The Queen Of Spades

Chapter 3, Continued

Oliver knocked on the door and I put my act on. I painted on a small smile and locked away the truth. The door opened. It’s a good thing that I know how to pretend too. A tall woman, probably five ten/five eleven with short blonde hair that's a bit lighter than mine and definitely dyed, and hazel eyes stood there with a smile on her face. She was wearing a black pencil skirt and matching blazer like she just got home from work.
"Hello Mrs. Hudson." Oliver said. "My name is Oliver French, I'm Madelyn's case worker. We spoke on the phone."
"Oh, yes, come on inside." She stepped to the side of the door and swept her arm out, showing the house as we came inside. "Hi Madelyn, I'm Hannah, it's nice to meet you." She walked out of the room and then came right back in with three children following her. Two boys and a girl, I recognized the older boy as Aiden's friend. He was about an inch taller than me and had curly brown hair framing his olive face and green eyes, and he wore baggy jeans and one of those shirts where it's ripped at the arms down to the waist that were really popular with early 2000s boy bands. I had the same shirt.
"Hi, I'm Noah, that's Olivia and the little one is Anton. He doesn't talk but Liv does enough for the both of them." The taller boy said, smiling.
"My husband Robin is at work, but he'll be back later tonight." Hannah told me.
"Hey." I waved at them, "Why doesn't the small one talk?" I asked Hannah.
"We don't know, we adopted him last year and all he says is gibberish. Probably trauma, that's what the social workers say." She shrugged, looking at him.
'He doesn't speak' yeah right. "sprichst du?" I asked Anton in German. (Do you speak?)
"Da." He replied.
"He does speak, but probably only German." I told Hannah, "I can teach you some basic phrases and words if you want, and I can teach him English."
"That would be great Madelyn." Hannah said.
"How did you know he spoke German? How do you know German?" Noah asked suspiciously.
"How do you know English?" I answered. Oliver gave me a warning glance telling me to stop with my attitude. "To answer your first question, Anton is a fairly common German name and he looks German. To answer your second question, I like languages, and I went to Germany once, kind of fell in love with the language." I supplied. Not to mention the people who tortured me for information only spoke in German.
"That's amazing." Hannah said in what sounded like mock amazement, "Noah, why don't you go help Madelyn get her things." He sighed and we both walked out to Oliver's car. I opened the trunk and Noah reached for my duffel bag, rolling his eyes. "I don't need any help. I can do it perfectly fine by myself. " I said, snatching the duffel before he could touch it.
"Whatever, just give me something to carry or I'm gonna be grounded forever." He held out his hand for a bag.
"If you drop this, I will kill you." I warned, giving him my violin. He let out a small laugh that said "Yeah right". Now it was my turn to roll my eyes, I grabbed my duffel and my go bag (which is disguised as a backpack) and walked back to the door. When we got back inside Oliver and Hannah were talking in the next room and the two other kids were nowhere to be seen. Noah told me that my room was upstairs so I followed him to wherever we were going. "So how'd you even get into foster care? Aiden always said your parents were great. Did they hit you or something? I remember one time he came to the school with like a thousand bruises." I remembered that day, I had totally demolished him during training the night before. I got in trouble for hurting him that badly. He got in trouble for being so distracted that I was able to do so.
"Ní imionn ach béal amadán níos faide ná mar a fheiceann a shúile, agus dtuigeann a intinn."
"Is that more German or something?"
"It's Irish, it's my first language. You might have noticed the accent. It means 'only a fool's mouth wanders beyond where his eyes can see and his mind can comprehend'. You're probably not smart enough to understand that though so let me dumb it down for you, basically it means don't talk crap about something you don't know anything about."
"Watch your mouth, we don't cuss in this family."
"Well then it's a good thing I'm not part of your family." I said, leaning on the doorway.
"Whatever. This is Olivia's room, you share with her. Your dresser is over there and your bed is the one without a stuffed giraffe on it. I've done my job, here's your violin, and goodbye." He gave a two finger salute before turning around and walking downstairs. I turned the other way and surveyed the room. It was a decent size, there was a window in between the two beds. Along with the beds, there were two dressers, a closet and a table at the end of Olivia's bed. I stuck my go bag and weapons duffel under the bed and sat down. It looked like an okay house but it was still pretty suspect, of course, that could just be my paranoia taking over but then again, maybe not.