My mother’s eyes well up. “I hoped she was still alive. Something…in the past…made me believe she might be. But as the years passed, and there was no sign of her, I began to lose hope. My little girl…my baby. How is this possible?”
For the second time in half an hour, I repeat the story. You’d think I would get bored of the retelling, but I could talk about this—I could talk about Callie—for the rest of the night. Maybe even the rest of the week.
My mother’s openly crying now, and she moves forward and hugs me, in a way she hasn’t since I came back to civilization. I close my eyes, feeling the warmth of her embrace, the solidity of her arms and chest. This is how it would feel if she loved me. This is how it would be if we were a true family.
“Your true daughter, your firstborn,” I murmur. “The one you actually love.”
I don’t know why I say it. Swear to Fates, it just slips out. I want to snatch the words from the air, stuff them back in.
But it’s too late. She drops her arms and backs away from me. I reach out, but before I can touch her, she cries out and runs from the room. Blood-red footprints decorate the floor in her wake.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. What is wrong with me? This is the closest I’ve felt to my mom in years. Why did I have to ruin the moment with my insecurities?
Angela squeezes my hand. Her eyes are red, and she looks like she’s been crying herself. “She’s emotional, and who can blame her? I can only imagine how I would feel if my daughter were returned to me.” She drops a kiss on Remi’s head. “Don’t you worry. I’ll go talk to her. She may want to be alone now, but in a few minutes, she’ll be glad for the company.”
Shooting me a sympathetic glance, she and Remi leave the room.
And then it’s just Mikey and me.
Except he won’t look at me. His eyes flit from the magnificent mountains on the wall screens to the retractable coffee table to the water-filled massage chair. Anywhere but at me.
He’s not crying, either. In fact, he doesn’t even look surprised.
All of a sudden, I remember him coming to my room, in the early days after we relocated to Eden City.
“Callie’s been gone six years, and you’re still grieving her,” he said. “It might give you closure if you resurrected your bond and sent her some memories.”
“I already tried.” I hugged a pillow to my chest. “Almost every day the first month we escaped, and nearly every week since. It doesn’t work anymore. There’s no click.”
“Try again,” he suggested. “For me. Try it one more time, right now.”
Because I never had a father, because I was barely speaking to my mother, because I loved him as much as I’ve ever loved any parent, I obeyed. Nothing happened.
Looking almost as disappointed as I felt, Mikey left the room, and I pushed the incident out of my mind.
Until now.
Mikey works at TechRA. In fact, he’s one of their head scientists. Is it possible that he’s known this entire time?
“Did you know, Mikey?” I whisper. “Did you know my sister was still alive?”
He finally meets my eyes. And then he nods.
My knees go weak, and the room spins around me. I trusted him. He taught me to hunt, even though I didn’t talk. When we came back to civilization, he let me live with his family in the cottage behind their house, when my mother refused to move to the compound. He was like the father I never had.
“You lied to me,” I say.
“You have to understand,” he pleads. “Every day, I wanted to tell you. I wished every single day that her condition would improve, so that I could come home and tell you the good news. But what good would it have done for me to tell you that Callie was in a coma? It would’ve killed you to see her lying there, day after day, and not be able to do anything to help her.”
“I could’ve sat by her side. Held her hand and sent her my memories.”
“I was trying to protect you.” He walks to the water recliner and flops onto it, covering his eyes with one hand. “Both you and Logan. I had no guarantee she would ever wake up. And I didn’t want the two of you to bury yourselves in that room until you might as well be dead.” He lifts his hand, and it’s like he’s pulled back a curtain. As blank as his eyes were before, they’re full now. Of a long-ago wound that’s never healed. Of a pain so deep it’s carried in his soul. “Turns out, I was right. She took a turn for the worst last week, and even I had to admit that my hope was foolish. It’s only a matter of time before she leaves us once again.”
“No, you’re wrong, Mikey.” I shake my head. “Today, her vitals entered the safe zone after I sent just one memory. All I had to do was touch her for the transmission to work. Preston thinks the only reason her brain was behaving erratically was because it had woken up and couldn’t find a hold. But now that she’s latched onto me, she’s stable. More stable than she’s been since the first year of her coma.”
“Oh, thank the Fates.” He closes his eyes briefly and then opens them. “You can’t tell Logan. You have to promise me that.”
“What? Why not? You just said you were waiting for good news before you told us. This qualifies as good news.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” he says quietly. “But when I believed we were going to lose Callie for good, Angela and I redoubled our efforts. We took turns talking to Logan every night; we invited him and Ainsley out to dinner at a Manual Cooking establishment. Angela even let Ainsley play with Remi, so that Logan could see what a good mother she could be. And then, a couple days ago, we finally seemed to get through to him. After all these years, my brother is finally on the verge of moving on. Of being happy.”
“He deserves to know—”
“He deserves to live,” Mikey says, his eyes blazing. “I’m glad Callie’s gotten a new hold on life. I want her to wake up nearly as much as you do. But that may still never happen.”
“Logan has a right to know,” I say fiercely. “A right to live his own life.”
“I can’t let him do that! I can’t lose him, too.”
I stop, not sure I heard him correctly. “What do you mean? Who else have you lost?”
He pushes against the floor with his foot, and the recliner rocks beneath him. For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. And then he sits up and rests his elbows on his knees.
“Most people know I was the first member of Harmony,” he says. “What they don’t know was there wasn’t even a Harmony back then. I was just a sixteen-year-old kid who managed to escape from the TechRA labs. I didn’t go into the woods, but up into the mountains, where a primitive community lived, one that had been together since the pre-Boom era.”
A smile ghosts across his lips. “The mountain people thought I was strange, with my pockets full of gadgets and my talk of psychic powers, but they were kind and they accepted me. There was a woman there. Sierra. Just as I arrived, her little boy, Jonas, was about to step on some sharp rocks, and she swept him up just in time. He laughed, not understanding the danger he was in, and she covered his face with kisses. I fell in love with both of them in an instant. Sierra was the sister I never had, and Jonas was the nephew I never knew I wanted.”
His words are quiet and halting, as though he’s not used to the rhythms of this story. “I’d been there only a couple months when tragedy struck. A snake slithered into their tent and bit Jonas. The poison spread fast. By morning, he was dead.”
I gasp, bringing my hand to my lips. But he continues as though he doesn’t hear.
“We buried him under a mound of loose rocks.” He looks at the wall screen, and I know he’s not seeing the rotating images of the majestic snowcaps. He’s seeing the mountains he knew. The ones where he lived and loved. “Sometimes, I wonder if it would’ve made a difference if I hadn’t piled on so many rocks. Other times, I know this is my Fixed. The event that defines my life so thoroughly it would be the same in every world.”