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None of it feels quite real to me anymore.
Hell, I’m not even sure I feel entirely real half the time. Ever since the high-rise, since waking up alive in a barn in the middle of nowhere, it’s like my grip on reality has become tenuous. Everything is muted, slowed to a sluggish crawl as I drift through each waking moment in a fog, except those moments where I’m training with Lyssa, and everything speeds up.
Is this what the beginning of a total psychotic break looks like? That slow spiraling descent into madness that all Grandmother’s girls inevitably seem to succumb to once they’ve been steeped in the life for too long?
I shudder hard, gritting my teeth against the wave of panic clawing at my throat. I can’t afford to lose my shit completely, not yet. Not until Ariadne and Grandmother finally get everything that’s coming to them. Once that’s done, once I’ve made them suffer…
Until then, I have to make my joys—and make my goodbyes—wherever I can find them.
I hear a few cars start up somewhere in the main street, and another in the nearby alley, and then Lyssa’s back with me a few moments later. “I told them to all go get a coffee for an hour. Let’s go.”
One hour.
The only noise is a slight clinking of the chain-link fence as we hurdle it easily and then move silently through the yard, keeping low. Lyssa raps sharply on the back door. After a moment, it creaks open a few inches and my mother’s familiar face appears, eyes widening in surprise as she looks past Lyssa to me.
“Scarlett?” she gasps, flinging the door open wider. “Is that really you?”
I drink in the sight of her. God, I’ve missed her so much. I didn’t even dare acknowledge how much until right now. But all that comes out of me is a croak. “Hi, Mom.”
She rushes forward and pulls me into an embrace, hugging me fiercely. I return the hug just as tightly, breathing in her comforting, memories crashing over me. When she finally releases me, her eyes are filled with tears.
“No one would tell us where you were!” she says. “And there are people watching us, all the time?—”
“They’re the good guys,” Lyssa says. “You don’t need to worry about them.”
Mom stares at Lyssa now. “I know you—you were there with Scarlett when…” She trails off, looking more upset than happy now.
“Mom, we don’t have long,” I say, pushing her back into the house. “Can we come in?”
We’re already in, but Mom nods anyway, worry lines creasing her brow. Lyssa and I follow her into the warm, familiar kitchen. Nothing has changed, except for Adam’s absence—and mine.
“Would you like some tea?” Mom asks, ever the polite hostess. “Or I can make something if you’re hungry...”
“We’re fine, thank you,” Lyssa cuts her off politely.
Mom’s gaze drifts back to me, drinking in my appearance as if reassuring herself I’m really here. “Your father is in the front room watching the game. Come on.”
She turns and bustles off before I can suggest she call him in here instead. But I follow her, and then I have to suffer through my father’s joy and hope as well as he sees me and shoots out of his armchair.
“Scarlett? What the?—”
He stops, overcome, and pulls me into a bone-crushing bear hug just like he used to when I was a kid. I can’t stop the tears that sting my eyes, and I have to pat him on the back for a long time before he lets me go.
When he does, I turn to see Lyssa inspecting the framed family photos clustered on the walls and shelves.
All those photos are exactly why I didn’t want to come in here to the living room.
Lyssa bends to look at a picture of me and Adam at my high school graduation, both of us grinning and looking so happy, so naive about what the future held.
Dad and Mom are watching her along with me, as though they can sense she’s not quite an ally. Lyssa glances over her shoulder at us and reads the room, fast. “I’ll give you all some privacy,” she says, and backs out of the room into the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Dad demands once she’s gone, his expression a mixture of joy and anger. “Where the hell have you been—all these years, and then after that terrible experience—young lady, do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”
I open and close my mouth, at a loss for how to even begin explaining the unbelievable situation, and worried I’m going to laugh at the strangeness of hearing him devolve into his gruff disciplinarian voice.
Young lady, do you have any idea?
Yeah. I have some.
