Chapter forty-five
Rebecca
Becky
My dearest Remi,
I’m sorry I haven’t written in such a long time. It’s been years.
Things have changed. Everyone calls me Rebecca now, and Carrson is called Carr. It’s a thing in The Order, once a man has a baby, they lose the -son from their name. Don’t ask me to explain why. It goes way back. As for me, Becky seemed too young for who I’ve become. What I’ve grown into.
I’m the High Mother now, the highest position a woman can hold in The Order.
I know all the secrets now. How it all began.
Where it’s going. I know the blood that’s on our hands, mine included.
The human suffering. But I also know the miracles we’ve accomplished.
Technology is booming, thanks to companies and research secretly funded by us.
We have cell phones that we can talk on without cords.
Portable computers. The Internet in every house, not just on college campuses.
The world calls it progress.
The Order calls it control.
But Remi! If you lived now, you wouldn’t have to go to the hospital so much.
We’ve made huge strides with cystic fibrosis.
More and more patients are living into their thirties and older now, falling in love, having children of their own.
Carr says in twenty years the disease will be completely survivable.
He’s helped so much, stood by me while we fought for that research to get the attention it deserves.
I did that for you, but you’re still dead.
All because you were born a decade too soon.
Sometimes I see seventeen-year-olds laughing in restaurants or driving around with their friends, and I think of you.
You were seventeen too. Just a girl. Still sleeping with stuffed animals on your bed and pretending not to hear Mom crying in the bathroom.
Trying to be brave even when your lungs failed one breath at a time.
You should’ve lived long enough to become complicated and messy and old.
That unfairness lives inside me like a wound that’ll never heal. Some nights it feels unbearable, knowing girls like you survive now. That somewhere there are sisters who get to keep each other simply because history shifted a few years in the right direction.
I’m happy for them.
I hate them.
I keep your memory alive even though I don’t write. I gave my daughter your middle name, just like I promised. That’s right. I have a baby, a beautiful daughter named Samantha. She’s only one year old now, but already her laugh sounds just like yours.
Carr has a son the exact same age. He’s named Carrson.
We’ve made mistakes, both Carr and I. Have broken each other’s hearts more times than I can count, but every time we come crashing back together, like addicts who can’t give up even if it’s bad for us.
The thing I didn’t understand when I was younger is that when you fall in love with something, a man or even an idea like The Order, you don’t get to pick and choose the things you love about them.
You don’t get to keep the things they do that you like and forget about the rest. Back then, I only saw what I wanted.
Now I see it all. The whole truth. The rotten underbelly.
I got everything I wanted and then realized most of it didn’t make me happy.
Even Carr, who aggravates me, challenges me, and is still, no matter how hard I fight it, the only man I see when I walk into a room. A couple of months ago we gave in. One touch, that’s all it ever takes with us. Suddenly we’re twenty again, ruining each other without hesitation.
Now I’m in trouble. Deep trouble.
We broke the oldest rule The Order has. The one even the founders feared.
That’s why I’m writing you. I can’t tell him, it’ll put him in danger, threaten his leadership of The Order and his life. If they find out, they’ll kill us all. Carr, me, the babies. Jackson would leap at the chance to pull the trigger.
Please, Remi, if there’s a heaven. If you’re there, please send help. I need it so badly. Help me hide it, the forbidden thing we’ve done. I’m scared. Please help your sister. I need you.
Love always,
Rebecca
I put the cap on the pen and set it in the passenger seat next to me, along with the letter. I’ll burn it later. I’m parked in front of my house. The six-bedroom home I share with my daughter. The one with the yellow front door and flower beds in the front.
In the fall, I sit on my knees and plant bulbs, daffodils, narcissus, lilies, just so I can see them grow in the spring.
Watch them burst out of the ground and unfurl like a miracle.
This batch I planted with Samantha next to me, covered in dirt, toddling around with it clinging to her diaper.
Now I don’t know if we’ll survive to see the flowers bloom.
I pull it out of my purse one last time, praying for a different result, but still it stares back at me.
Two pink lines.
A death warrant for us all.
For the first time since Remi died, I feel truly helpless.
I put my head on the steering wheel and close my eyes.
I cry.
To Be Continued…
NOT The End.
It’s been thirty years since Carrson and Becky ruled Ashford House and Rosewood Hall.
Now, a new generation has risen.
Brutally tested and trained since birth, these heirs are more dangerous, more ruthless, and more unhinged than ever before.
But history has a way of repeating itself.
When outsider Laurel Turner accidentally stumbles onto The Order, she’s claimed by Carrson Ashford’s son and dragged into a world of secrets, violence, and obsession.
To succeed, Laurel will have to fight with both her wits and her fists.
Because at Ashford University, survival is the final exam.