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Rika

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I swear that I heard my mommy's voice today at dinner. Actually, I know that I did, and I wasn't the only one either. Reagan heard it too. And I think that daddy did. The only one that I am not sure about is Talia.

I thought that Talia had heard her too, but she didn't look excited like Reagan and I had. Daddy hadn't reacted too much, I think he was trying to remain calm for all of us, but his eyes gave it away. There was nothing like that in Talia's eyes though.

Didn't she love Mommy? Didn't she care that something was wrong with Mommy? What was I supposed to do to figure all of this out?

Not to mention, I very clearly remember what she said.

'Mommy isn't here.' Why would she say that? Mommy was right upstairs in her room. Mommy was just sick and sleeping in the bed. She was still here. She wasn't gone.

I needed to talk this out with my brother. I needed to talk to Reagan. That was why I was on my way to his room across the hall from mine.

"Come on in, Rika." He called out to me before I even knocked on his door. We often did that. We knew when the other one was near or when they were coming to see us. That means I knew when he was on his way to my door, and he knew when I was on my way to his. There was more to it than that, but that is all that mattered at the moment.

"Hey Rea." I called out his nickname when I walked into his room.

"Hey Ree." He had taken to stressing the long E sound in my first name as my nickname, this just made us closer, I don't know why, but it did.

"U..uhm, Rea, I uhm.. I wanted to ask you something." This was a lot harder to bring up than I thought that it would be.

"Are you going to ask me if I heard Mommy?" He lifted his head from the book that was in his lap. "Because if that is what you are going to ask me, then the answer is yes. I heard her. She called out to us from somewhere really far away. She said all of our names. She started with Dad's name then mine, yours, and lastly Talia's."

"I knew it." I was smiling happily. "I am just really glad that someone else has heard it as well. I had been feeling borderline crazy there for a few minutes. I knew that I hadn't made it up or that it wasn't just in my head. But no one talked about it at dinner, so it really made me wonder if it was real or not."

"Oh, it was real." He immediately confirmed that for me with his eyes filled with excitement. "I know what I heard, and I would know Mommy's voice anywhere."

"Me too." I slumped backwards on his big bed as I collapsed in relief.

"Did you hear Talia, though? She said Mommy wasn't here. Did she not hear her?"

"I don't know."

The moment that I said that, there was a knock on Reagan's door.

"Come in, Talia." He called out to her, having smelled her the same as I did.

"Hello Reagan, hello Rika." Talia walked into the room with a smile on her face and came to stand in front of me and my twin brother.

"What's up Talia? What do you need?" Reagan asked her with a tone that said he wished we hadn't just been talking about her.

"You were talking about Mommy, right?" That took us both by surprise. All we could do for a moment was look at her and then at each other. After a minute or so, I found my voice and asked her what I wanted to know.

"Talia, why did you say that Mommy wasn't here?"

"Because she isn't." There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary with Talia. She didn't look any different, but the things that she was saying made no sense to me at all.

"She's upstairs, Talia. She's in her room." Reagan pleaded with her. "You know that."

"That is just Mommy's body. It's her shell. She's not in it right now, though. She will come back, but she isn't in it."

What the heck? What in the world was she saying right now?

"Talia? Do you know where she is?" Reagan asked her.

"Where has Mommy gone?"

"Mommy is on a mission. She is gone with our brothers to stop a bad guy. She will come back soon."

"We don't have brothers." Reagan rolled his eyes at Talia, clearly dismissing her words.

"Not yet. But we will soon." With that, our little sister smiled and then left the room calmly. That was definitely an experience that I had not been expecting.

I know that Reagan was dismissing her words, but could she have been right? Did Mommy go on a quest and left her body like that? Was she here but not here? And if so, where was she really?

I didn't want to think about it too much, and I didn't want to argue with Reagan about it at the moment. He clearly didn't believe Talia. Yet, for some reason, I felt like she was right. I just needed to think about this myself.

"I will talk to you later." I waved at my brother and went back to my room. I laid on my bed and just replayed that conversation with Talia in my head over and over again. The more that I listened to it, the more I thought that she might be telling me the truth.

After a little while I heard a knock at my door, and could tell that it was Daddy.

"Come in, Daddy." I tried to smile for him, but it didn't go well."

"Are you feeling ok, sweetheart?" He came over to sit with me on the bed, and I knew that he was here to tuck me in and tell me good night.

"I'm just thinking. A lot has happened today."

"Really?" His eyes opened wide like he hadn't expected that from me.

"Daddy, is Mommy going to be OK?"

"Yes, baby girl, she will be." Daddy looked a little more calm than I had seen him in the last two weeks. He had to know something, something had to have changed since dinner.

"Talia told me that Mommy wasn't in her body and that we have three little brothers coming."

I had expected him to laugh it off, I didn't think that he was going to look so scared by what I had said.

"She really said that?" I nodded to tell him that it was true. "Then what Charlie said was true." Daddy whispered that part under his breath before he looked at me. "Look, Rika, I will not lie to you. What Talia said is true. But Mommy will be back, she just has a job to do."

"Yes, Talia said that too. So, does that mean that Mommy is going to have three babies too? Is she pregnant with one of them now?"

"She is pregnant with all three right now. They're triplets, and they're all boys."

"Oh, cool." I tried not to react to that too much. It was a little odd to have everything that Talia had said confirmed. "Daddy, where did Mommy go?"

"I can't tell you that, Rika. That is not something that I can share. But she will come back. And I have some people that can check on her now, so we will know that she is still safe while she is there."

"OK." I was not happy that he didn't answer me, but I had to deal with it. I couldn't chance it anyway.

Now that I knew that my mommy was going to be OK, that I knew that everything was going to work out in the end, one way or another, I felt a little calmer. Not to mention, I just found out that I had three new little baby brothers coming soon. When Talia had been born I had still been little, so I hadn't been able to do a lot for her. Now though, now I could help them and hold them when they were here. I was determined to be a good big sister and help my mommy out when my little brothers got here.. That's what a responsible big sister does.

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