“Before Camille died,” Mase said, “she overheard a conversation between Dr. Wesley and someone else.” Mase’s dark gray eyes were wide, imploring. He looked from me to Camille. “Show her what you showed me.”
I, too, looked at Camille.
Slowly, she pulled the small whiteboard away from her chest and turned it around so I could see the words, bubbly and slanted to the left.
Mase pointed to the board. “That’s what Camille heard the doctor say.”
The board said: “I won’t leave…won’t abandon him. I love him too much.”
My mouth was filled with sand. With cotton. With bile. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and somehow managed to convince myself not to lash out at Camille. It wasn’t her fault that Dr. Wesley was an even worse human being than I’d originally thought…though I did wish Camille had spoken up earlier, so to speak.
I was now certain of two things: I could never, ever tell Jason the truth about his mom, and I couldn’t trust anything that woman had written in her letter to me, not to mention whatever else she’d included in the “care package” wrapped in a manila envelope she’d left with mind-wiped Zoe in Colorado Springs.
I opened my eyes, swallowing my rage.
Camille’s pale gray eyes were locked on mine, and she reached out to take my hand in hers and give it a squeeze. She let go of my hand and wiped the words off the dry-erase board with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Hastily, she scrawled, “I trusted her, too.” She met my eyes, then continued writing. “And she betrayed me.” Her gaze flicked to Mase, filling with an overabundance of pain. “She promised me that everything would be okay. She promised to look out for him.” Camille wiped her words away again. “SHE LIED.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly, then sent a sidelong glance over my shoulder at Carlos. He was watching the woods beyond the field.
“Do you know who she is…I mean, who she really is?” I met both Re-gens’ eyes.
Camille wrote on her board, and when she showed her words to me, my heart seemed to plummet into my stomach. “Jason and Zoe’s mom.”
As I kept an eye on Carlos, I swiped my fingers over the words, doing a half-assed job of erasing them. At least they were no longer easily comprehensible. When I looked at Mase again, he nodded.
“How do you know?”
“She told me before I died,” Camille wrote. “She said she was sorry for her part in my mom getting sick and dying”—Camille snorted, and her letters became sharper—“not that she told me what her part was.” She met my eyes, and I could relate to the hatred shining in their silvery depths. “And she told me she did it to keep her kids, Zoe and Jason, safe.”
“And apparently because she’s in fucking love with General Douchebag,” I muttered.
Mase grunted.
I met both sets of eerily gray eyes again. “You can’t tell anyone.” I raised my eyebrows to emphasize how serious I was. “I mean it—no one.”
They both nodded, no hint of reluctance.
Inhaling deeply, I sighed. “Thanks for telling me. I needed to hear this…it’ll help me figure some stuff out.”
Mase nodded, and Camille’s lips curved into a humorless smile.
I rubbed my hands together and turned to Carlos. “Right, so…about electrotherapy…”
7
ZOE
MARCH 29, 1AE
San Juan National Forest, Colorado
“Whoops!” Sarah chirped.
Wringing out the last of the wet laundry I’d just scrubbed clean, I glanced over at her. With one hand braced on the slim trunk of a pine tree, Sarah began to slowly lower herself down to collect the t-shirt she’d dropped on the newly sprouted grass lining the retention pond’s bank.
“Sarah!” I jumped up from my crouched position at the pond’s shore, letting one of Harper’s shirts fall back into the water, and rushed over to her. “I’ll get it,” I said. I wiped the water trickling down my bare arms onto my pants and helped Sarah straighten back up before bending down to pick up the shirt myself.
After shaking the loose debris off, I draped the shirt beside the rest of the freshly-washed clothing that hung over a nylon rope we’d strung between two sturdy pines. “The last thing I need is you toppling over on my watch,” I said, only half joking.
Sarah flashed me a halfhearted smile. “Thanks, Zoe.” One of her hands automatically found her belly, while the other went back to straightening the clothes hanging on the line to dry in the early morning sunshine.
