't have. It was the same reaction when they found out about her ability to smell things with the gifts, and her eye sight too.

She remembered how her parents were planning a surprise visit to Disney Land for her. She had heard them talking about it so she already knew where they were going, but acted as if she didn't. They were driving down the highway and her excitement got the best of her when she caught sight of the large castle buildings in the distance.

'There it is daddy, up there, there's Disney Land!' She squeaked out from the back seat.

She could see her parents both squinting their eyes as they tried to see what she was seeing. Her father looked back at her with a confused look on his face, and a bit of disappointment when he realized she had known where they were going. They were another few miles down the road before her mother announced that she could see the castles starting to form shape in the distance.

As she went through all the memories in her mind she began to wonder how Ryan would react to all her extra abilities. Would he think that she was some type of freak that could see, hear, and smell better than anyone else? How would she explain to him how her senses were so much different than everyone else's?

Would she be able to hide that fact that she was different from him, like she had with so many others over the years? It almost came as a second nature to her now. She didn't even really have to try to hide the facts since she had been doing it for so long. Her father had a talk with her when she was younger about how she shouldn't show people how much better she was at things than they were. He said that they would just start asking a bunch of questions and want answers that he didn't have yet.

Her father would study her for hours as a child. He would give her tests to see how much she could see, hear, or smell that other people couldn't. He was amazed at the abilities that she had and was determined to figure out how she could do the things that she did. He must have given up, or at least acted like he had by the time she was about 12. The questions and tests had stopped and he just went on with life acting as if she were just like every other young child around her.

She knew that the hardest thing for him to overcome was her ability to heal at an alarming rate. Being a surgeon he was fascinated with the way she could heal in time that was unheard of for other people. He knew that she was a quick healer from the first time he had met her as a child. At the time he just put it off as she was young and her body reacted well to the treatment, but as she got older and the healing got faster he couldn't figure it out. She knew that it bothered him greatly, and she tried her best to be careful not to get hurt. If she did get hurt she would try to hide the wound from him until it was gone.

One day while out at the estate she was climbing one of the trees in the front yard when she lost her grip and fell to the ground. She had scrapes up both of her arms from the bark on the tree, and one of her arms had a shooting pain in it when she hit the ground. He ran over to her and held on to the arm.

"The bone is broken Angel, I can feel it. We need to get you to the hospital."

She refused to go to the hospital, she hated it there. She smelled it on her dad every day when he came home. The blood, the chemicals, the cleaning agents. She didn't want anything to do with that place. She told her dad that it wasn't broke, that it didn't even hurt that bad and begged him not to take her. He agreed that they would wrap it for the night but if it was swollen and still hurt in the morning that they were going. The next morning she had almost no pain in her arm and when her father pressed over her arm he was surprised to feel that there was no longer any break in the bone.

"You are some miracle child, Angel. I just don't get it." He said with a frown as he let go

of her now almost fully healed arm.

How was she going to hide that from Ryan she thought to herself. How would she explain to him that she would be just fine in a few days if something happened to where she broke a bone or got a large cut on her somehow? She thought back to when she had fallen and cut open her head a few days ago. She felt her scalp and there was no cut, no bump, and no pain left where the cut had been.

He hadn't asked her about it since it happened. He must have just been too caught up in the way she was acting and forgot all about it, she thought to herself. Hopefully he wouldn't bring it back up for another few weeks. By then she figured even a normal person would have been healed from the wound.

'He knows more than you think, and he will understand if you tell him' the voice inside her head said. She almost jumped at the sound. It had been a while since the voice spoke from the last time she yelled at it to shut up.

'How would you know? You always think that you know every thing,' she growled back at the voice.

'Well usually I do. I know more about this than you do, trust me,' it said back a little smug.

'Whatever,' she thought to herself as she tried to ignore it.