Second Thoughts

by Cara Bertrand

  “I should go then, I guess.” I hugged him, laying my head on his shoulder, and he ran a hand down my hair.

  “I love you,” he said, almost loudly, as if he was sharing his feelings with the entire night. And then softly, just for me, “And whenever you’re ready, I’ll still be here.”

  THAT NIGHT I spent many sleepless hours listening to my roommate’s soft, even breathing while I tried to tame the tornado of thoughts in my head. Carter, of course, whirled near the top. As soon as I left him, I regretted not staying, but I was still too afraid to turn around. I wondered if my subconscious was to blame, that underneath I feared if I deviated from my plan, everything would fall apart. The plan felt safe, somehow. Nothing bad could happen if I stuck to the plan.

  Later, I thought about Jill. It dawned on me for the first time that she was my cousin and that I had probably, quite literally, ruined her life. Yes, she’d tried to take mine completely, but that was beside the point. I wasn’t sure what it was about me that couldn’t hate her—it was probably a good thing about me—but hell if I wouldn’t take even a healthy dose of apathy where she was concerned. Instead, I lay in bed feeling guilty.

  Her Sententia ability was gone. Gone. Part of me wanted to believe she was lying about it, but I knew she never would, not about something so very important to her. Being Sententia was as critical a part of her world as it was Carter’s. Even I knew that much. And I had taken it from her. One more thing to add to her list.

  I wished I could give it back, but I didn’t think that was in my apparently expanding arsenal of tricks. Frankly, I’d have given her my gifts, either or both of them, I didn’t care, if I could have. But I knew I could never escape my Marwood gift, so instead I moved on from Jill to wondering about it.

  Was there more to it than I, or anyone, had thought? I knew it stopped hearts, but was that all it stopped? Maybe Jill was a fluke, but I’d pretty much stopped believing in flukes or coincidences over the past year. Something in my touch had negated whatever inside her made her Sententia. I mentally flexed my Sententia muscles, but I didn’t feel anything inside that would answer this question. I could command my Diviner ability pretty well, but that didn’t help me here. The Hangman in me wasn’t exactly something I could practice.

  Naturally, my thoughts drifted next to Daniel Astor. Uncle Dan. Lately it seemed like eventually all my thoughts drifted to him. In fact, my obsessive fear of him or, more specifically, being related to him, had given me a bit of reprieve from dwelling on my impending death and Carter’s roll in it. I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful to him. And, in fact, what I was starting to fear most was that I’d misjudged him.

  I couldn’t detect anything but sincerity in everything Dan had said at dinner, not in his pained confession or his offer to help me any way he could. He was either the real deal or one hell of an actor. I wondered if it wasn’t time to give him more of a chance. He was my uncle, after all.

  Maybe someday I could even tell him that.

  IT WAS ALMOST as if he’d known I was thinking about him. When I arrived at the dining hall the next morning, I could tell something was going on. There was a buzz throughout the room, something more than all the parents in town making it extra crowded.

  After only a few steps, I figured it out. It wasn’t too hard. Daniel Astor stood from the table where he’d been sitting with Alexis, Mandi, and their family just as Amy rushed up to me. The most amazing thing about this was actually that Amy had beaten me to breakfast.

  “Lane, oh my gosh,” she gushed. “The senator has been waiting for you!”

  All I got out was, “Um,” before she continued.

  “My dad just about died when he stopped by our table and remembered his name,”—apparently politicians were Dr. Moretti’s version of celebrities—“and he did talk to us for a while, but he was really looking for you. You’re so late!”

  I looked at my watch and laughed, mostly because she was right. It was almost ten o’clock, which by most students’ standards was early on the weekends, but usually I’d have been and gone by then. “I took the rare opportunity to hog the bathroom myself,” I told her, smiling, and she stuck her tongue out at me.

  “Whatever. I don’t hog the bathroom.” She really did. “But seriously, you shouldn’t have kept the senator waiting!”

  “I didn’t mean to! I had no idea he was going to be here. And stop saying ‘the senator’.”