Returning to Harper’s water-soaked shirt, I wrung it out once more and shook the wrinkles loose. “Here ya go,” I said, handing it up to Sarah with an insuppressible yawn. I’d been trying to ignore my encroaching sleepiness since I’d woken. “Sorry,” I said, shaking thoughts of sleep from my brain.
“Not sleeping well, Zoe?” Sarah asked as she draped Harper’s shirt over an exposed portion of the line.
I yawned again. “No, not really.”
Sarah glanced down at me, her brow furrowed. It was an uncommon expression for her. She was always so…bubbly. “Why not? Is everything okay?” She turned—more like hobbled—to face me. Her expression was intent as she brushed her hands off on her ankle-length skirt.
“I’m fine,” I said, waving her concern away. “I just had a…strange dream last night.” Leaning down to avoid eye contact, I collected the liquid soap and scrub brush I’d been using for the last hour. “I had a hard time falling back asleep is all.”
That wasn’t all, actually. Thinking about the dream had more than kept me up, and it had been smoldering in the back of my mind since the sun had come up.
“What sort of dream?” Sarah asked, her head cocked to the side as she rubbed her hands over her belly. She looked like a bohemian princess, with her dark curls falling messily around her face.
One vivid image after another from my dream flashed before my mind’s eye. I shrugged and rinsed my hands off in the creek, trying to avoid her seeing my beet-red face. “Just a random dream.”
Gathering my cleaning supplies, I dropped them into a canvas bag and looked up, freezing immediately.
Sarah’s hands were on her hips, her eyebrows raised as she waited for an explanation.
She obviously wasn’t going to let it go, so I cleared my throat. “I’ll tell you, but don’t…”
“Don’t what?” she asked skeptically.
“Just don’t judge me, okay? And don’t say anything to anyone. It’s sort of embarrassing.” I dropped the bag of supplies into the empty wheelbarrow we’d used to carry the bags of dirty laundry down to the pond. “I had a dream about Jake last night…an”—I swallowed—“intimate dream. It left me a little…distracted.”
Sarah burst into laughter. “Is that all? Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. I probably wouldn’t have gotten any sleep either.”
My body warmed and tingled as I remembered the sensation of Jake’s lips trailing down my neck and the heat of his touch as his fingertips drew a line between my breasts. I couldn’t help but look down at my chest, remembering…it was like I could still feel his hot breath against my skin.
“That good, huh?” I heard her say. “Zoe?” I glanced at Sarah to find a huge smile engulfing her face. “You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said in exasperation. “Of course not.”
“Liar!” She giggled, but when she saw my mortification, she took a few steps closer and placed her hands on my shoulders. “What’s wrong with thinking about him? You’re together… it’s normal, don’t you think?”
My head was shaking before I could stop it. “We were together, Sarah. It’s different now. Besides, I don’t remember any of it…it’s like he was with someone else, you know?”
Sarah’s mouth quirked at the corner, and she stared at me, sympathetic. “You don’t want to be with Jake anymore?”
“It’s not that, I just—we haven’t been together, we haven’t even held hands really. Thinking about us doing more than that i
s…daunting.”
“But why? It’s Ja—because you don’t remember him. Sorry, I keep forgetting.” She waved her ignorance away. “I blame it on the pregnancy. It’s like my brain doesn’t have room for any more information or something.”
I picked a rogue leaf from one of her flyaway curls. “It’s not that he scares me. I mean…I’m petrified around him, but that’s only because I’m completely clueless about what to do…how to act. He thinks about her when he’s around me. At least, from what I can feel. He’s really difficult for me to read.” Putting my hands on my hips, I let my head fall back and exhaled my frustration. “I feel so stupid.”
Jake’s uncertainty around me and his apparent fear of what I might rediscover made it clear enough that there were some intense, private moments to be seen, and a part of me was secretly grateful he’d been keeping his distance. The pressure to be that Zoe made it difficult to just go with the flow and let things happen.
