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“No, it’s not.” The words I promise leaped to the tip of her tongue, but Isobel held them in check. She couldn’t say it. Not when she had another promise, still unfulfilled, to keep.
“Why?” Danny asked her, the sorrow and confusion in his voice making her stomach churn with shame. “Why do you care about him more than you do about us?”
“Danny, it’s not like that. You don’t und—”
“That phone call last night wasn’t about you,” he said, and for a split second, Isobel wasn’t sure what he was referring to. Then she remembered the discussion they’d overheard as their father had entered through the garage door. “Dad was talking to his and mom’s lawyer.”
Shocked, Isobel grabbed his arm. “What?”
“After Baltimore, Mom told Dad she wanted a divorce,” he said. “I’m not supposed to know, but I overheard them talking last night. Dad’s trying to fix things. That’s the real reason they were going on that stupid date, except now they’re not because they’re out looking for you!”
“I . . . ,” Isobel started, but everything within her had already collapsed in on itself, suffocating anything she might have said. And what could she say? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because she could see by her brother’s lost expression that it was all true. And they both knew it was her fault.
“Danny . . . I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said, taking a step away from her. “You’re not. You did this all before, and now you’re going to do it again.”
Turning, he hurried to where he’d dropped his phone. He picked it up and, dialing, pushed out onto the front porch.
“Dad!” Isobel heard him say seconds later through a choked sob. “Dad, come home right now. She’s here, but I know she’s not going to stay. She’s going to leave again. So come home. Please hurry.”
Isobel moved to go after him but paused at the door.
She had time, she told herself, to cross into the dreamworld once more. But if she was going to do that, if she was going to leave her family and Gwen behind again, then she would need to create a distraction of her own. A diversion that would lead them all away and, at the same time, keep them together. As safe as possible in this reality.
Isobel pushed through the screen door and, crouching by her backpack, dug through her coat pocket to retrieve her cell. Flipping it open, she ignored the string of texts and missed call alerts and sent a quick reply to the fifteen messages Gwen alone had sent.
MEET ME AT THE DANCE
Clamping the phone shut, she made sure Danny saw her stuff it into her bag again.
“He wants to talk to you,” Danny said.
Isobel glanced at her little brother, but her focus landed on the back-lit screen he held out to her and the photograph he had assigned to their father’s contact info.
Dressed in the makeshift Edgar Allan Poe costume he’d donned for Isobel and Varen’s project, his fake black-comb mustache on his upper lip as askew as the spray-painted cockatoo hanging from his shoulder, their father sat at the kitchen table, a goofy, too-serious expression plastered across his made-up face. He aimed the tip of a black pen at the camera. At her.
“Isobel,” she heard her father’s voice buzz on the line. “Are you there? You answer me right now. Do you hear me?”
Isobel took the phone from Danny and saw the tension knotting his brow ease slightly.
“Isobel, damn it,” her dad said, his voice growing louder, more frantic. “I said answer me!”
She didn’t raise the phone to her ear. Instead she stared at that picture. Studying it, she took in all the details—memorizing every last one. Just in case.
“Izzy?” her father said, and now his voice came soft, almost too quiet to hear. “If you’re there, for the love of God, please say something.”
“I love you—Mom, too,” she said. “And I’m sorry,” she added before driving her thumb into the end button.
26
Crisscrossed
Isobel turned her back on her brother, unable to meet his gaze again.
Re-entering the house, she dropped his cell to the floor and, dodging the cracked picture frames that littered the foyer floor and steps, pounded up the stairs.
The eyes in the photos seemed to watch her as she passed: Danny in his Scout uniform, Isobel in last year’s cheerleading portrait, all four members of her family beaming in front of the Christmas tree two Decembers ago.
