I look up and find the clock, realize several hours have gone by since McKay left and decide to go check on Indie and see if she needs anything.
It’s the least I can do after failing her so miserably.
I didn’t close the door to the office when I left her in there. But it’s closed now.
My heart actually skips. A hard, thump inside my chest. Then nothing. Like I am dead. Then another hard thump.
I open the door and switch on the light.
“Indie?”
She’s gone.
Holy fucking shit. She’s gone.
I walk around the house, calling her name—“Indie!”—throwing open doors and peeking into all the rooms.
Nothing.
She is gone.
I go outside and call her, the way McKay used to call her when she was small. “Indie! Indie Anna Accorsi! You come home right now!”
Nothing.
She’s gone.
I go back in, pacing the hallway, then look up the stairs. Take them three at a time. Practically run down the hallway to her room. Throw open the door and flick on the light.
Empty.
I whirl around, open McKay’s door.
Empty.
I go to Adam’s door and find it already open. But dark inside.
When I flick on the light she’s there.
In his bed. Sleeping with her face pressed into his pillow and under his covers like this is where she belongs.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes, trying to get my heart to slow down. I try not to imagine all the ways this could’ve turned out differently. Then force myself to stop and just be thankful that this time, this one time, everything is OK.
I turn the light off, walk across the hall to my bedroom, and position a chair so I can see into Adam’s room.
Then I grab the bag I brought with me from California and I pull out the ancient tape player.
I grab tapes at random. Does it really matter which one I listen to?
At first, I think it does. But after I’m done listening to the seventh one, I realize something.
They all say the same thing.
They are all Indie, in her own words and her own voice, begging me for just one thing.
The truth.
Every single time she asks me to tell her some truth.
And every single time—while I do not lie—I hide that truth from her.
I sit there in the dark and ask myself the same question over and over again.
How?
How the fuck do I live with myself?
I can’t do it anymore. I know she’s fragile. I know I was the one saying we should not tell her too much all these years.
But I can’t do it anymore.
So I grab one tape.
Just one.
It’s the only one that matters. I put it inside the little machine. And then I take it down to her room and place it on her pillow.
Then I close the door and go back to my room.
And I wait.
A little while later I hear the familiar sound of truck tires on the driveway outside.
McKay is back.
A long breath comes out of me and I feel like I’ve been holding it in since he left. And when the front door opens and closes, I get up, walk to the top of the stairs, and look down so I can force him to hear me. He has to hear me.
It’s time to give her the truth.
But it’s not McKay looking back up at me from the bottom of the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - ADAM
PRESENT DAY
I want to believe that people are good. I want to cling hard to the idea that trust, and loyalty, and love are all that matter. I want to have faith in the life we created with Indie and the way we raised and supported her.
I want her to be strong, and resilient, and safe.
And if you had asked me the day after her twentieth birthday if I still believed all that stuff, I would’ve said yes.
Hell, if you had asked me a month later or even a year later, I’d still have said yes.
But four years?
My convictions are wavering.
It’s not even that I’m afraid I don’t know her anymore. It’s this sudden fear that I never did. That we got her all wrong.
The best-case scenario being we simply misunderstood her. We missed something. Some critical hidden component that, once applied to her treatment, will patch things up well enough for her to keep going. For us to stand by her.
But it’s the worst-case scenario that scares me.
What if… what if this is just who she is?
What if, no matter how well we nurture her, she is just bad?
I’ve heard it go both ways.
Evil people are born.
Evil people are made.
I need someone to offer up a definitive answer in this regard. I need some fucking assurance that what happened was a one-time thing.
But not even James Fenici could give me that piece of mind. The last thing he said to me when we parted ways four years ago was… It’s a hard lesson to learn, but not everyone’s worth saving.
I get that. Probably better than most. But how do you know? Where is that line? The one that tells you when it’s time to give up and move on?
This is what I think about the whole drive up to Old Home. Because I have to know. I can’t give up on Indie unless I know for sure she’s gone and there’s no way to save her.
I made a promise to myself that day back on the island. I promised to protect her. To never let that snake get that close again. And I’m not really talking about snakes. We lived in the middle of the fucking swamp with so many snakes all around us, we were practically trippin’ over them.
None of this ever had anything to do with the snakes.
It was about the garden.
And the gate.
And the ignorance we cultivated inside those walls.
Her ignorance. Her secrets.
And mine too.
And finally, one day, it all caught up with us and we were squeezed, and crushed, and eaten when her veil of ignorance was lifted and her secret snakes finally came crawling out of the walls be built around her.
But that’s just it. Her secrets. Her ignorance. Her snakes.
I can’t let her go out there alone. I can’t let her face that evil by herself.
What kind of man kicks a little girl out of the Garden of Eden?
Am I that man?
Obviously, I have decided I am not. But I pause at the gate of Old Home just the same. To think it through one last time. To thoroughly understand the consequences of this action. Because once I see her again… it’s over. I will stand by her side no matter what comes next.
And that might be my downfall.
That might be the end of all of us.
I don’t know why I do it, because there’s no one but me on this dirt road tonight, but I signal before I turn into the driveway of Old Home.
I guess I just want my decision to return to be definitive. Even if I’m the only one who ever knows it.
McKay’s truck isn’t in the driveway and the house is mostly dark when I pull up in front. But there’s a light on somewhere. Upstairs. Maybe the hallway or Donovan’s room. And probably the kitchen too.
I turn my truck off and get out, closing the door softly behind me like I don’t want to be heard.
Then I take a deep breath and walk up the porch steps. Open the front door, close it. And look up the stairs.
Donovan is standing there, like he was waiting for me.