Chapter 9
Stopped at the one traffic light in Lincoln, James watches a stream of fire trucks and ambulances rush past, lights flaring red, sirens wailing.
He cuts right onto Anderson and parks in his parents’ uphill driveway.
Through the bug-strewn windshield, their two-story house rises white and formidable. The sirens fade.
Nelle peers through the windshield. The moon sits over his house like a vintage plate hung in the sky.
“This is where you live?”
“Yeah.”
James grips the steering wheel, and a clammy heat creeps into his face. What is common practice after leaving someone to burn to death?
“Do you think Quill will try to escape?”
“Maybe.” She chews her bottom lip. “But if he could still control me, he would’ve. He kept my ink in the room he set fire to. It’s long gone.”
That’s a relief, at least. Still, he isn’t sure what to do.
Nelle has nowhere to go. Will his parents take her in?
Even if they do, he doesn’t know what she will do in a few weeks when he moves back to college.
He hates himself for the regret he feels.
Every time he thinks he is getting out of one uncomfortable situation with Nelle, he finds himself in another.
“What’s in that folder?” He gestures to the manila rectangle in her lap.
Nelle breaks the seam and cracks it open. A birth certificate. A social security card. All the information she needs to live. To travel. Even a passport, Nelle’s teenage face staring up at them. All under the name Eleanor Quill.
“How did he get all of that?” he asks.
“I remember the day he took me to the courthouse for that picture. I didn’t ask why, I was just happy to leave the house. The rest isn’t mine.” She passes it over. “It’s his dead daughter’s. He told the police officer that she didn’t die, that she moved to Scotland to be with family.”
“But she did die, right?”
“Yes. She died.”
“But the government thinks she’s alive,” James says. “So, legally, you are Eleanor now. Maybe he wants you to be able to live on your own. Maybe . . .”
“He actually loved me?” Nelle says. “In some twisted way?”
“Isn’t it possible?”
“You don’t torture someone you love.”
James flinches. “You’re right.”
“Thank you, by the way.”
“What did I do?”
“You wrote for me,” she says. “I gave you the necklace hoping that one day I could ask you to use it to free me. But I didn’t have to ask.”
He squeezes the empty vial, glass stained with her blood.
“What now?” he asks. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Nelle’s hand sits on the folder. Pale, small, curling into itself. “What about leaving with me?”
James examines her in the dark. She’s dead serious.
“You want me to leave with you?” That all too familiar anxiety creeps into his gut. “I can’t. I have classes and my family and a job, and what would Nancy say if I just—”
“You’re overthinking.”
He looks at his house through the blue night, then back to Nelle, her one hand gripping her seat belt and the other on the manila folder.
Can they simply flit off without a plan?
He thinks about the money he has saved, close to $6,000.
Could that be enough for gas and food and hotel rooms?
For how long? What about college? His parents?
“James.” Nelle’s voice fog lights through his thoughts.
Instead of counting costs, debating logistics, and stressing over reactions, he imagines the open road. The glorious unknown. A city of skyscrapers at the end of a rainbow.
“Wait right here!” He laughs as he leaps out of the car.
Nelle stares at the social security card, Eleanor Quill in black letters glowing under moonlight. This is really happening, she tells herself. You’re free. James’s house towers above her. Free-ish.
He will have to write for her. Quill is gone, and yet Nelle’s life is right back in another man’s hands. A better man, but still.
She slides the documents back in the manila folder.
She has no right to suggest that James uproot his life for her.
But he does want to get out of Lincoln, to experience exotic places, meet memorable people, and live.
How many times did he complain over the past few weeks about college?
How many dreamy-eyed tales of his cousin’s life in New York?
Leaving Lincoln is a mutually beneficial decision, but guilt still nibbles at Nelle’s conscience.
On some level, she orchestrated it all. She told James her address, she spilled the secret about her creation, she gave him that vial of ink.
And although he was the one to find her under the fireworks on the Fourth of July, she took in his statue-cut jawline, his veiny typist’s hands, and saw not only a beautiful boy, but a getaway car.
James runs inside the house, down the hall lined with his and Midi’s childhood scribbles, and upstairs to his bedroom.
He shovels shirts and pants and a couple of jackets inside a bag.
A new pack of toothbrushes and his favorite books.
He crosses the hall to Midi’s room—she’s staying at Mandy’s tonight, thankfully—and steals some clothes from her closet.
Sweaters and shirts and pants. In the kitchen downstairs, he writes a note for his parents.
Hey, Mom and Dad, I’m going to see Jessie in New York until the semester starts.
I have money saved up. Love y’all! I’ll call you when I get there.
He shoots Nancy a text, feeling a hit of guilt over her last unanswered message.
As he races down the porch steps, he can’t wipe the smile off his face.
He is being spontaneous, far outside his realm of comfort, and he loves the way it tastes.
For the next few weeks, he doesn’t have to worry about college or medical-school applications or the friends he doesn’t have.
The sad cloud that haunts his every waking moment has been broken by sunlight.
His parents would say he is having a manic episode, but James thinks that maybe, just maybe, he is finally doing something right.