Wasn’t well.
You don’t have a spouse, but you have Mom, and Dan. You don’t have a newborn, but you have Sammy.
Sometimes you’ll stand in front of the mirror for long quiet minutes. You don’t look dangerous, you think. Maybe if you did, fewer men would scream at you from their cars. But you’ll think of those ads on the bus, too. Those posters of girls, always blonde, thin, and white, tear tracks lit in sepia. MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS, it advertises. It never says what to be aware of.
Imagine what people would see—if you wore your insides out, if they could see your thoughts projected. Imagine what they’d think. Hysterical. Paranoid. Crazy.
Mom, and Dan, and Sammy—they wouldn’t look at you like that. They’d never.
They just might not look at you the way they do now.
The volunteer firefighter is doing better, you’ll learn three weeks from today. He looks happier. He’s gained some weight.
“But you never really know,” Flora will sigh into the phone.
“Mm,” you’ll say to a fixed point on the wall. “I guess not.”
Nineteen
THE HOME AWAY FROM HOME
THE PATH AHEAD has split into two.
In one, the alleyway entrance to the Mockingbird’s office, undisturbed by the things set into motion at its core. In another, the kitchen of the Summers’ condo narrows to a sharp point, Nick Lansbury standing at the center.
The image of the kitchen holds for a moment. The light mist falling over both of us belongs on Sutton Avenue, not here. But it pools on the floor. It flows down the cabinets in rivulets. Nick’s hair is soaked, plastered to the sides of his face.
And closer than ever, that roar. I can make out another sound now. Something churning.
“Rose.”
The images overlap as I blink. The ground rising and flattening, pavement to tile, pavement to tile. The windows of the buildings around us shrinking and narrowing into cabinets. Nick, everywhere, no matter what I’m seeing. Everywhere as always.
“Rose.”
Like a screen door, the present moment slides back into place. We’re standing in Lotus Valley, Nevada: the door to the caverns behind us, faint signs of life from the street. But that cold, damp air engulfing me, the slight shift of the colors in the world like a winter day sapping the brightness of the sky—those don’t fully recede.
My fear is driving the memories I see. Whatever I’m feeling, we both feel it. And if I spin out, so does the Flood.
So calm down.
Sure. Thanks, Rose. What a revolutionary concept.
“Rose.”
My shoulders jerk upward. Cassie’s calling me. I heard her the first time. Did I not answer her the first time?
“Y-yeah,” I say. “I’m here.”
Not how I meant to say it. She notices, too.
Past her shoulder, Felix is saying something to Alex in a low voice. Alex nods sharply but doesn’t look up—he’s holding his palms down and flat in front of him, staring kind of wonderingly at his quivering hands. I know that look That look that says you didn’t realize how scared you were until just now.
Alex glances at me, over my shoulder. Which he probably can’t help. If I could see what he sees, I’d be staring, too.
Felix, on the other hand, is looking right at me.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” Cassie says, “stop.”
“I didn’t say anything.” Felix’s mouth snaps shut briefly. “But maybe I should.”
“Felix—” Cassie starts.
“It’s okay.” My thoughts feel fractured, the way they always do after a panic attack. “Let him say it.”
Alex’s hand is still shaking as he takes Felix’s elbow. “This isn’t her fault.”
“I know. So you can all stop looking at me like that,” he says. “I’d still like to hear what happened down there.”
“Nothing that’s going to happen again,” I say. Nothing that can happen again. I could feel it that time, the full power of the Flood hanging over us. What would have happened if I hadn’t calmed down?
“The Flood hasn’t shown you someone else’s memories before, right?” Felix says. “Hell, they’ve never shown us anything before.”
“If they feel what I feel,” I say, “then I won’t do it again. I’ll control myself better.”
“Rose,” Felix huffs out, “do you understand what’s happening here? This thing is—”
“Dangerous?” I say faintly.
“Felix,” Alex says. “Give her a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute!” he says, throwing his hands in the air. “We barely have more than a day! How are we supposed to help if she can’t talk to us?”
“Maybe there’s no helping them.” There’s a crackling static down my spine. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
Felix barks out a laugh. “First thing you’ve said that’s made any sense.”
“Listen to me.” There’s a bone-deep chill to Cassie’s voice. “If I can be calm about this, so can you.”
“Oh, well, if you say so,” Felix says. “If you’re going to tell us what you know, then tell us. Don’t expect us to take your word for it.”
“What I know,” Cassie says in a low shiver, “would break you in half. So do yourself a favor and drop it.”
There’s a long stalemate, none of us quite willing to come close to eye contact. Finally, Alex clears his throat.
“I think we could use a break,” he says. A little more pointedly to Felix, he adds, “I could use a break.”
“Fine.” Felix clears his throat and straightens. “I’ll drive you back to the station.”
Cassie’s arm slides into mine. The edge in her voice hasn’t quite left. “We’re going to walk.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Felix doesn’t look at me at first, as he passes. But before he turns the corner, I hear him mutter, “Sorry.”