  She mock-glared at me. “Bitch. Anyway, the senator seemed to think you did. But it all just adds to your mystique around here! Of course the Chairman of the Board and United States Senator is waiting for you. As if the seventh and eighth graders needed another reason to follow you around.”

  Over her shoulder, I could see Dan shaking hands with Mr. Morrow and Alexis glaring at me. Unlike Amy, she meant it. Mandi noticed my presence moments later and followed suit. Not all the underclassmen were following me around.

  Senator Astor looked handsome and relaxed this morning, casual and approachable in a button-down shirt and jeans. Eyes from all over the dining hall followed him as he made his way toward me. I felt worried, and maybe cautiously excited too. I didn’t understand why he thought I’d expect him, but I was still flattered.

  “Ah, here she is, Miss Moretti, before ten, just as you promised,” he said. Amy beamed next to me. “Good morning, Lainey.”

  “Good morning, Senator, I mean, Dan,” I amended at the jokingly disappointed look he gave me. “I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting for me?” In my nervousness, I caught myself making my statement into a question, a bad habit I usually reserved for Headmaster Stewart.

  “Nothing to be sorry for. I enjoyed the chance to spend some extra time with a few old friends and new.” He turned toward Amy, and we both knew it was a dismissal, but at least it was a good one. “Miss Moretti, it was a delight to see you again. Please tell your father I’ll have someone contact him about that grant opportunity for the hospital.”

  “Of course, Senator, I’ll tell him! Thank you again,” she said and backed away still smiling.

  We watched her go. “A lovely young woman, your roommate,” Dan said to me and I nodded in agreement. “Quite brilliant, in fact. A shame she’s not one of us.” Though the dining hall was crowded, no one was close enough to hear us over all the noise.

  I nodded again. “I wish she were too.”

  “Nothing we can do to change that, I’m afraid,” he said. “But there is something we can change this morning…”

  “What is it?” The seriousness in his voice had my nerves jangling.

  After a beat, he laughed, and what I could only describe as a mischievous smile spread over his face. “Well, I know I’m famished, and since you’re here, I’m guessing you’re hungry too. Let’s fix that. Join me for breakfast?

  OBVIOUSLY I COULDN’T decline his request, but I was surprised when instead of moving farther into the dining hall, Dan led me outside to a waiting town car. I was even more surprised when we pulled up outside Dad’s Diner. I hadn’t been in weeks, not since my last shift the day Amy had moved back in. Despite my nervousness about being with the senator, which our pleasant small talk in the car did nothing to cure, I was excited to be back at Dad’s.

  After all my hours there over the summer, walking through the doors felt a little like coming home. I basked in the warmth of the tin walls, the scent of eggs and potatoes on the griddle, and the mismatched collection of dingy booths and tables. Also, the happy greeting from Mercy Jenkins, the head waitress.

  She bustled over, deftly managing both coffee pots in one hand, and grabbed my hand for an affectionate squeeze. “Lainey! What a nice surprise! And you’ve brought the senator! What a happy Sunday!”

  Dan laughed. “It’s been too long, Mercy.” He even leaned in and hugged her. “The table in the corner, if you don’t mind.”

  She frowned. “Well, sure I don’t, but where’s that nephew of yours? Y’all won’t fit in the corner.”

  “Just the two of us toda
y, actually,” Dan replied. “I wanted the chance to get to know the newest member of my family a little more myself.”

  He had no idea just how right he was about that. I managed to smile, and Mercy had no trouble being delighted by his smooth charm. Plus, I thought she considered me part of the diner’s extended family too. “You’ll love her as much as we all do,” she promised. “Lainey’s a hard worker, especially for a city girl,” she added with a wink, as she led us to the most private table in the far corner of the small space.

  Orders placed and coffees in hand, I started to relax and Dan started his interview. After a while of telling him stories about my aunt and our life on the road, and his telling me what it was like to be a senator, I really believed he just wanted us to get to know each other. As I was taking the last bites of my eggs and toast, I felt so relaxed—an effect he must have had on most people, if he wanted to—I forgot completely I was supposed to be afraid of him. In fact, I was so relaxed, I asked the question I’d been harboring since I learned about his Sententia gift so many months ago.

