Some Quiet Place (26 page)

I remember him. Everything. I remember his smile, his pensive tones, the way his eyes twinkled, every moment of every day we spent together.

His words, his companionship, his love—gone. All of it, gone.

My brother. My twin. I sink into a black hole of despair.

“Landon.”

Twenty-Four

I stand in the middle of Elizabeth’s room.

I gaze at the walls, the mural I’ll never finish. Green everywhere, trees and light and mystery. My eyes fall on me and Landon. I take in the silent anguish, my arms embracing death. It’s the thousandth time I’ve seen the image—through flashes of memory, through dreams—but now it means more. So much more. That was the moment I denied the blood running through my veins. What was the point of being Life if I couldn’t use it to bring my brother back?

Something wet falls to the wooden floor, the sound like a crash all around me. I look down, see the drop of water. I touch my cheek. I’m crying.

That’s when I realize I’m no longer alone. Someone stands behind me, someone with gentle fingers as they rest on my shoulder. I turn and meet Sorrow’s bottomless eyes. He doesn’t say a word, and as always, he’s crying, too. There’s nothing to say. We grieve together for a few moments before the Emotion fades into nothing, leaving his essence as a token. As the salty taste in my mouth.

It’s being in this room. It’s thinking of him. It’s Sorrow’s brief presence. But suddenly I can hear his voice—something I’ve done everything to avoid—in my head, warm and alive.

Just you and me, Rebecca. We’ll be travelers. We’ll see everything and no one will tell us what to do.

A sob hitches in my throat. Wanting to block it all out, I bend over, picking up a bucket of green paint by my feet. I hurl it at the wall. It splatters everywhere, ruining the mural and bleeding across the floor. It’s not enough. I pick up another bucket, throwing it at the next wall. The bucket cracks at the force of the impact. But the paint simply drips down the wall—not enough, not enough. I collapse against the wet paint, screaming, rubbing it with my hands, spreading it over me, the trees, and the shadow that is Landon.

“This is the last place I expected you to go.”

The woman stands behind me. In another lifetime, my mother considered her a good friend. She’s proved to be more than worthy. She helped me run, she created the illusion, she tried to protect me when Nightmare found me a second time. This woman, with her cryptic warnings and ever-present pain. I should have known who she was, even when I was Elizabeth. It’s so obvious, so simple.

“Leave me alone, Denial,” I whisper.

She glowers. Trembling, I just lie there against the wall, paint dripping down the side of my face and staining my hands. The sensations coursing through my veins are overwhelming.

Denial watches me. “It’ll take some time to adjust to,” she says, waving her hand at me dismissively. “Now, back to the matter at hand.”

I barely hear her. After the illusion broke, I fled Joshua and the barn and all the Emotions. This was the first place I could think of to go. So far, Charles has yet to make an appearance.

Denial only endures my silence for a minute before she grows impatient. She smashes the stillness. “Your time for mourning is done. I told you, Rebecca. You’re strong enough to—”

“I haven’t even
started
to mourn!” I hiss, pushing myself up, clenching my fists. Even now, I’m still trying to hold on to Denial’s essence, to the nothingness that’s desperately gone now. I want to balk at all of this, refuse to accept it. I want the oblivion back!

I take a step away from Denial and collide into a warm chest—Anger. “Nice to see you again,” he murmurs, and I can see that he actually means it. Smiling with a trace of smugness, he reaches out and takes hold of my shoulder. The fury is devastating, and the ever-present pain makes tears spring to my eyes. Finished with me, the Emotion vanishes. I turn this new wrath onto Denial. I feel my eyes burning, but she isn’t afraid; she just glares back.

“And whose fault is that?” she challenges. “I did what you asked. I did the illusion. I hid you here. It’s time for you to grow up and face reality again.”

I whirl away. “You agreed to my terms, Denial. You shouldn’t have tampered with any of this. You should have
let me be
.”

“Don’t you dare turn this around on me. I saved your life—Nightmare would have eaten you for breakfast if I hadn’t come back to warn you.”