“You’re just curious and nervous, Zoe. That seems normal.” A knowing smile filled her face, and her eyebrows lifted before she winked. “Just give it some more time.”
I appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood, but her teasing wasn’t helping. I buried my face in my hands, trying to gather my thoughts. “As it is, it’s hard trying to be someone I don’t remember ever being on a daily basis. I mean, I’m not complaining. I know worse could’ve happened, but…”
“But what?”
“It’s like there are expectations…expectations I can’t possibly live up to. What if being with me is like being with someone else? The last thing I want is to finally work up the nerve to kiss him, or let him kiss me, only to learn he wishes I was someone else. I might be a shit kisser now.” I groaned, leaning against one of the trees. “I don’t think I’m ready for that sort of rejection yet.”
“But it’s you, Zoe. It’s not just some other woman; it’s you. You have to remember that.”
“Easier said than done,” I grumbled. “I just feel bad for putting him through this…”
“It’s only been a week. Do you know how long it took you guys just to say a few cordial words to each other in the beginning?”
I shook my head.
She tapped her index finger on her lips. “I don’t either, actually, but it was a while,” she said. “Look, Jake cares about you…a lot. It’s obvious. You can even feel it, can’t you?” She nudged my shoulder. “He knows you’re different; we all do. Neither Jake—nor anyone else, for that matter—expects you to be the same as you were before.”
I knew that wasn’t true—only moments ago, Sarah herself admitted to forgetting I wasn’t the old me, to expecting me to react like the old me—but I kept my observations to myself.
“Maybe you just need to give it a little bit more time.”
Knowing she was right, that regardless of the pressure I felt, at least some of it was only in my head, I smiled. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Thanks, Sarah.”
She nudged my shoulder again. “Alright, let’s get back to camp. I’m ravenous.”
As I bent down to collect the folding chair Sarah had been using for her frequent breaks, I noticed a full linen bag resting up against the side of the large rock we’d been using to place the folded stacks of clean clothes that had been drying overnight. “Um, Sarah?”
“Hmm?” I looked over to see her wiping water from her mouth, an empty plastic bottle in her hand. “God, I love this stuff,” she breathed. “What’s up?”
“How many bags of laundry did we have to do this morning?”
Sarah squinted, and I could tell she was mentally counting. “Three—oh, crap.” She took a step toward me and peered over to the other side of the rock. “Crap. I knew that seemed to go by way too fast.” As if it were trained to do so, her stomach rumbled.
“Go back to camp,” I said on a heavy exhale. “I’ll finish up here.”
“Are you sure?”
I dumped the contents of the half-filled bag onto the ground. “It’s fine. Go ahead. I wouldn’t want you to starve or anything.”
Sarah smiled gratefully. “Are you sure you won’t be mad?”
I nodded and snagged my bag of gathered supplies out of the wheelbarrow. “I got this.”
“Alright, Zoe. Thank you. I owe you big-time.”
“Yeah you do,” I muttered playfully, dropping the bag by the water’s edge. “Just leave me one of those chocolate bars I saw stashed in your secret hiding place.”
Sarah’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened. “How did you…”
Resisting a grin, I pretended to zip my mouth shut. “Just leave me a bite, would ya?”
“Alright,” she grumbled and headed back to camp.
I crouched down to separate the dirty shirts and socks. Although it wasn’t the most luxurious job in the world, it was a necessary task and something I could do without feeling inadequate, so I happily washed the laundry with Sarah when needed. It felt good to contribute, even in the smallest way. Plus, it gave me time to think.
I diligently scrubbed one shirt and then another until I was finished and they were rinsed, then I moved on to the socks. Most of the time, I was around people and unable to block their invading memories and emotions; no matter how hard I tried, I’d yet to figure out how to stop sensing them.