  “What’s it like to be a Thought Mover?” I blurted. Immediately, I sipped my coffee to hide the damnable blush creeping over my cheeks, but I didn’t take it back. I really wanted to know.

  He didn’t respond for a moment, but studied me instead. It should have made me feel nervous, but it didn’t. He seemed to regard me with a mixture of pride and intrigue, as if this was what he’d really wanted to talk about and been hoping I’d ask all along. But his answer was not what I expected.

  With a smile, he finally said, “You tell me.”

  I coughed around the coffee I’d just choked on. “I’m sorry?” He laughed lightly, but I knew he was serious.

  “You’re as much of a Thought Mover as any of us, though perhaps you don’t realize it.”

  “Carter said the same thing once,” I told him. “I thought he was just making a comparison.”

  He shook his head and said, “A distinction. It’s a rare gift to be a Thought Mover. Carter should know. And you, Elaine, are probably the rarest of all. Undoubtedly,” he amended. “It’s remarkable that the two most powerful Thought Movers of their generation, of the entire Sententia, would meet so young and fall in love, purely by chance.”

  Actually, I found it a little scary, but I supposed remarkable was another way to look at it. “Dr. Stewart once told me she doesn’t believe in fate, but sometimes I wonder,” I said.

  Dan smiled fondly so I knew he wasn’t being cruel. “Constance doesn’t like to believe in anything she can’t control,” he said. “But that’s one of the reasons she’s such an excellent headmaster. As much as possible is in the control of her very capable hands.”

  “Carter said something like that before too…But I think you like Dr. Stewart a lot more than he does,” I added.

  If anything, his fond smile grew wider, though I wasn’t sure if it was for the headmaster or his headstrong nephew. “Were Constance here, she could tell you that is an undeniable truth.”

  I dropped my eyes and said softly, “I wish I could trade my gift for hers.” And I meant it.

  The fleeting touch of Dan’s fingertips to the back of my hand jolted my eyes up to meet his. With utter seriousness, he said, “No, you don’t.”

  “But…why? Knowing the truth is so powerful.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “When it’s a truth you want to know. You’re young, but someday you’ll understand that lies are often told out of compassion and being able to believe them is a gift in itself. Constance never experiences that. It’s one of the things that has made her so…hard. No, Lainey, your gift is powerful.”

  “I’m afraid of it,” I admitted.

  He nodded, as if there was no other answer I could give. Maybe there wasn’t. “As well you should be. If you weren’t, I’d be concerned. But you’ve already proven you can carry the weight of your gift without falling to the temptations of it. You should be proud of yourself, Elaine.”

  I looked at him for a while, weighing my emotions, wondering if this was how Carter felt around him. He’d called me Elaine again, not in anger or reproof, but out of…affection, I guessed. Like my aunt did sometimes, and Mercy too. I found myself proud to have made him proud. Somewhere in the course of a day, I’d gone from fearing him to being curious about him to being eager for his praise.

  “Your abilities are powerful too, Carter tells me. Will you…move my thoughts? Show me?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” he said, and for the briefest second he seemed vexed by this.

  “Huh?” I was so distracted by what I thought I’d just seen in his expression, and by anticipating what it would be like to have my mind, literally, changed that I barely understood what he’d said.

  But I forgot whatever I thought I’d seen when, with deep sadness, he said, “What I mean is, I won’t. I’m not strong enough, Lainey. Not like you. I never use my gift, not anymore. Not even to demonstrate for you, I’m sorry.”

  In all that he’d told me about the senator, this was not something Carter had mentioned, even hinted at. “But…why?”

  “You don’t know what happened to my father, do you?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t really know anything about the elder Senator Astor, save that he’d died not long after his son had joined him in the Senate. And that he was my grandfather, something I was sure the man sitting across from me, turning a cold mug of coffee round in his hands, didn’t know.

  “My nephew tries to spare you, perhaps too much,” he mused, and then he told me the story, sparing nothing. “My father was the last, as well as the first and only, Perceptum President to be executed.”

