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on her hospital bed, where she’d been rushed after the home birth had gone wrong. He’d almost lost both the small baby they’d named Nicolas Christopher and his wife. The doctors and nurses looked at both of them as if they were too young to have tried any of this; to be sure, he and Maggie had married young—they’d only been seventeen, and she’d gotten pregnant the first month of their marriage, but none of that mattered, none of that had been the cause of this.
    “She can’t have any more children,” the doctor told Kenny bluntly, as if Maggie wasn’t in the room, as if she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Kenny didn’t bother to tell the man that Maggie had known the diagnosis from the second she’d given birth—maybe even sooner. Being of gypsy blood, Maggie had been born with the gift of second sight in the same way Kenny had, although her gift was stronger.
    Both knew they wouldn’t have an easy path in life because of it; despite often being called a gift, psychic power could easily become a burden, a drain on the soul.
    “A reason for everything,” Maggie murmured as she brushed the top of their baby boy’s head. “You’ll explain it, right, Chris?”
    And so, in spite of his birth name, their son had always been called Chris, because Maggie deemed that calling their boy Nicolas hadn’t felt right.
    Of course, years later, when both Nick and Jake came into Chris’s life—with a literal bang when Nick threw a chair at Chris in the principal’s office and all three boys had gotten suspended—it made perfect sense. Maggie had smiled and brought all three boys back home; together they’d discovered that Jake was being abused by his stepfather, and that Nick was being neglected by his own family. Their decision to take the boys with them to Virginia came right after Jake’s stepfather tried to kill him and, in the process, died himself. Maggie knew the New York foster care system wouldn’t miss having another case to manage.
    Nick’s situation was slightly more difficult, but solved when his very wealthy and politically connected family agreed to let Kenny and Maggie take him in exchange for Nick forfeiting any rights to the family fortune. And so, Jake and Nick remained in their lives as their sons and Maggie’s prediction was complete.
    Maggie’s death nine months later had been a surprise to everyone but Christopher.
    Later, looking back, both Kenny and Chris realized that his momma’s hadn’t been the first death he’d predicted. No, he’d forced his thoughts about his grandparents, an aunt and a neighbor out of his mind efficiently.
    Kenny had tried to tell Chris that was normal, but could barely get the words out before Chris was stomping away from him in some kind of teenage haze of angst and rebellion.
    Before Maggie died, there had been nothing to rebel against. They’d never set boundaries for the boys, and all three had been content with the new living situation. But after … he’d wanted to rein all three of them in after practically disappearing for months.
    None of it had sat well with his boys.
    Chris had been described as having clairsentience, or clear-knowing, had told himself after his momma’s death that he’d refuse it if it ever happened again, read extensively on how it happened so he could block it.
    He’d never been able to, never would be. And all of it was about to play another role in his life, or had already. Kenny was helpless to do anything—and like all three of his boys, he didn’t do helpless well.
    He could almost hear Maggie whispering in his ear, her heavy accent telling him, It’s Chris’s mountain , cher. He has to climb it alone because there’s no way to get around it .
    He sighed and punched the numbers on his phone so he could hear Jake and Nick’s voices again.
    Five A.M. came much too fast. The military medevac was waiting on the tarmac to transport Chris to Germany and then back home to the States.
    Jamie slung her bag across