Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-Five
“Next time,” Nora says, leaning between the front seats of my new—new to me, at least—car, “I’m driving.”
The car was purchased three weeks ago. My dad volunteered to take me car shopping, and we spent two hours at the used-car lot in Evergreen, near his new apartment.
I expected two hours of awkwardness, but by the time we made it to the lot, we’d slipped into something comfortable.
Calm. Not an old dynamic, because we’ve spent too long apart to even remember one, but something new.
But others will. New people will fill the seats, new jokes will be told, and new music will filter through the speakers. And though I want to throw up each time I climb behind the wheel and am bombarded with images of bent metal and bloodstained snow, it subsides quicker each time.
“I’d like to arrive alive, so I’ll take Miss Caution over you any day,” Finn says from his spot in the passenger seat.
“You’ve ridden in my car like five times,” says Nora. “And people who don’t have licenses don’t get to judge.”
“I was dead. Couldn’t exactly take my driver’s test,” Finn says. He flashes me a wicked grin.
“First off, you weren’t dead. Technically. Second, that excuse was only valid the first ten times. You’ve exhausted it.”
“What do you think, Jo?” Finn asks. “Think I’ve exhausted it?” His hand finds my knee across the middle compartment, and I know I’m blushing, but after a month of these little touches, I still react the same. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. The miracle of a small touch.
“I’ll give you a few more.”
“You’re both nauseating.” Nora groans and sits back. But when I catch her eye in the rearview mirror, she’s smiling. “If this is going to be our new normal, we’re alternating. Next time, I get shotgun.”
“But, Nora, I—” Finn starts.
“If you say the word died, I will climb up there, open the door, and shove you out.”
“Fortunately, Jo’s driving slow enough that I’ll survive it,” Finn says.
A laugh slips past my lips. It happens more these days.
Laughter is no longer such a reach. It comes easy, though anger comes easy, too.
With the whole town—the state, even the country—solidly locked on Holden and his pending trial, I’ve had to fend off a dozen reporters knocking on our front door or pretending to be interested in book shopping only to drop a question bomb.
I spent only a day in that bunker, but it sticks to my skin like pollen, and likely will for a long time.
The same goes for Jasper, Finn, Aisha, and Sloane.
Jasper’s nightmares bring him into my room a few nights a week.
Aisha texts me several times a week to check in on us, like she’s worried one day she won’t get a reply.
Sloane stops into the bookstore just as often, usually with a brother or two in tow, watching her intently.
And sometimes when Finn grabs my hand, he looks down at our fingers for a long time, quiet, as if waiting for his skin to pass through mine again.
“Turn here,” Nora says suddenly, and the easy feeling hardens, the reason for today’s drive settling around us all like a fog.
When I told Nora and Finn I wanted to visit Ingrid’s parents, neither was all that eager, but they both agreed to come. The three of us go most places together these days, and this is no exception.
“Should we have called ahead to make sure they’re home?” Finn asks as Nora directs me to a house at the end of the block. It’s painted yellow, with a wraparound porch and colorful flowers. Aisha would love the garden.
“Probably,” Nora says. “Too late now.”
I pull up to the curb and put the car in park. My stomach threatens to claw its way up my throat and out of my mouth, and my heart is beating so loud, I miss Finn asking a question.
“Hmm?” I say.
His brows knit together. “Do you want me to come with you?” he repeats.
My gaze drifts to the house. Ingrid’s house. I shake my head. “I’ve got this,” I say.
I climb out of the car, leaving the engine running, and head up the pathway to the front door. I sneak a glance over my shoulder. Simultaneously, Finn and Nora give me a thumbs-up.
I push down my own nerves; I’m not here for me. I dig my hand into my pocket, closing around the bracelet I’ve held on to since that day by the creek when the man in the woods was still a shadow, when Finn was a specter, and when I was still a ghost in my own right.
Taking a breath, I reach out and press the doorbell.
A beat passes. Then a woman opens the door, her husband behind her. Harriett and Andrew. A small, fat Yorkie rushes between their legs and sniffs at my shoes.