  Chapter Seven

  I forgot how to speak. I think I even forgot how to blink. When he’d told it all, I stared at Dan dumbly for what seemed like minutes. I’d always assumed the late Jacob Astor had died of natural causes, because I had no reason to think otherwise. But no, it was much sadder than that. It was ego and greed that ultimately killed him.

  Finally, I said, “I just don’t understand. It seems so…so pointless.” Mr. Astor had been a Diviner with a gift for seeing outcomes—exactly as I’d assumed about my own father, and what had translated into my ability to determine a person’s final outcome, so to speak. From everything Dan told me, it sounded like his father abused his gift, and his positions in both the Perceptum and the Senate, to further nothing but his own bank account and sense of superiority. “He basically stole from the Perceptum, like it was a game. But what did he have to gain that he didn’t already have?” Money and esteem had already been his in abundance.

  Dan met my eyes with something like respect. “You are perceptive. Carter told me that. And the terrible answer is: I don’t know. If there were other motives, better ones, he never shared them with me.” Eventually, maybe inevitably, his manipulations grew so extensive they caught up to him. And it was Constance Stewart who did the catching.

  “Really?” I asked stupidly. Shock, like alcohol, disconnected my mouth from my brain.

  “It was a sorely misplaced lie,” Dan said. “When you’ve told so many of them, you sometimes forget who not to lie to.”

  I nodded, sagely, I thought. Like of course I knew this already. And in a way, I did. Lying, blatant or by omission, had begun to feel like a job I didn’t want but couldn’t afford to quit. I wondered if that’s what Mr. Astor had felt like, before it was too late. But I was only trying to protect people, I reasoned.

  I looked down at the table, toying with my teaspoon. “Couldn’t he predict what was going to happen? In the end, I mean.” If only I’d known my paternal grandfather, I might have told him exactly where all his efforts would lead.

  “Probably, if he’d tried.” Dan lifted his coffee, as if he’d take a sip, but set it back down without drinking any. “We can’t use our gifts directly on ourselves, but…well, I’d say it should have been obvious, but I was as blind to what he was doing as anyone.”

  “I’m sorry. This must be hard for
you to talk about.”

  Dan met my eyes. “I’ve made peace with it. I’ve learned from it.”

  “What do you mean?” It seemed like maybe the saddest thing he’d set yet, which made no sense.

  “I mean that my father’s fate could easily have been my own.” I gasped, and Dan smiled sadly. “That shouldn’t be surprising. There’s a reason I don’t use my gift anymore. I know I’m not strong enough to resist the temptation of abusing it because I did. My father’s disgrace was what finally made me admit it. I haven’t used it since the day he died.”

  The most powerful drug in the world, I thought to myself. Moving thoughts had to be difficult to resist and infinitely harder to quit. Despite what he’d said, it was clear it pained Dan to talk about what happened, just as it pained me to learn my grandfather had actually been a pretty terrible man. I had a million more questions I decided to keep to myself, but I couldn’t resist asking one more thing I’d wondered about. “Is that why you and Jill’s mother never married?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I won’t deny it. I should have learned my lesson when it cost me my daughter. I loved Angela, but it’s Jillian I truly lost. Nearly twice, if not for you.”

  So we’d come full circle, back to me and my gift. “Why don’t you hate me?” Another question I’d been dying to have answered but never thought I’d ask.

  He said nothing for a few long moments, regarding me not with hostility but a fatherly sort of warmth. “Carter also once told me you don’t see yourself as others do. He was certainly right. Your humility is perhaps an even rarer gift than your heritage,” he mused. “What I hate are the actions you were forced to take, along with my part in them, but I can’t imagine anyone else who’d have followed them with such compassion. If not for you, I wouldn’t have admitted the additional mistakes I was making, and never would have gotten my daughter the help she needs. No, I needed you, Lainey, and I’m not alone. We need you too.”

  Here it was, the moment I’d been dreading, all the more since my suspicion of Daniel Astor had begun to change into something else. I knew who he meant—We was all of us, the Sententia, and the Perceptum Council specifically. They wanted me to do my family’s job, and I was sure I couldn’t.