Chapter 12 Emma
TWELVE
Emma
I woke up suddenly, shockingly. My body went straight upright, lungs dragging air in by the bucketful.
Beside me, Daniel’s hand shot out across my waist, pinning me to the mattress like I might try to bolt for the door.
He’d gone from hibernation to full combat alert in the time it took for my first breath.
“Emma,” he said, and it didn’t even sound groggy. Just a thick, brambled concern, laced with an old policeman’s ready suspicion.
“Sorry. Sorry. Bad dream,” I said, or tried to. My mouth barely opened. There was too much of a shudder in my chest, and I was still trying to remember what reality was.
He sat up, scanning the bedroom as if the dream had left some physical evidence behind for him to tackle. “What happened?”
I sagged, then, and let my head hit the pillow again, shoving sweat-plastered hair from my eyes. The room still held some of that panic, but nothing except the two of us and the low gleam of the hallway nightlight waited in the dark.
“It was just a dream,” I said, quieter. “It’s nothing.”
Daniel’s hand traveled from my waist to my shoulder, warm and heavy. “If it was nothing, you wouldn’t sound like you just ran a marathon. Was it…?”
I knew what he meant, and didn’t want to answer, so I did the thing I did best and looked at the ceiling instead.
“Emma,” Daniel said again.
I reached over and covered his hand with mine. “It was about Alice,” I said, finally. “Again. She was calling out for help. I couldn’t see where she was, but she was desperate. And there was this light? Like everything went white, all at once.”
Daniel didn’t answer right away. His breathing changed, though, and he inched closer. “Could it be a premonition?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It was too scrambled. More like a panic attack with special effects.”
He didn’t contradict me, but he kept his hand there. I could have stayed like that, counting my pulse in his thumb, but eventually the dampness beneath the sheets made it clear I’d sweated through everything.
“I need a minute,” I said, and pulled away. Daniel let me go, but only after pressing a quick, dry kiss against my temple.
I left the bedroom with bare feet, and the hallway’s hardwood chilled my skin in a way that woke me up, properly. The rest of the house sat silent as I padded down the stairs. My phone blinked at me from the kitchen counter, but I ignored it.
Instead, I drifted toward the living room.
The walls were mostly windows, and even at two in the morning, the ocean outside managed to catch what little moonlight was on offer.
I pressed my forehead to the glass, a kid again, watching the old world’s edges for monsters.
The dream still itched at the back of my head.
There were blankets on the couch, and I took one and draped it around myself, but kept the patio door open a crack. I needed air, even if it meant fogging up my glasses. The briny, half-frozen scent of the sea did a better job than any cup of coffee.
I tried to reconstruct the dream, piece by piece.
Alice’s face, her hands outstretched, the way her mouth had opened in a soundless scream.
In the moment, she’d been at the bottom of some pit, a well or a shaft or maybe just a deep hole in the earth.
I’d reached for her, but my arms wouldn’t budge, pinned as if I’d turned to marble.
The light had come from above, too bright and too cold, and then everything snapped to white.
Now, wide awake, my brain wanted to make poetry of it, to assign metaphor and meaning, but the ache in my chest was stubborn and real.
I shut my eyes, let the cold draft cling to my skin, and tried to will Alice into safety, wherever she was. That had never worked before, but I was running out of options.
Footsteps creaked behind me, just once, and my whole body tensed. It was Daniel, or maybe the house settling, but I wasn’t ready for either. The blanket bunched in my fists.
“Hey,” Henry said from three feet away. “Couldn’t sleep?”
I didn’t jump, but only because the blanket kept me rooted. My little brother had a gift for sneaking up on me, even on a night like this. “Hey yourself,” I said, and shifted to give him a space on the couch.
Henry stood there for a second, seeming to be considering what to do. He wore a pair of old gym shorts, a T-shirt that read NERDS MAKE BETTER LOVERS, which had been a gag gift from Alice, and the saddest expression I’d ever seen on him.
“Did I wake you?” I asked, and then realized he wasn’t carrying a phone or a tablet or any of his usual late-night distractions.
“I wasn’t asleep. Just waiting for morning. Or for news. Whichever comes first.” He sat beside me.
We watched the ocean for a while, the black expanse broken only by the white dash of an occasional wave. I’d always thought the water was comforting, knowing it was right there, a big moat between us and all the world’s bullshit. Tonight, it was just empty, and so was the sky above it.
“I talked to most of her friends,” Henry said, after a while. “Even the ones she didn’t really like that much but kept in touch with out of pity or obligation. None of them know where she is.”
I nodded, but he wasn’t looking for me to say anything.
“They said,” he went on, “that she was happy. She wanted to be with me, and she’d been talking about getting married. Even her parents like me, finally. No one thinks she just took off.”
“They’re right,” I said. “She wouldn’t. Not to you.”
He looked at me, his eyes shifting sideways as if it embarrassed him to need confirmation. “That’s what I thought. But I’m not supposed to have thoughts like that. I’m supposed to be logical, to follow the trail and check for signs, but this…” He trailed off, because he knew I understood.
I reached over and placed my hand on his. He didn’t move away. Henry had never been a fan of touch, not even as a kid, but lately he seemed to tolerate it, or maybe even crave it. I patted his knuckles and left my hand there.
“We’ll find her,” I said. “If she’s in trouble, I promise we’ll get her out.”
He shrugged, but it came out more like a tremor. “You don’t have to promise.”
I kept my hand where it was. “I already have.”
Henry didn’t say anything for a bit. The moon crawled higher, found a path through the cloud cover, and for a minute the glass reflected our faces back at us. I looked older than I wanted, and Henry looked younger, caught at the moment before a kid turned into a man.
Eventually, he spoke. “There was something weird, though. When I was talking to her friend Monica? She said the last time she talked to Alice, it sounded like she was scared. Not of me, not of anyone in particular. Just scared.”
“Of who?” I asked, but Henry shook his head.
“Monica didn’t know. She said Alice got weird for a second, then changed the subject. I mean, I get paranoid sometimes too. That’s the internet, you know?”
“Could be nothing,” I offered, though it didn’t feel like nothing.
Henry stretched, arching his back until it popped, then settled back against the couch. “I hate this,” he said, and the raw honesty of it made me want to cry.
“Me too,” I said.
We didn’t talk for a while. The only sound was the quiet tick of the old wall clock and the occasional sigh from the fridge.
“You remember when Mom and Dad used to take us to the lake at night?” Henry asked, out of nowhere.
I grinned. “Sure. Dad would bring the telescope, and Mom would make up stories about the constellations.”
“Mom always said the stars were holes poked in heaven so we could see the light,” Henry said.
“Yeah. She said it was proof that the people up there missed us.”
After a bit, I looked at him. “You want to stay up with me? Just for a while?”
He shrugged but didn’t move. I shifted over and gave him a one-armed squeeze, just enough to make sure he knew I was there. He surprised me by hugging me back, tight and hard, just for a second. I returned it.
“Thanks,” he said under his breath.
I kept my arm around his shoulder until he relaxed, and we sat like that, two silhouettes in the silver blue of the living room, staring at the ocean that neither of us trusted tonight. I didn’t know what would happen to Alice, but I’d never let Henry go through it alone.
The dream would come back, I was sure, and maybe the next time it would have more answers. But for now, we stayed put, the two of us braced against the world, waiting for a sign that morning would be better than the night that came before it.