Alex doesn’t say anything. But the look he gives me before he slips out of sight is—kind of soft. Scared, too, but mostly soft. I think that’s what it looks like to have someone afraid for you.
Don’t get lost in your own head. That was supposed to be my rule. But this isn’t all in my head, is it? Not anymore.
* * *
—
IT’S A CLEAR, dry day outside. If this is the second to last day of Lotus Valley’s life, at least it’s a nice one.
We pass Paul’s Pawn and Loan, and there’s a line stretched around the corner; people shifting their worldly possessions in their arms as they wait to lighten their evacuation load. Across the street, Theresa leans against the side of the garage. She doesn’t notice us. She’s too busy watching the procession.
Cassie walks in step with me, careful not to crowd but close enough that any onlookers will know I’m with her. She takes a swig of her water bottle, then hands it to me.
“I should apologize,” she says as I’m drinking. I almost choke.
“For what?” I sputter. There’s only one harbinger of destruction in this conversation, and it’s not her.
“That night at the diner. You told me about your PTSD,” she says. She either doesn’t notice the flinch or ignores it. “I haven’t thought about how this must be affecting you. The things you must be seeing. And I’m sorry for that.”
“You’ve been nothing but nice to me,” I say slowly.
“Partially so you would help. So you’d trust me,” she says with a shrug. “I’m told sometimes I can be . . . careless with people. You might have noticed by now that I can’t always tell what we’ve talked about and what we haven’t. Sometimes I don’t have the patience for conversations. Where I’m concerned, we’ve already had them and moved on.”
“You don’t have to be nice,” I say. “You’d have every right to blame me for this.”
“That’s the good thing about looking ahead,�
� Cassie says. “I was done blaming you a long time ago, even before I knew for sure that it wasn’t your fault. And if blaming you fixed anything, you’d have that covered by yourself, wouldn’t you?”
I wince. “That’s fair.”
“It’s really okay.” She laughs. “The first time I saw tomorrow night—that was such a long time ago. I’ve seen it from every angle since then. And I’ve seen glimpses of your life. So many times now. So when I tell you that it’s not your fault, or even the Flood’s fault, that’s not to make you feel better. That’s because it’s true. Most bad things happen without malice, y’know? They just happen. Storms never wish anyone harm. They just come and go.”
Something about the way she says it sends a rush of goose bumps up my arms and legs. “What did you mean before, what you told Felix?”
There’s enough of a beat that I know she’s scripting an answer. “I don’t blame him for being scared. He has a big family. He wants them out of harm’s way. But that doesn’t mean he gets to forget that the rest of us are scared, too.”
I nod. I don’t buy for a second that that’s it, not when she still hasn’t told me how the prophecy ends. But she’s respected my silence countless times, without question, in the past day and a half. The least I can do is return the favor.
Cassie chews on her lip for a moment. “Rose. What happened with the Mockingbird . . . you don’t have to explain it if you don’t want to. But maybe you should think about telling someone.”
I laugh weakly. “I don’t think I’m ready to hear what they’d have to say.”
Cassie’s eyes narrow. Not the answer she was expecting, I think. “What do you mean?”
I concentrate on my feet, shifting my weight. “Not everything ‘just happens.’ Sometimes it happens because someone didn’t do all they could.”
She looks perplexed at first. She gets this look, like she’s doing math in her head. Then her eyes get wide.
“Oh no, Rose,” she says. And she looks—sympathetic? “You haven’t been—Oh no, no, no. It’s not like that.”
“What’s not?” I say slowly.
Suddenly, we’re not walking anymore. She’s facing me, holding my shoulders. “Listen to me,” she says. “What happened to that girl was an accident. Just an accident. It’s not like what he did with you.”
There’s a pause. A long, cold moment I can’t quite put my finger on. A burn of metal up my throat and across my tongue.
“What did you say?”
Cassie’s eyes get wide in her pale face. “I hadn’t told you yet,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “Had I?”
I saw you, she’d told me, yesterday. Just you, standing in the middle of this empty road. But she saw more than that.
“You saw what happened to her.” My tongue feels thick. The metallic taste floods my stomach, dissolves into a rush of churning blood. “No . . . you saw all of it. What happened to me, too.”
“I’m so sorry, Rose.” She’s stammering, clasping her hands together. To her, we’ve had this conversation, already moved on, and yet she’s at a loss for words. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this, I—”
“Oh my God.” Laughter bubbles up, unstoppable. “I haven’t told anyone. I was never going to tell anyone, and you knew. You knew before it even happened.”
“Rose.” Her hands hover at the edge of my space. “Why don’t you sit down.”
We lock eyes. I wonder what she sees in mine to make her look at me like that. I wonder if she can see threads of cause and effect as easily as she can see futures. I don’t want to sit. I want her to explain.
Did you see what I agreed to, that night on the road?
Or I didn’t want him to lose his license, can you believe that?
Or Would she have gotten in his car if I said something? If I picked up the phone?
Or Did you see what happened to her?
Did it look like it hurt?
Did they mean it when they said it was quick?
