Read Yesterday's Kin for Free Online Page A

within sight.
    “Thank you,” Noah gasped. “It was. . . .” He stopped.
    Something was happening in his head, and it wasn’t due to the sugarcane. He felt an immediate and powerful kinship with this woman. How was that possible? He’d never seen her before. Nor was the attraction romantic—she was in late middle age, with graying hair and a drooping belly. But when she smiled at him and said, “You don’t need the ER,” something turned over in Noah’s heart. What the fuck?
    It must be the sugarcane.
    But the feeling didn’t have the creamy, slightly unreal feel of sugarcane.
    She was still talking. “You probably couldn’t get into any ER anyway, they’ll all be jammed. I know—I was an ER nurse. But this kid’ll be fine. He got almost none of the gas. Just take him home and calm him down.”
    “Who . . . who are you?”
    “It doesn’t matter.” And she was gone, backing into the vestibule of her apartment building, the door locking automatically behind her. Restoring the anonymity of New York.
    Whatever sense of weird recognition and bonding Noah had felt with her, it obviously had not been mutual. He tried to shake off the feeling and concentrate on the kid, who was wailing like a hurricane. The effortless competence bestowed by the sugarcane was slipping away. Noah knew nothing about children. He made a few ineffective soothing noises and picked up the child, who kicked him.
    More police sirens in the distance. Eventually he found a precinct station, staffed only by a scared-looking civilian desk clerk; probably everyone else was at the riot. Noah left the kid there. Somebody would be looking for him. Noah walked back to West End Avenue, crossed it, and headed northeast to Elizabeth’s apartment. His eyes still stung, but not too badly. He had escaped the worst of the gas cloud.
    Elizabeth answered the door. “Where the hell did you go? Damn it, Noah, Mom’s arriving any minute! She texted!”
    “Well, I’m here now, right?”
    “Yes, you’re here now, but of all the shit-brained times to go out for a stroll! How did you tear your jacket?”
    “Dunno.” Neither his sister nor his brother seemed aware that eight blocks away there had been—maybe still was—an anti-alien riot going on. Noah didn’t feel like informing them.
    Ryan held his phone. “She’s here. She texted. I’ll go down.”
    Elizabeth said, “Ryan, she can probably pay off a cab and take an elevator by herself.”
    Ryan went anyway. He had always been their mother’s favorite, Noah thought wearily. Except around Elizabeth, Ryan was affable, smooth, easy to get along with. His wife was charming, in an exaggeratedly feminine sort of way. They were going to give Marianne a grandchild.
    It was an effort to focus on his family. His mind kept going back to that odd, unprecedented feeling of kinship with a person he had never seen before and probably had nothing whatsoever in common with. What was that all about?
    “Elizabeth,” his mother said. “And Noah! I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got . . . I’ve got a lot to tell you all. I—”
    And his mother, who was always equal to anything, abruptly turned pale and fainted.
    MARIANNE
    Stupid, stupid —she never passed out! To the three faces clustered above her like balloons on sticks she said irritably, “It’s nothing—just hypoglycemia. I haven’t eaten since this morning. Elizabeth, if you have some juice or something. . . .”
    Juice was produced, crackers, slightly moldy cheese.
    Marianne ate. Ryan said, “I didn’t know you were hypoglycemic, Mom.”
    “I’m fine. Just not all that young anymore.” She put down her glass and regarded her three children.
    Elizabeth, scowling, looked so much like Kyle—was that why Marianne and Elizabeth had never gotten along? Her gorgeous alcoholic husband, the mistake of Marianne’s life, had been dead for fifteen years. Yet here he was again, ready to poke holes in anything Marianne said.
    Ryan, plain next to his