Lynn nodded, wiping her eyes. “They can’t believe it. I can hardly believe it.”
“I just … I just wish William was here,” Blue said, her voice cracking, her hand caressing Lynn’s cheek.
“Yes,” Lynn said, kissing her hand. “I wish he were here too.”
“We’re free, you know. It’s over. He did that for you. For all of us.”
Lynn stood, holding tight to her mother’s hand. The window was without wooden grilles, allowing the morning sun to shine through, absent of shadow.
EPILOGUE
The palm trees towered overhead against a sky bleached with thinning clouds, shifting islands in blue. A whiff of the ocean snuck through the haze of the smog, blowing across Wilshire Boulevard, prompting Quincy to open the sunroof and inhale.
“Nice day to begin your global empire, girls,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror.
They were such exact images of each other, nearly impossible to tell them apart. He insisted every day that Lily wear red hair ties, and Ava blue. He suspected, occasionally, they switched them and went the entire day just giggling as they responded to each other’s names.
But the school insisted that there be no variation for any of the students, so they both wore the plaid headbands, their hair pulled back tight. Have to make sure everyone is on the same playing field, the admissions director had said.
So you won’t know which kid’s dad owns Google and which kid’s mom is the CEO of Warner Brothers? Quincy had asked.
He knew they had concerns about his girls. There were no official transcripts, just the test results from the tutors. The best in LA, he mentioned more than once. Yes, there was no medical history, no recommendations from anyone other than their therapists and doctors, and of course the tutors, who said they were brilliant despite their years of no education.
They were small, too. About the height of third graders, even though they were entering fifth. The admissions director had even inquired if they would feel out of place.
“Do you want the twenty million dollar new technology center or what?” he’d responded.
Yes, Mr. Martin. Thank you. Here’s your admission letters. Is there anything else we should know? What their life was like before the adoption?
Oh, there’s plenty to know, Quincy had thought. It’s been one heck of a three years.
The private investigator he’d hired had finally tracked down that the girls’ mother was a crack addict and their father was in prison. They’d lived for a time with their aunt, who slept during the day and operated a fairly successful cocaine operation at night. They lived in a trailer on the outskirts of Medora, North Dakota. The girls had never gone to school and resided in the drug community where others kids watched TV all day and scrounged for food. When the girls had just disappeared one night while playing outside, the aunt hadn’t even contacted police.
No. Nothing much to say about it, Quincy had answered.
“I know! ‘Immigrant Song’!” he said, scrolling through his phone. “It’s our fight song!”
Just as Led Zeppelin began to howl the Viking anthem, Lily turned from the window. “I don’t want to do this, Quincy. We want to stay at home.”
Ava had just nodded.
“It’s time, you Goddesses of the Air. Mrs. Ratchett and Mr. Temple say you need to be more socialized. As much as I enjoy our little compound, the world awaits. Plus, who’s going to take over my companies if you don’t get that PhD from Harvard?”
“It’s fifth grade, Quincy,” Lily mumbled.
“We all start somewhere. And there, my sweets, is where you begin.”
The tops of the whitewashed buildings of Lankard Academy could be seen above the palm trees. A sweeping fence circled the vast campus, rising from perfectly manicured grass. Mercedes, Teslas, and Range Rovers formed a two-lane parade, jockeying to pull in to the entrance.
In the Lexus convertible beside them, a blond woman in a tennis visor shouted, despite the Bluetooth in her ear. In the back seat, three blond girls, all wearing the same uniform as Ava and Lily, stared into their iPhones.
“I swear to God, Debbie, I’m going to be late,” the woman yelled. “This school is going to have to hire traffic control. Just reserve court six. And listen, I’m just going to say, for the record, I don’t buy it. Not for a single second.”
Rolling his eyes, Quincy began to close up the sunroof, until the woman laughed irritatingly loud. “I mean, aliens? Come on. I mean, I have a few cleaning the pool today, don’t get me wrong!”
Quincy didn’t have to crane to hear her, but he did anyway. “I mean, yes, like we’ve talked about, it’s super weird all those missing people came back. But they weren’t taken by aliens, I don’t care what Marsha says or what the Washington Post reports. It’s just mainstream media trying to get clicks. It’s just crap.”
He couldn’t make out what the other trophy wife was saying, but Mrs. Blonde shook her head, her ponytail waving wildly. “And what’s so strange about wildfires? Although it did totally interrupt Mike and my wine country anniversary. So what if people were sick and fighting everywhere? It happens. It’s the world. I hate it for those people who died, but it happens.”
Quincy rolled down his window. “Hey lady,” he yelled.
She looked over, and he winked. “It’s all real.”
He punched the gas and swerved in front of her. She honked her horn twice.
“I’ll probably have homeroom with one of those girls,” Lily said. “We aren’t like these rich kids.”
“No, you’re richer. At least I’m richer, and so by default, you’re richer. And like we talked about, if anyone questions it, just tell your last name. It’s MARTIN. As in QUINCY MARTIN.”
