Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy
Page 49
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“And what of after?”
“Is there an after?”
“There’s always an after of some sort or another.”
“I know nothing of after. I only know there is no returning to before.”
Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall
She had never before seen Will sputtering (she was actually unable to think of any previous occasion where use of that word would have been appropriately directed at another human being), but that was definitely what he had been doing. She hadn’t been in the mood to deal with that any more than she had been in the mood to deal with his phone calls, so she had faked sleeping for most of the drive back. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about that. She had needed time to think, and Will had needed some time where he wasn’t panicking about her safety to cool down.
Connor, who she was starting to think had been vastly underappreciated, had tried here and there to get Will to take a step back and focus on the fact that she was fine. His efforts had been met with a combination of disdain and catty comments that (while likely vastly unpleasant for Connor to listen to) gave her a nice insight into just how (and for what reasons) rattled Will had been.
She and he would hash it out later. Later being the point in time where the jump drive in her pocket didn’t come with the weight of the world on her shoulders attached to it. She had the idea that this was maybe what it felt like to be Connor all of the time, and she found herself wondering why Connor even wanted to be Connor because it was really not pleasant in the least. To each his own she supposed was the proverb that applied. She was going to be a very happy girl when she could make whatever it was that she was carrying around Anna’s responsibility to deal with instead.
Then, she would only have to be responsible for the whole necklace passing, goodbye message telling burden that she wasn’t going to have the luxury of being able to shift off to someone else. That could wait. Even Lia had said Anna first, Kyle later or something along those lines. If whatever she was bringing to Anna was the be all, major play, end game sort of item that Lia had implied, then everything might even sort itself out. Then, she wouldn’t have to worry about the necklace. She could just bide her time and return it to Lia.
That was a pleasant prospect. She would hold out for that one if at all possible. She had her own order of precedence now. Anna first, sort out Will and her second, and then the rest of the world as it came at her. She settled further down into the backseat of the car and thought that maybe she wouldn’t fake sleeping all the way back. It had been a really long day. She had totally earned a nap.