Although I initially thought it was exciting and useful to gain insight into the minds of the people I was surrounded by, it quickly grew bothersome. Like Dani, now I had to hold onto the knowledge that my mom loved the General—the man we were practically running for our lives to get away from. It was just one more item to add to the list of things Jason didn’t know. Plus none of my companions liked having to worry about what I was gleaning from their minds, and some even avoided me outright. Cleaning the laundry was somewhat therapeutic, and it enabled me to have time away from the others to collect my own thoughts.
Hearing muffled conversation through the sparse trees beyond the pond, I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Sam and Tavis emerge through a small copse of trees.
“Zoe!” Sam waved at me. He held up a string of rabbits attached to a tether. “We caught dinner!”
“Nice!” I called back, submerging someone’s socks into the water before squirting a blob of liquid laundry soap onto them and working the fabric clean. “You mean we won’t starve?”
“Not today,” Tavis answered as they sauntered over. “Oh, good, you’re cleaning my socks. I’m running low.”
I stopped mid-scrub. “Oh, they’re yours? In that case…” I pretended to toss them into the center of the pond.
“Such a comedian,” he said.
Sam started toward camp. “You coming, Tavis?”
Tavis shook his head. “I better stay here and protect my socks.” He grinned at me.
“Alright,” Sam said. With a sigh, he trudged away, rabbit tether in hand.
For a few moments, only the sound of the scrub brush against the cotton socks and the trickling of water as Tavis rinsed off his hands filled the morning.
As I wrung the water from the last sock, an unexpected ripple broke at the pond’s edge, splashing me. “Jesus, Tavis. Do you have to wash your hands so enthusiastically?” I glared over to find him crouched and picking at something on the ground.
He looked at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. I needed a nap to rest my addled brain.
Eventually, Tavis wandered over to me and stared out at the cloudless sky. “The weather here is funny,” he said. “I’m used to the seasons at home. It should be getting colder, not warmer. I like it, though. I’m not much of a winter kind of guy.”
“Really?” I said. I hadn’t thought much about it. “I think I like the cold. I especially like the mornings. Everything seems fresh and new. There’s something about the crisp water, too; it’s refreshing. Sort of awakens my senses a little.”
Tavis made a noncommittal noise.
“Hang these up on the line for me, would you?” I wa
ited until Tavis turned to face me and tossed each balled-up sock at him consecutively, laughing as he juggled to catch them all without dropping any.
“Careful, those last two socks are yours. I wouldn’t want you to have to wear them dirty.”
He flashed me an easy smile and winked. “I’m so sure.”
I enjoyed teasing Tavis and liked that we had so little history together…that he had so few memories of me, and that there wasn’t much I had to live up to. I liked that I didn’t have to worry about disappointing him.
“I’m just looking out for you,” I told him.
“Like you care,” he quipped, draping the socks over the line. I heard him swear, and when I looked over, he was shaking off a sock he must’ve dropped. “Damn it.”
“That’s Jason’s…you better make sure it’s clean.”
Tavis strolled closer, holding out the soiled sock.
Shaking my head, I refused to take it and handed him the scrub brush instead. “Be my guest.” I grinned. “I’ll check to see if anything on the line is dry yet, and we can head back up to camp.”
Tavis looked at me askance, then crouched down to grab the soap and scrub brush. “I just caught us dinner,” he grumbled.
“And,” I countered, “you just dropped my brother’s sock in the dirt. In fact, you should probably make sure it’s extra clean…you might want to scrub it a second time, just in case.”
“Again, such a comedian,” Tavis chuckled.
I batted my eyelashes at him and felt a splash of cold water on my face as a result. I blinked rapidly in surprise, my mouth gaping. “Really?”
“Sorry, I guess my aim with water is as good as my bow…but you did say you like the crisp water,” he said in a sing-song voice and flitted his own lashes.
Smiling despite my annoyance, I tsked and shook my head. “You’re the one who doesn’t like it…” I said, splashing him back. Once…twice.
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 94