I know I should go and get my O2 shield. Dad was so militant about protecting ourselves from inhaling Florapetro residue. He would have a conniption if he caught me without it. Still, retreating into our house isn’t an option right now.
To me, it seems more toxic inside than it is out here.
I park myself on the steps and look down Hollow Street, which hasn’t changed since the day I was born. The rows of historic brick townhomes are all perfectly indistinguishable, with one exception, of course. The pathway in front of our house is the only one with the shape of a star pressed into the concrete, signaling that someone important—in this case, my father—once lived here. I guess that’s supposed to make me feel proud. Usually I walk right over the seal and pretend it’s not even there, but tonight it takes a Herculean effort to keep my eyes focused on the pops of light coming from behind my neighbors’ windows.
Thankfully, the roar of a V12 synthetic-oil engine pulls my attention somewhere else and my head turns. A bulldozer-size delivery truck lurches down the road and comes to a stop a few feet away. I rise to my feet when a slender man in a light gray shirt and black pants exits the driver’s side, carrying a large parcel. When his shoes walk across the star on our pathway, it feels like something is coiling around my midsection and squeezing.
“Regan Welch?” The man’s words come out quick behind his O2 shield, like he’s in a big rush, so I just nod. He sets the package down on the steps with a thud and types on his tablet, his eyes never meeting mine. Then he shoves the tablet in front of me. “Scan here, please.”
I reach into my cargo-skirt pocket and pull out my card, tapping it against the screen. Once we hear a chirping sound, the deliveryman yanks the tablet away from me so he can dash toward his truck, practically knocking over the package in the process.
“Thanks for being so careful!” I shout sarcastically, but he slams the truck door in reply and slowly chugs away, a stream of exhaust hurtling behind him.
Sighing, I pick up the package, which is surprisingly heavy considering that it’s packed in a durable foam box, and look to see who sent it. The tag reads Alessandra Cole. The trendiest boutique in the Heights Sector.
It wasn’t my birthday. Who would send me something from Alessandra Cole?
I’m about to rip it open on the steps, but when I see how secure it is—there are thick, orange strips of quick-seal on every side—I realize I’m going to need a laser pen to tear into it. The other thing I realize is that I’m starting to wheeze a little, so going back inside the House of Darkness is an absolute must now.
I hold the package in between my knees as I wave my passcard in front of the lockpad near the front door, unlocking it and pushing it open with my left hand. I gently set the box on the ground and nudge it forward until it passes through the entryway. The door softly shuts behind me and I lift the package up with both hands, almost dropping it when I see my mother standing in the middle of the living room, her back to me as she holds the book my dad left in the lockbox out in front of her.
She must sense me, because she slowly glances over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine. She doesn’t seem rested at all. In fact, from the dark half-moons that have formed right above her cheeks, it doesn’t look like she’s slept since December.
“Where did you get this?” she asks, her voice weak and hoarse.
For a moment, I worry that she’s upset with me, but then I notice the small smile forming on her lips, like she’s trying to remember how to be happy.
I set down the package, but I hesitate. I know that when I respond, the small smile is going to disappear. I consider lying and telling her I found the book hiding somewhere, but she keeps this house like a shrine to my dad—everything he owned is still sprinkled around this place—so she wouldn’t believe that for a second. I almost feel a little angry with her for putting me in this position.
“At the depository. It was in his lockbox.”
“Oh my God, Regan. The appointment.” Mom covers her mouth with her trembling hand, and just like that, the smile is gone. “I’m so, so sorry. I got a call from Orexis about Elusion’s CIT approval a few hours ago, and I just got so worked up, thinking about your dad; I went to Elusion, and then I was just so tired. I sat down on the couch and . . .” She shrugs, choking back tears. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Really.”
I want to believe what I just said. I tell myself I just have to be more patient. But I know what she’s going to say next.
“All I need is a little more time. I’m going to do better tomorrow, I promise.”
Mom wipes her eyes with her shoulder so she doesn’t have to let go of the book. My heart immediately replaces anger with guilt, and the shift makes me hunch forward. Suddenly, I have the posture and regret of a woman five times my age.
“You’re right—tomorrow will be better,” I say.
She sits back down on the couch to collect herself and looks up at me. There’s a lot of red around her green irises, but that doesn’t stop her from forcing a grin for my benefit. I know this sounds selfish, but I wish she’d do that more often. Just to let me know she’s fighting to come back from wherever she is.
“This book,” she says, tapping on the cover, “this is the first gift I ever gave your father. It was his birthday, and we hadn’t been dating that long. But I knew he was a nature buff, so I just ordered it on a whim. I had no idea he still . . .”
When she pauses for a while, I sit down next to her, thinking my closeness might be comforting. “Well, he liked it enough to keep it under lock and key. That’s really sweet.”
“I suppose. I just thought he, I don’t know, was protecting something more important than this.”
“What do you mean?”
“The monthly fee of a security box at Morton and Wexley is almost a thousand credits a week. I’m sure this book represented a lot of fond memories, but it’s strange he’d spend so much just to prevent it from getting damaged or lost.”
“Or stolen,” I say, even though that thought seems a bit ridiculous.
Mom must think so too, because she chuckles a little. “Regan, who’d want to steal this? It’s not worth anything; it’s falling apart.”
“I know. I’m just trying to make sense of it.”
“Well, sometimes things don’t make sense right away, so you might as well put them aside and wait until they do.”
She finally lets go of the book and takes my hand. I was expecting her skin to feel cold, but it’s just the opposite. Her palm is warm and soft.
“So what’s inside the package?” she asks me, a hint of playfulness in her tone.
“I don’t know, something from Alessandra Cole.”
My mother’s eyes brighten. “Oh good, it’s your dress. I’m so glad I called over there this morning to confirm delivery. They totally messed up the dates.”
It takes me a second to register what she’s talking about, but when I do, my stomach performs a little flip of excitement. Before my dad died, she and I went to Alessandra to get fitted for formal ball gowns for Cathryn Simmons’s huge spectacle of a fiftieth birthday bash, which Cathryn has been planning since the day she turned forty-seven. I had seen a dress I loved, but because it was so expensive, I had put it on hold, intending to get my friends’ opinion before buying it. With everything that happened, it had slipped my mind entirely.