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She took a deep breath. “It was sunny, after about a solid week of rain. My mom was always super protective of me, but this day … I was so happy to be outside, free. She was hanging clothes on the line. I stretched out on the grass for a minute, just to feel it against the backs of my legs. Everything after that gets kind of …”
“That’s enough.” I could see the day on her emotional time line. It was a big one. “Promise me you’re sure.”
“Yes.”
I leaned forward, took her face in my hands, and looked into her eyes.
Emotion flooded through my system almost the second I touched her. Visuals I didn’t understand made her feel trapped, and then there was pain. Happiness and a swing set. White clouds and flapping sheets. Worry, anxiety. Shiny black car, feet, the ground. So much fear.
Hope. Hope and a red crayon, a lined piece of paper. Crude drawings and … pain.
A doll with black yarn for hair.
Then everything clicked into sharp focus, but it all moved in slow motion.
stepped back a full foot. “How were you wrong?”
“Let me explain why I was right first.” Taking my hand, she led me to the couch. “You don’t take advantage of people and use what they have to benefit yourself.”
“You say that knowing I need your help to find Jack. Putting you in danger, going against your grandmother’s rules. That’s taking advantage.”
“Not to benefit you,” she said, disagreeing. “To benefit people that you love. I know that’s your desire, and that’s the thing that comes first. You don’t have to ask me, Kaleb. I’ll do whatever it takes to help you.”
“But your grandmother, and the men and the fact that they could be watching—”
“Focus,” she said. “I have a point to make.”
I kissed her on the forehead, breathing in the citrus scent of her hair. “I’m focusing.”
“On what I’m saying.” She pushed back and took my hands in hers. “As for how you were wrong … I think, in trying so hard to be different from him, you missed some really important similarities. In doing that, you’ve missed some answers.”
“Explain.”
“I’ve been thinking about this since the night we talked in Memphis. Jack takes memories hostage. You take terrible emotions and keep them away from the people they hurt. How tied are emotions and memories?”
I stared at her.
“You can’t separate the two. Jack keeps telling you killing him would be a mistake, that the two of you are alike. He’s telling you the truth. If you kill Jack, you kill your mother’s memories with him, and now your father’s. If he goes, so do they.”
“Are you saying he’s the key to restoring my parents?”
“No. I’m saying you are.”
“How?”
“The memories Jack took were the ones that were most important to your mother.” Lily spoke slowly. “Her love for your father and you, all the personal moments that tied you together. If those memories aren’t tied in emotion, I don’t know what is.”
“Finding their memories, their emotions, inside him? Taking them back, and then transferring them over?” I shook my head. “It’s impossible. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“That’s why you’re going to practice on me.”
I followed her to her bedroom. It was on the small side, with clean white walls and photographs everywhere. Built-in bookshelves lined one wall, crammed full of every kind of book and organized by color. It looked like a perfect rainbow. She sat down on the edge of her double bed, leaned back on the red duvet cover, and held out her foot. I stared at it, and then looked at her.
“Knee boots?” She grinned. “Can you help me out?”
“Oh yeah.” I pulled the right boot off while I was facing her, but for the left, I turned around to give her a view of my backside.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, laughing.
