He sighs, and the edges of his eyes and mouth droop.
“You think someone kidnapped her?” It feels like he is taking her side, like I am the horrible person everyone else believes I am.
“Zoe, I don’t know what to tell you.” The car turns into my parents’ neighborhood. “You say you’re married, you’ve got a life. I think the best thing you can do is get on a plane and go home.”
“She’s my sister. If she’s in trouble, really in trouble—”
“You’ll do what?” He brings the car to a hard stop right in front of my parents’ house and cuts his eyes at me. “If Ava’s in trouble, you should fucking run. I told you before. Go home.”
CHAPTER
18
AVA
I AM FLEEING THROUGH the woods, and a full moon gives the scene the flickering light of an old filmstrip. I need to find a refuge, but I can’t catch my breath. I stop, clinging to a tree for support, my fingers clutching the rippled bark. Then the tree gives way under my hand, a small door opening, and inside the tree is a tiny room with a fireplace. A man bends over it, feeding twigs into the flames. He straightens and I see it is Beckett, but a younger version, the man I fell in love with.
He smiles and holds out a hand in invitation. “‘Come live with me and be my love.’”
I put my hand in his. Relief floods through me, but then the sky darkens and a cage falls down around us. We are caught.
My mother stands on the other side, a clipboard in her hand. She frowns at it, then at us. “You’re not nearly fat enough. Stick your finger through the bars and let me see how plump you are.”
There’s a chicken bone in my hand, gnawed clean, and I poke it out of the cage.
Now she looks at me with Cristina’s piercing dark eyes, and her face begins to sag like an oversized rubber mask. “Don’t try that trick on me. You’re the damn witch in this story. Just ask Zoe.”
I wake with a gasp. The room is still dark, and now Beckett is sleeping behind me, almost touching. I don’t inch away. The dream felt so real, not like sleep, not like a fairy tale. Zoe probably does think I’m a witch, but I don’t think she’s behind all this, I’m crossing off one option after another—not Zoe, not a crazy fan, not a random psychopath.
The signs point to my parents.
But that’s insane. I can’t believe it, but I can’t refute it either. Setting aside the secret research and the connections to all the terms Cristina rattled off, the most damning evidence is the way my parents always take a minute to decide on an emotional reaction. When I first brought Beckett home and told them we were engaged, they just looked at us. The silence grew more and more uncomfortable. Then my mother took a breath and said, “Congratulations, sweetie.” The endearment sounded like a word in a foreign language, one that she’d read mothers should say.
Behind me, Beckett whispers, “Ava?”
“What?”
He pauses. “Did you ever think it was Zoe?”
“Maybe.” Of course I did. Now I almost wish it were.
“But it sounds …” He draws a deep breath. “Do you think … maybe your parents are involved? Somehow?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. My parents.
Nothing can dispel the loneliness and fear of that thought. This is exactly how I felt as a child, when my parents’ presence in the house was no comfort at all, and Zoe always fell asleep straightaway. Some evenings I couldn’t stand lying awake by myself and I would slip into bed next to her, the solid fact of her breathing the only comfort I could find. This chill, this isolation, brings it all back.
But I still can’t believe it. Their research was a mystery to me and their attitude toward me and Zoe was clinical, sure, but I can’t wrap my head around the idea of my parents actually doing this.
I lean back just a little, so I’m closer to Beckett. We are frightened, cold, disoriented, and exhausted, and even though it’s been five years, my body remembers the shape of his.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into my hair, and the sweetness of the lie makes me tear up. Maddening, infuriating Beckett. If only I could hate him all the time.
I was never sure what my parents did for a living, and I never felt love or emotional connection from them, only a sense that Zoe and I were some kind of family experiment.
I don’t doubt that my parents would prioritize their research over my health and well-being. I know the grim truth—they are absolutely capable of this. I just can’t believe they would go to all the trouble, or that my mother would delegate a massive research project to anyone else, much less somebody like Cristina. I tell myself that if my parents were really involved, I would have seen them by now.
I close my eyes against the dark. My dream still eddies around me, and I wish this were only a story, the kind I used to tell Zoe.
When a nightmare woke her in the wee hours of the morning and our parents were bundled up with sleep masks and sound machines, I’d hear a whisper from the doorway of my bedroom. “Ava? Are you awake?” She’d slip under the covers, we’d press our foreheads together, and I’d whisper stories to her. Some were “real” fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel or Rumpelstiltskin, and others I made up—two sisters exploring a magic forest, dragons tamed and princes rescued and witches plunging off cliffs. Now I’m the one in the cage and no one’s coming to defeat the witch. If I disappeared forever, that would probably be Zoe’s happily-ever-after.
But I try to find comfort in the warmth of that long-ago memory, when I wasn’t alone and stories could hold back the shadows.
Minutes or hours pass, before the sound of the blast door unsealing shakes me awake.
My head still aches from slamming into Phil, but it’s one ache among many. Every muscle and joint hurts. Beckett is already up, seated against one wall, his legs crisscrossed, as if he’s meditating.
Cristina comes into the room, leaving the door open, and I’m fully alert, my body tensed, cataloging her every move. Nothing she does will escape my notice, because no matter how clever she thinks she is, she won’t outwit me.
Her army-green coat is gone, replaced by a trim white lab coat that she wears without a trace of self-conscious pretension. The container of coffee in her hand trails a familiar scent redolent of morning comfort, and there’s something in her other hand, but I can’t quite see it. Glancing at us as if she’s confirming we’re still here but not as though she’s particularly interested, she stops at the computer and hits a few keys. Shaking her head at the screen, she takes a sip.
Slowly I approach the gate.
She turns around and slips two energy bars through a gap in the fence, then quickly steps back. The diamond-shaped gaps are not wide enough for a hand, but the food slides through easily and falls onto the floor. We still have bottles of water, and a bucket in the corner. A slight smell lets me know that Beckett has used it during the night.
I pick up the energy bar, but I’m not ravenous, I’m furious that this witch thinks she can kidnap me, cage me, and then ignore me. All the leftover edginess from my argument with Beckett is redirected right at Cristina. I’ve been trying to be strong, holding back, not letting her know how scared I am.