Canes of Divergence (11 page)

Bristlecone, Colorado

I
T WAS THE
strange feeling that woke him – the feeling of the hair standing up on the back of his neck and behind his ears. The feeling that he was being watched.

Zander
opened his eyes slowly, trying to remember where he was, and why he was so uncomfortable.

He
was
being watched, he realized. Owen was perched on the very end of Quinn’s bed, by his feet, silently staring at him.

Suddenly, last night’s events all came rushing back to him.

He must have fallen asleep here on Quinn’s bed, with his neck propped at a strange angle against the headboard. Her phone was still in his right hand, tethered to the wall by the charging cord.

“I’m sorry, Owen,” he said
, quickly sitting up, and setting the phone on the table. “I shouldn’t have come in here.”

“
Quinn wouldn’t mind,” Owen said quietly. “She wasn’t using her bed. It’s nicer than the couch.”

“I don’t think she’d much like me going through her private things, Owen. She didn’t give me permission.”

“They’re not really Quinn’s things anymore. She said that me and Annie could have whatever we want. I don’t think it would bother her, but if
you
thought it would bother her then why did you do it?”

He
chuckled under his breath. “I don’t know why I did. Her room was just here, and … I guess maybe I thought I would find some answers here or something.”

“What kind of answers?”

Owen’s face was so sincere, his expression so deep and powerful, that for a moment, Zander forgot he was only eight, and that he shouldn’t be having this conversation with him. For a moment, he lost sight of all of that, and just spilled his guts. “Like where Quinn
really
is. Why she disappeared without saying anything to anybody. Why she didn’t take
any
of her stuff. I’m starting to worry that something really bad happened to her.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, of course, he regretted them.
Owen was just a young boy, and now he was probably scaring him.

But Owen was still just looking at him with those dark, wide eyes, waiting patiently. He was silent for several seconds, looking like he was waiting to be sure Zander had finished. And when he spoke, his words weren’t what Zander was expecting at all.

“What if you got answers to your questions, and they changed your life?”

“What do you mean?”
His heart sped to a manic pace. “Did something bad happen to her, and everyone is just hiding it?”

Owen slowly shook his head. Too slowly to convince Zander.

“Do you know where she is?”

He nodded.

“Is she in Europe?”

The pause was much longer this time, b
ut finally, Owen shook his head again.

“Do you know why she went so fast and didn’t take any of her stuff with her?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not supposed to tell me.” He knew that, now.

“Nobody told me I couldn’t.”

He frowned.
“Then why won’t you tell me the truth?”

Owen blinked several times. “Why do you need to know?”

It was a valid question. He didn’t – and yet, he did. “I don’t know why I need to know. Honestly, I’ve tried to forget about it, I’ve tried to let it go, and just accept what your mom is saying. I’ve told myself it’s none of my business – and I know it’s not. But I can’t help it, Owen. Something just keeps pulling me into this, and I can’t stop wondering. I need to know.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s it? You’re going to tell me?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Why wouldn’t I want to know? I thought you said nothing bad had happened to her.”

Owen sighed – Zander had never seen him do that before. He was obviously struggling with this for some reason. All he knew was that this scared him, all of it. Actually, he also knew that he should just stop now, leave the little boy alone, but he
couldn’t bring himself to let it go.

“I don’t know if I
should
tell you, Zander. But…” For a second, Owen’s bottom lip trembled, and Zander’s heart leapt into his throat. Then the little boy took a deep breath and his eyes met Zander’s again. “But I need help. And I think you’re the only one who can help me.”

Zander couldn’t even identify the mix of emotions that coursed through him then, but at least part of it was pure, unadulterated panic. Something
was
wrong. He knew his voice was shaking as he answered, “Help you
how
?”

Owen took a deep breath. “Alvin told me that it has to be your choice. That I can’t bring you into this without warning you.”

The encounter with the old man at the river came back in a rush. “You know Alvin?”

“
Yes. I’ve only really seen him once, but he talks to me in my dreams all the time. He said he met you.”

“He told you that in your
dream
?”

“Yes.”

All right then. He’d somehow managed to meet Owen’s
hallucination
down by the river. This was getting better all the time. “What else did he say to you in your dream?”

“That you could help me – you could help
us
, if you wanted to. But only if you were really ready for your life to change forever. Only if you are ready to learn something that you can’t unlearn.”

Somewhere inside of him, a warning bell sounded. As crazy as all of this was, as little sense as Owen was making at the moment
, as much as there was one part of him that wanted to call Megan and Jeff
right now
and demand to know what kind of stories they’d been filling Owen’s head with, and another part that was half ready to call the
police
, just in case something truly horrific had happened here – another part of him, one he wasn’t so familiar with, told him, unequivocally, that this was for real.

Owen’s statement was serious. If Zander didn’t drop this immediately, if he pressed it even one step further, he was going open Pandora’s Box. And once he did that, once he let whatever was in there out, he would never, ever, be able to put it back in.

He didn’t know how long he sat there considering the unconsiderable. His heart had slowed; everything was silent and still as Zander really and truly weighed the question in front of him.