Lily rolled her eyes. She’d adopted so many of his mannerisms.
I wish I could keep you home. Cover you in Lilly Pulitzer clothes. Find a way to fill your room with more toys, if that were possible. Be there every second some snobby girl asks who your parents really are. Or more importantly, be a voice for Ava when she refuses to talk.
It hadn’t been easy. None of it had. It’s why they lived in almost constant isolation that first year. Daily sessions with therapists who had signed nondisclosure agreements and were paid more in a week than they normally made in a month. Night terrors, sobbing, fear of the dark, refusal to speak. And that was just Ava.
Lily had been forced to become her sister’s mouthpiece, grappling daily with the guilt she felt. She’d had to be coaxed to stop doing everything for her sister.
Quincy had given them everything. Ice cream for breakfast. Private trips to Hawaiian islands. He tried to show them that there was good in the world, even though he had a hard time seeing it himself.
He’d found it in them.
He knew they were his the moment that Ava had woken screaming again, about six months into their stay. He’d rushed into her room, knowing she refused to be touched by anyone except for Lily. When he’d sat on the edge of the bed and she’d reached out for him, he vowed to never let go.
It was that night when she’d explained what she’d seen in those final moments inside the mountain. How the man from her dreams, the one who brought her the comfort of knowing she wasn’t alone in the never-ending nightmare, stood in the same kind of cage that had trapped her for so long.
How, in just one moment, she felt different. Something in her had changed. And the man from the dreams had done it. The burden she’d carried, the dreams of the diseases, were gone. It was over.
She remembered pressing her hands against the filmy substance that ensnared her as she watched the man pull a gun out and point it to his head—
“Quincy, you’re holding up traffic,” Lily said.
“Oops, sorry. Hey, where’s the valet?” He smiled at her.
They pulled up in front of the school, amid a sea of children in perfectly coiffed ponytails and dry-cleaned uniforms. A woman in a drab suit and sensible shoes walked briskly up to his Mercedes.
�
��No need to get out, sir. Just let them out, and the line won’t stall—”
Quincy began to open the doors for the girls. “That,” he said, pointing to the building under construction on the corner of campus, “means everyone else can just move around me.” A sizeable sign stood in front reading, “The Quincy Martin Center for Technology.”
“Oh.” The woman forced a smile. “Of course.”
“Quincy,” Lily chastised. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Men open doors for ladies.” He reached down to give her bear hug.
“Ladies don’t need men to open anything for them,” she said, returning the hug.
“I do adore you, Lily girl,” he said, with a final kiss to her forehead.
Then he followed her around to open Ava’s door.
“And you, pretty face, are going to knock it out of the park,” he said, sliding Ava’s backpack over her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered, “I stuck your phone in the side pocket. You need me, I’ll be a hologram for you in a second.”
“Do you promise, Quincy?” she asked.
He knew she wasn’t talking about the phone.
Ava had made the same request almost every day since the night she explained how it ended. How she watched the monster move in so close to William that she feared it would tear him apart in those horrible jaws. Even at nine years old, she’d understood why William held the gun to his head. If he were dead, there would be no way to ever reignite them all.
But then William had turned the gun from where he held it against his temple and began to fire at the monster, right into its eye.
She’d been with it for so long, she’d become part of it too. The hundreds of veins that had so long ago lodged themselves into her skin meant it was a part of her. She knew it was completely armored, nothing could penetrate it. But the eyes, those large slashes of darkness, were as vulnerable and jellylike as her own.
William had fired over and over into them, and she felt the pain in the monster’s head. It screamed again, this time in confusion and disbelief. By the time William had run out of bullets, it could no longer see, but was still very much alive.
And that’s when she felt him, reach down to her and ignite the weapon within her. But this time, instead of being directed out into the world around her, it was focused entirely on the monster itself.
She felt the others too, from the dreams, including her sister. The tendrils of the creature burst into flames. Winds suddenly rushed around them, fanning the fire that now burned its horrid face and neck. She felt the diseases from Lily join the ones she sent as well, turning the skin from oily black to a fading gray.
The lights around her had gone out. The tentacle holding William’s pod dropped as the monster fell, its horrible face smashing against the floor, thrashing for a moment before it lay in silence.
Then, she felt no connection to the others. The disease, so much a part of her that she could taste it, was gone. She felt lighter.
She forced her way through the filmy prison, stepping out to see the other pod had crashed. A single hand reached out from it, and a red-haired man stumbled free.
“You know the deal,” Quincy said, his hands on her shoulders. “You go to school. You get good grades and you talk and you show everybody what you’re made of, and I promise. We’ll go see William again.”
* * *
Lynn gripped the armrests of the seat as the plane landed. Even in her plush surroundings, she felt her nerves jitter as the wheels of the jet touched the surface of the rural airport. She looked out the window at the holywood trees rushing past them, thrilling for a moment that she was seeing them for the first time after reading about them all her life. The slow-growing trees provided the hardest wood in the world, which explained why the species was endangered. Her daddy had told her about them, marveling in their existence. He hadn’t lived to see them, though.