What finally comes out is “I’ll meet you at the station.”
“Rose,” she says again, in a rush of air. “I don’t think you should be alone.”
It’s like there’s a break in the water, and I drag myself to the surface. I can convince her I’m okay. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s looking okay. But I can’t keep talking to her—not like this.
Because next time I open my mouth, everything might come tumbling out.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I am. But I need a minute.”
Cassie chews on her lower lip. “If anything happens, call me. I mean it.”
“I will,” I say. I think she hears just how perfunctory that sounds.
“Listen.” She drags a hand through her curls. “You don’t have to talk to me. Just . . . maybe it’ll be easier. That you don’t have to start from the beginning.”
She watches me for a long time as she walks away. The ghost of her stare lingers after I turn to the empty road.
* * *
—
EVEN THOUGH LOTUS Valley looks empty at first glance, there are surprisingly few places to be alone. Everywhere I try, there’s always someone staring, or trying to talk to me.
I end up wandering in circles at first. Walking used to help—especially at night, when the sounds of my neighborhood were sleepy and muted. That was never Mom’s favorite habit of mine. But there were no dangers out there that I hadn’t already thought through, back to front.
I should try the Flood again. I haven’t seen them since I left the Mockingbird’s. But my vision is still swimming, and my tongue feels heavy in my mouth.
Eventually, my aching feet decide for me. So I find the quietest place I can to sit: the back steps of the Sweet as Pie Diner.
The back door stands open, straight into the kitchen. Faint sounds filter through: the clinking of forks, the sizzling on the stove, and the murmur of the TV on the counter. Maggie Williams’s inescapable voice.
The time is now, she says. Your civic duty is clear. Vote YES ton—
The auburn-haired waitress is by the counter, spacing out even pours of coffee. When I shift on the stairs, it gets her attention. She doesn’t seem startled, though. Her mouth thins into a thoughtful line.
And then she does something I don’t expect. She reaches over, turns the dial, and shuts the TV off.
“Adrienne—” someone starts to complain.
She cuts them off with a look. “You ain’t watching it,” she drawls.
And then leaving the mugs on the counter, she crosses the kitchen to the back steps.
“I’d bring you some of that coffee,” she says. “But something tells me you don’t need it.”
We look at each other for a long moment. Then she giggles. And surprisingly, I laugh, too.
“Rough day?” she says, grinning.
“Nah,” I say. “Living my best life.”
She throws her head back and flat-out cackles. “Can I let you in on a secret? Get the Home Away from Home. Cures all ills.”
“Oh . . .” I glance at the laminated menu on the back door. Sure enough, there it is: the home away from home special. please inform your waitress of any food allergies or unpleasant taste associations.
I have several follow-up questions. But what I end up saying is “Strawberries make my mouth itch?”
“Home Away from Home without strawberries, got it,” she says, already half turned away.
“But I—” I crane my neck after her. “I don’t have any money!”
Adrienne waves blithely as she sweeps back into the kitchen. “I’m putting it on the sheriff’s tab.”
She closes the door partway behind me, shielding me from the craned necks of the diner patrons. And the sound of clinking forks and sizzling oil goes quiet.
I look down at my phone, wincing. I was more distracted than I though
t. My nerves have been so finely attuned to my buzzing phone this almost-year, it’s not like me to miss any texts.
From Christie: Just got back. Heard about Mockingbird’s. You okay?
From Alex: Felix is sorry. I don’t know if he’ll tell you that, but he is.
And more than a few from Cassie.
I’m so sorry I told you like that.
I really thought we’d talked about it already.
I know it doesn’t compare but we can skip my next few turns in the game? You can ask me anything you want.
I smile. Not the best way we could have discussed it, yes. But it’s nowhere near her fault.
For a second, I consider how easy it would be to tell her everything. The urge doesn’t quite fade even after I type, next question: five most overrated John Jonas prophecies?
Her responses come rapid fire:
omg
Buckle up
I’ve been waiting all my life for this
I laugh and set my phone aside. And I let that overpowering, momentary longing fade completely.
The door creaks open, and Adrienne backs through with the plate of food, a puzzled look on her face. “Gotta tell you, this is a new one. Where you from, anyway?”
Without thinking, I start to answer her, but when she places the plate on the step next to me, I forget the question completely.
Four fat pieces of hand-rolled sushi are lined up across the plate, perfectly spaced. They’re inexpertly done, uneven at the edges, not quite fully closed at the ends. Just how Gaby would have—
Mouth dry, I pick one up to get a better look. In the center of the rice, a single slice of avocado has been lined up against a slab of mango.
“Who made this?” My own voice sounds distant.
“You’re looking at her.” When I glance up, her smirk has settled into something softer. “It’s not like I look at someone and know right away. But when I walk back to the kitchen it just happens. The taste of home, or your money back. My manager’s guarantee, by the way, not mine. And sorry about the rice. Best I could do on short notice.”
I absorb about half of what she says, one of the rolls still pinched between my thumb and index finger. Distantly, I hear Flora’s voice: A meal has a protein, Gabrielle.
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