“Edward, get back here,” Harriett says. The dog, Edward, ignores her, continuing his inspection of my shoes. “Sorry about that. He’s relentlessly nosy.”
I smile, bending down to pet Edward’s head. He licks my fingers once before heading back through the door, satisfied.
“How can we help you?” Harriett asks.
“Hi. I’m not sure if you remember me. We met at the block party in July,” I say.
“You’re Jo,” Andrew says.
Harriett looks between her husband and me. She inhales and tears fill her eyes. Before I can say anything, she steps forward and wraps me in a hug.
“Jo,” she says, voice muffled by my hair. She steps back, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. We know who you are. We have so much to thank you for.”
My throat closes up, my own tears pricking the backs of my eyes. “Me?”
Andrew nods.
“You gave us the answers we’ve spent years searching for. I’m just sorry you had to go through what you did to find them,” he says.
My arm, still in its plaster cast for a few more weeks, twinges. The bruises on my neck and body have faded, with only my arm and my memories to remind me of everything that took place in that bunker.
“It was nothing,” I say, because I can’t decide on anything else—because thinking about it still knots me up inside. Maybe it always will.
“It was everything,” Andrew says.
I clear my throat, willing myself to not cry. I pull my hand out of my pocket, the bracelet tucked against my palm.
I don’t think I realized how hard or how long I’ve been fighting. Since the day my car spun off the road. Fear may have been the navigator, but I was always there, too.
I couldn’t fight alone. And because a dead Ingrid fought for herself, and for the others, I did.
“I wanted to say…” The words get tangled up behind my teeth despite a full week of preparing them.
“I know this is going to sound…odd, but your daughter saved my life. She saved all of us. She led me to that bunker and wouldn’t let me give up, no matter how badly I wanted to.
Without her, my brother and the others would still be down there.
” Tears slip down my cheeks. “Your daughter was brave and stubborn, and I only wish I’d gotten to know her before all this.
I know I can’t bring her back to you, but I wanted to give you this.
” I hold out my hand, the charm bracelet dangling off a finger.
“I found it out in the woods months ago. You should have it.”
Harriett’s hand flies up to her mouth, a sob behind it. Even Andrew is crying. He takes the bracelet in shaking hands, treating it like one would a fragile piece of glass.
“Thank you, Jo,” Harriett says.
I wish like hell I could give them more.
But after a month combing through the Holdens’ property and the bunker, the police have found little to identify the kids who lost their lives inside.
The identifications they have come from Finn, Aisha, and Sloane—the stories and the names carried through the ghostly inhabitants of my house for so long.
The clothes left behind were burned along with most everything in the bunker.
I told the police about the room full of medications and the boxes of files from the Dyebucetin trials, but when the investigators went inside, half the room was ash and the other half had been cleared out.
The cops think it all burned, but I saw those people in dark clothes descending into the flames after the firefighters pulled Holden and me out.
They think what’s left of Holden’s research is ash. I think someone is covering tracks. Cleaning up a messy truth. And considering the ease with which Cecily disappeared—gone like she never existed—maybe she was part of that cleanup.
Nothing simply disappears. There is always a trace. Somewhere.
After a few more tearful hugs, I head back down the porch and toward the car, where Nora and Finn are waiting. I climb into the driver’s seat.
“You okay?” Nora asks, once again squeezing between the front seats.
I give them both a small smile. “I’m okay,” I say.
Finn reaches over and threads his fingers through mine. He squeezes once, and I squeeze back.
As I turn my focus to the road ahead, I catch a glimpse of a girl, blond hair tied back in a ponytail, outfitted in running shorts and a Blackridge High cross-country team T-shirt. She’s standing in the grass of the Halstead house. And she’s smiling.
Ingrid. Not the Ingrid I saw before, haggard and in a hospital gown. But the Ingrid she used to be.
She lifts her hand in a wave. Then she disappears.
I want to thank her for helping me find my way out of the dark. But I think she knows.
Ingrid is free. And so am I.