He thought of the weeks of wondering and agonizing over where Quinn had gone. He thought of his conversations with his parents last night, how they’d pointed so strongly to the fact that he didn’t even know where his life here was going anyway.

He even thought about what it would be like to just drop this now. To take everyone’s word for it that Quinn was fine, and it was none of his business anyway. This wasn’t his problem, and if he got involved, he wouldn’t be able to take it back.

In fact, that
last option was almost tempting. Right now, right this second, he still had a chance to get his life back – a life that was familiar, and comfortable. One where he knew most of what he was doing, and would somehow be able to figure out the rest. He’d almost landed on this decision when he looked at Owen’s face again – really looked at it this time, deep enough to see the worry hidden in the very back of the little boy’s eyes. And he suddenly understood that, while walking away from this was probably the
best
choice he could make, it would also be the selfish one. And that, though he didn’t know how or why, in the end, leaving this behind was the decision he would regret.

“
Okay, Owen, where is Quinn?”

The little boy nodded. He didn’t ask any more questions, didn’t double-check Zander’s thought process. Whatever had just happened, they both knew the decision had been made.

“I can’t tell you, Zander. I have to just show you. If you’re going to help me, you’re going to have to just follow me today, and do what I ask. I can’t explain it right now – not until later.”

Zander closed his eyes. “Tell me she’s okay, Owen. Tell me you’re not going to take me to her body somewhere or something.”

Owen’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates, and this time Zander knew he’d made a mistake. He hadn’t dared even articulate that thought yet in his own brain, even though it had been dancing around the edges. It had just slipped out on its own.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that … I’m just scared, Owen.”

“She’s alive, Zander. And she’s okay right now. But she needs help. We have to help her. And you can’t ask me any more questions, and you can’t stop in the middle. If you’re going to come with me, you have to promise you’ll do
everything
I tell you.”

*          *          *

Eight hours later, Zander was well past questioning his sanity. He had also lost any desire to be the one to call the police to report any suspicions he might have about Quinn – mostly because he was now pretty sure that if anyone called the police, he was going to have to do some serious explaining of his own.

After calling Megan and Jeff to let them know that Zander was staying at their house, and calling Zander’s parents with the news that Owen had been fine for the rest of the night, and they could relax and enjoy their trip to the Springs, Owen had flitted around the
house for hours, gathering up items and putting them in a duffel bag, and writing some kind of note to his mother, which he sealed in an envelope and left on the counter without letting Zander see it.

Zander, who had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before, had actually dozed off for a while on the couch while Owen was doing his thing.

But around five in the evening, Owen’s instructions got a little strange. At first, his request seemed almost innocent. After dragging the surprisingly heavy duffel bag out to Zander’s truck, Owen told him there were a couple of things he needed to get from Doctor Rose’s house. Apparently, Doctor Rose had signed the deed on the house over to Megan, and Owen had the keys to prove it.

“You promised,” Owen said. “Everything I say. Nobody’s there, and even if they were, we’d knock, and Nathaniel would let us in. But he’s not, and he wouldn’t be mad. He needs our help, too.”

Although Zander had never been inside the house of Nathaniel and William Rose, and had nothing to compare it to, going in there had given him the same creepy vibe he’d gotten in Quinn’s room. It looked like nothing had been touched. All of the furniture was still there; there were jackets hanging on the hooks in the hallway, everything anyone would need to live ordinary life there. There were even still two laptop computers sitting on a long desk at the back of the living room.

“Who’s paying the power bill?” Zander wondered aloud, as Owen walked through the house, flipping switches on without a care.

“Um, I think Nathaniel has everything set to come out of his bank account automatically.”

“You’re eight. How do you even know stuff like that?”

“You’re the one who asked me.”

“I suppose I did.”

Owen shrugged, not looking at Zander as he headed to the wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “People don’t think I’m listening most of the time. Or maybe they think I don’t understand.”

Zander had no idea how he knew what he was doing, but Owen carefully selected several black binders, and
tucked them into a large hiking backpack he’d found somewhere in the house.

When he’d finished carefully arranging the binders at the bottom, he looked back up at Zander. “Nathaniel talks
to
me, though. So does William. Maybe they knew I’d need to know this stuff sometime. William said I could come here and use his microscopes and read his books whenever I wanted. And Nathaniel told me if he doesn’t ever come back, that I can keep whatever I want.”

Somehow, Zander didn’t doubt for one second that Owen was telling him the truth.
The little boy was clearly familiar with the house, moving about with ease, and touching whatever he wanted to. Owen wasn’t a child who was usually so comfortable in strange places. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Yeah, I like it here. My mom doesn’t like it so much, waiting around for me, but now that my dad’s home, he’ll bring me sometimes after I finish my homework. He likes the books, too.”

“What does your dad think about all of this?” Zander wondered, realizing he’d never thought much about Jeff’s part in this. He’d still been in Afghanistan when Quinn left.

“
He’s sad. He misses Quinn, but he’s glad she finally knows about Nathaniel and her family. They fought about it a little – he thought my mom should have told her about it a long time ago, and maybe it wouldn’t have happened like this. Quinn wrote him a letter. And he wrote one to her, too. He wants to give it to her when he visits her, but I brought it with me.”