She certainly thought she never would either.
“I finally get that Caribbean vacation.”
She looked from the window to the Roxy. “I can barely stand it.”
“I do wish, however, we were staying at a resort. One of the Sandals places, where the couples do three-legged races in the commercials. I’d like to wear my bikini and stun them all.”
“You’re a mess.”
“It’s about time we got here.”
That was true, Lynn thought, as the jet came to a stop. I’ve counted the days, the hours even, to come here.
They walked down the aisle of the private jet and waited as the flight crew prepared the stairs.
“I hope you enjoyed your flight, Mrs. Roseworth,” said the pretty flight attendant. Like all the staff, she wore a green hologram of a Q on her lapel.
“I certainly did. Thank you. This is incredibly nice.”
“It is Mr. Martin’s favorite jet, after all,” the woman said. “And we’ve come to enjoy making this trip. Looks like we’re ready for you.”
They walked out the door and down the stairs. The sunlight was almost blinding, the air tasting as beautiful as the crystal blue sky above them. It took her a moment to adjust to the brightness, to see the woman standing before the Jeep.
She waved, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Lynn and Roxy returned the gesture as she hurried across the dirt towards them.
Jane hesitated. “Is it OK to hug someone you only met once, inside a helicopter?”
“You are my family,” Lynn said, bringing the woman into her arms.
As Jane stepped back, she wiped tears from her eyes.
“And I may not be blood, but I’m part of the circus,” Roxy said.
“I hear you’re the star attraction,” Jane said, hugging her as well. “William says he was raised by two brilliant grandmothers. He can’t wait to see you.”
“I can hardly wait,” Lynn responded.
As the flight attendants went to pick up their bags, Jane motioned to the ragged Jeep. “You’ll have to forgive your transportation. You know your grandson.”
“It’s his preferred mode of transportation,” Lynn said. “His grandpa was the same way.”
“And let me just say,” Jane said, taking her hand and leading her to the passenger side. “I’m so sorry that it’s had to be this long before you could come. William has just hated it.”
A familiar sting of anger flared. I’ve hated it too.
Hated that she’d had no contact with William in the past three, long years. She thought of him every day, and longed to see him for a million reasons. She wanted to hold him, run her hands through that thick, unruly red hair. See those eyes, the brilliant color of blue.
Blue.
“I know it’s impossible for your mother to make the trip,” Jane said, hurrying over to help Roxy inside.
“Her health isn’t great. But she’s made the transition to Tennessee really well. Anne is staying with her while we’re here.”
Jane settled into the driver’s seat. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it? That she’s even still alive. I would like to meet her. But I suppose that will probably never happen.”
No. It hurts to realize it, but no.
It had all happened so quickly that day. She’d come out of the strange trance to find herself feeling light, as if a burden the size of a grand piano had been lifted off her shoulders. Stella, Roxy, and Kate had surrounded her, repeatedly asking if she was OK. They told her that her eyes had rolled back in her head and she hadn’t moved. She’d replied she was fine, and asked about William.
They didn’t know. Then came the excited cries from the tents nearby.
Not long after, the helicopters started taking off, carrying the others, still under heavy guard despite the overwhelming proof pouring in across the globe: The disasters had stopped, almost immediately, all over the world.
Lynn had insisted that she remain, but the general was not having it. The danger was still too real. Roxy actually sat herself on the ground, stating that she would not move her considerable behind until she kn
ew William was safe.
After an hour, the general had stridden over with his phone, telling them all to gather around. “Our drones can go in now,” he said, pointing to the screen.
His finger extended to the video of a red-haired man walking towards the Jeep. Holding his hand was a little girl who looked remarkably like the one who’d been rushed away with Quincy.
With that, the general summoned the soldiers to have the women taken to a helicopter. “I don’t have time to deal with you,” he said, practically shoving them all inside. “What our crews found inside that rock formation … Not to mention that thousands of people around the world have suddenly returned.”
For two days, Lynn and Roxy were kept in quarantine at the nearby military base. They had wisely kept Roxy with Lynn rather than face her wrath. All the women could do was watch television, news reports of how the government had swept in to gather the returned in order to study them and make sure they posed no threat, and to handle the growing throngs of family and loved ones who rushed the hastily arranged confinement centers, to see if they could locate their missing.
When Kate finally arrived, with a furious Stella in tow, it was with news that they could leave. When asked where William was, Kate’s face had just turned sad, handing her a piece of paper.
“He doesn’t want us to know,” she said.
There was no question it was his handwriting.
You’re together, and that’s what matters. Aunt Kate said that Steven gave you a flash drive. I’m sorry you have to find out this way, but you have to read it. And then find a man by the name of Rudd in Florida. Ask the Researchers.
Give me some time. I love you. Nanna. You were right. You were right all along.
- William
* * *
So, of course, she had read what was contained in the files. The next day, after she conferred with a man named SJ Rudd, her entire family had arrived in Florida to make the discovery that had stunned them to their very core.
Still, in all her joy, William was gone.
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