My fist slams against the wall of its own accord, and the plaster crumbles. I shake my head, my wild hair sticking to my skin. Now I’m a sniveling hole of regret. “You shouldn’t have let me do this. You shouldn’t have—”

“You remember that day, Rebecca. You were desolate. No, that’s not strong enough. You acted like you were dead, too. You asked me to take away the pain. You asked me to change who you were. Not to mention that he was still looking for you. This is the result we
both
came up with.”

I just keep shaking my head. Ignoring me, Denial app-roaches the nightstand beside Elizabeth’s bed. She studies a picture there of her and her brother. “It was so simple. I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out. The only tricky part was coming back every so often to alter the illusion so you appeared older. Couldn’t have you looking like a little girl forever. And you clung to the lie so hard that you never even sensed me.”

I straighten, glaring at Denial through my tears. I can taste a blob of paint on my lip, and green hair hangs in my eyes. “What do you want from me? Your part in this is finished. The illusion is broken. I remember. You can go.”

Denial doesn’t soften. “I care about you, despite what a pain in my ass you’ve been the last thirteen years. I’ll leave when I’m sure you’re not going to slit your wrists. And I won’t let you sit around and wallow. You either continue your existence here or start anew somewhere else. Your choice.”

“That’s no choice,” I retort, but the words are weak.

She sighs, but I’m not done. There’s something that’s been haunting me, and I can’t let it go. “Just tell me one more thing,” I whisper, briefly closing my eyes as if my eyelids alone can keep away all the shadows and the mistakes. “If … if I’d broken the illusion sooner, if I’d gotten my powers back … could I have saved Maggie?”

Pity blooms in Denial’s gaze, and I hate that. But she doesn’t mince words. “Probably. There isn’t much you can’t bring back with a touch. But, Rebecca … I’d guess that you just being there prolonged her life. You gave her more time, even with the illusion intact.”

It isn’t enough. I hate that word.
Probably
. I turn my back on her, wishing so hard that none of this had ever happened, that I could destroy all the
probably
s, that I could go back in time and save Landon, tell Fear that I loved him too, stop my mom from leaving that day. But maybe she didn’t leave … maybe my father forced her away, and by the time she escaped him, got back, we were already—

The reflection in the mirror next to the door catches my eye, and I freeze.

If I needed anything else to prove that I’m really not Elizabeth anymore, the face staring back at me would be it. The girl gaping in the glass is someone I haven’t seen in a long, long time. She’s so different from Elizabeth Caldwell. Her cheekbones are high, her brown eyes slightly slanted. Her skin is paler, her hair so dark it could be called black. It tumbles over her back in exotic, uncontrollable
curls. Her nose is slightly upturned, and her lips are full, pouty. Her collarbone is so delicate it looks like it could be snapped with one blow of a fist. When I raise my hand, the girl in the mirror raises her hand, too. Her fingernails are round, oval-shaped, and there, there is the one thing that reveals that she was once upon a time a girl who worked in a barn, hauled rocks from a field, withstood the abuse of a man who reeked of alcohol: there is dirt under those nails.

And one random thought that shouldn’t even occur to me in the wake of remembering my twin’s death:
what will Fear think?

Shuddering, experiencing so many things I feel like my skin is going to expand, I turn back to Denial. She’s studying the mural with something akin to sadness in her eyes. She almost seems … drained. Her gaze lands on what was once Landon before I ruined him, and now real sorrow does bloom in her expression. How could I have forgotten? She loved him, too. Many times I would catch the end of a lingering glance between Denial and my twin. Whether something ever came of those looks I’ll never know, but I do know there won’t be anything more.

I swallow. I look back at the destroyed mural, this room that no longer belongs to me. Never belonged to me, really. There’s nothing here for me anymore. All I’m leaving is emptiness, and memories that should never have been mine.

I turn my back to it all. “I know what I want to do.”

There’s a note for Charles on his bed. Three sentences, one farewell:
I’m going back to where it started. Thank you for saving me. You were the one who made me believe in humanity.

There’s a suitcase in the passenger seat of Elizabeth’s truck, stuffed with her clothes—which don’t quite fit me now, since she was taller than I am—and I have a new destination. There’s a map in my lap, and the route to Gig Harbor, Washington, is highlighted. Where I’ll find the stone house I grew up in, where Mom cooked breakfast every morning, where Landon and I were homeschooled, where we grew into our Elements.

It’s raining again. There’s been a steady downpour ever since the illusion broke. Trees speed by. It’s easier to focus on them than on the reflection staring back at me from the glass. After thirteen years I’ve grown used to the blond hair and blue eyes. These dark curls and brown irises are disconcerting, to say the least. No one would recognize me now—not Maggie, not even Joshua.

Joshua. I swallow, trying to shove down the feeling that swells up. He served his purpose.
You will need that boy in the end.
Joshua needed to love me, so that one Emotion could break through my defenses. In the end it wasn’t death or terror that shattered them. It was someone else’s love. How poetic.

It takes me a day and a half to get there. Since I’d never left Gig Harbor before Nightmare came, I don’t recognize the signs or the landmarks. But I follow the directions I got from Google Maps, and as soon as I take a right onto the last dirt road, I know. That’s the driveway, up ahead. I’m here. This is the place. There’s a mailbox in the ditch, no name on the side of it since Mom was always paranoid about someone finding us.

She turned out to be right.

The clouds have broken up just a little, enough that a few rays of sun touch the ground in sporadic splotches. I’m stiff, holding my breath as if I’m about to drive off the cliff into the ocean. Nothing yet … just the woods on either side and the overgrown road. No one has been back here in a long, long time. It feels like it’s all been waiting for someone.

Waiting for me. I roll down the window and let the humid air in. Smelling like salt and wind, it toys with my curls as I listen to the sound of the gravel under the car. The crunch of rocks and dirt makes me think of Elizabeth’s life in Edson. All that’s missing is a slamming screen door …

The house comes into view.

It’s lonely. It’s old. No one has bothered to chop away the tangle of vines climbing up its side. The shingles are rotting and falling off. One of the windows is broken, and the front door is wide open. It’s different and it’s the same.

My head feels light, too light, and I remember that I’m holding my breath. I let it out in an audible
whoosh
. So many memories, so much pain. I can almost hear Landon’s voice, reading aloud, or Mom’s gentle tenor as she firmly instructs us to sit at the table and work on our math for an hour.

I expected to feel … happy, maybe. Or at least whole. But all I feel is empty. After everything, after all the years and the pain and the pretending, I expected more.

It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that I’m finally home.

Everything is still here. Landon’s textbooks, Mom’s cookbooks. I found one of my old sundresses in a drawer—the one I was wearing in all the dreams. I remember Mom hugging me once when I had it on. Her scent has long since faded from the material, but I haven’t taken it off since discovering it, despite the cold. I like to pretend I can still smell a hint of her lavender shampoo.

I drift through the long grasses and trees of the woods that Landon and I loved. Since our father never took an interest in us—we were two among dozens he’s probably fathered, since Life can’t be contained—we used this place to feel closer to him. His presence is palpable here. He didn’t play a domestic role for us, but the trees emanate his very essence. Not that I care anymore, now that I see the truth for what it is. He slept with my mom and abandoned her. Moved on. Left us. He has to know we exist. His blood runs through our veins. But even when Landon was dying, when I was dying, the only one Life apparently cared enough to save was our mother.

There was one person who did save me, though, every single time without fail. And
I
abandoned
him
. I know that’s why he’s staying away. He thinks I don’t want him. When I became Elizabeth and left Fear in another lifetime, it was the ultimate betrayal. And how ironic that he fell in love with her. Does he hold any feelings for Rebecca, anymore? Or has my deceit obliterated any remnants of that love? Thinking of him adds to the pain, and I’m already confronting too much, so I avoid any more thoughts or memories.

Once, all I wanted to do was sing, dance, celebrate always and mourn never, but now I am consumed by what I have lost. Is Mom looking for me? Will she ever come back here? I try to imagine her somewhere else, leading an existence without me or Landon. She had no illusion to help her endure. Does she think I’m dead, too?

Sometimes I wonder if I could find comfort if I were to return to the niche with Charles. Memories are so easily erased, patterns simple to find again. But then I imagine Tim’s red, swollen face, feel the rage of his fists and hear the slur of his words. I remember Sarah’s trapped pain, the guilt that constantly consumed her. I think of Maggie, my only friend. I contemplate Joshua and what could have been. I relive Charles turning his gaze away when he noticed a new bruise on my cheek. And I know I don’t want to go back. Not really.