Authors: Kat Zhang
Echoes of Us (23 page)
Instead, after a long silence, she said, “We’re going to have to leave Brindt anyway. Do you trust this man?”
“You’ve told me I’m too trusting.” I looked down at the card still clutched in our hand. “I
want
to trust him. I want to trust him so badly, I don’t know if I can trust my own judgment.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
I told her. Within twenty minutes, she’d pulled up next to us, Marion in the front seat, Jackson and Lissa in back. Everyone was already packed. They’d checked out of our rooms at the hotel. No matter what, we were all leaving Brindt tonight.
The only question was: Would we be leaving with Logan?
Logan’s apartment was a sparse, dingy place he’d rented from a friend. Dr. Lyanne wanted to know everything—how long ago he’d met up with our parents. Why he was interested in helping. Where he wanted to take us.
Logan answered our questions patiently, one by one. He’d first come into contact with our family about a month and a half ago, when they stayed at the same safe house. He wasn’t hybrid himself—didn’t even have any close family that was hybrid—but he didn’t think that was a prerequisite for believing our mistreatment was wrong. He wanted to take us to a small town about two hours north of the nation’s capital. Our family was there, hidden away.
“If we start driving now,” he said, “we can reach them by tomorrow noon.”
The thought was so dizzying it pushed everything else from our mind.
Logan agreed to allow us some time to think things over. But Addie and I were almost trembling from the thought of seeing our family again. Everyone knew the final decision had to be ours.
“I want to go,” I said finally, quietly. “It doesn’t mean you need to all come—if it isn’t safe—”
“We’re coming,” Lissa said.
And so the decision was made.
A little later, when the others were gathered in the living room, poring over a map and discussing driving routes, Nina took me aside, down the hallway, and said, “Ty and me are going to go find our family. So we won’t be going with you.”
The night’s events had left her solemn, but steady. Eleven years old, and she’d already been stolen from home, cast from society, betrayed multiple times over. It was little wonder that sometimes, she and Kitty preferred to just shut away the thoughts that caused them pain.
I fought the urge to grab her and never let go. “The government’s going to be looking for you—”
“The government’s been looking for me for a long time,” Nina said. Her fingers fiddled with a lock of hair, then were still again. “They might be looking for me for—for I don’t know how much longer.”
We did.
“Make sure Ty follows through on that promise to teach you the guitar,” I said softly.
She laughed. Her eyes lost a little of their grimness. “I will.”
I bumped our shoulder against hers, and she laughed louder. I already missed her so fiercely I had to swallow down tears. This wasn’t going to be the usual kind of parting. Not like when a friend moved away, and we’d exchange addresses and phone numbers, and promise to call. I couldn’t be sure where she’d end up. If she was safe. If I’d ever be able to find her again, after all this was over.
If all this was ever over.
This was good-bye without a safety net.
“Eva?” Jackson said. He’d appeared in the mouth of the hallway. “You ready to leave?”
He hadn’t spoken much since arriving with Dr. Lyanne, and his features were strangely wooden. He looked very alone, standing there in the doorframe.
“I’m ready,” I said, and he nodded, turning to go.
Addie said softly.
This time, I tried to withdraw from control as Addie reached out to take it. At first, I couldn’t even do it—it was like shoving against a rubber film that kept bouncing me back.
But slowly, ever so slowly, our body’s reins shifted.
We—Addie—wavered.
Took a step.
Another.
Our limbs crumpled. Addie shouted as we fell.
“Eva!” Nina and Jackson cried in tandem.
I was back in control by the time Jackson caught us. The others rushed in from the living room, Ryan pushing ahead to reach our side.
“I’m fine,” I said, wincing. Jackson set us back on our feet. “I tripped, that’s all.”
“Is it your ankle?” Ryan said. He and Dr. Lyanne had often said we’d started putting weight on it too early. “Did it give out?”
Jackson just stared at us. Addie was silent, her anxiety flapping around in our chest.
I shook our head. Tried a smile. “No. Just me being clumsy.”
My smile grew at the ring of her silent laughter.
Even if everything else fell down around our ears, crumbled through our fingers—Addie and I would be all right with each other. That was no small thing.
W
e drove and drove, chasing Logan’s taillights. The sun climbed the pale winter sky. Sitting in the backseat, Addie and I practiced shifting control between us while the others slept. It got easier over the hours, Addie gaining strength with each attempt. There had been little time, since her return, to focus on anything but the chaos of the outside world. The long drive gave Addie and me time to focus on each other, and ourselves.
For two weeks, I had lost Addie, but Addie had lost the world.
By the time Logan pulled up in front of an enormous, beautiful house, it was high noon.
I knew her worry stemmed from the fear we’d gained like a callous over the last year—that good things were always taken away from us. That even if we repeated forever Jackson’s mantra of
keep hope
, each of our hopes would eventually fall skewered to the dirt.
We were both nervous, of course. But at least our parents had spent the weeks and months and years before our hospitalization knowing Addie existed.
They hadn’t spoken with me since I was twelve years old.
But I would be the one in control when we saw our parents again.
A part of me wondered if they would notice.
Ryan stood next to us as we climbed from the car. Everyone was quiet, even Marion, who kept eyeing us when she thought we weren’t watching. The trees edging the walk were bare, skeletal things, fragile in the cold.
Logan rang the doorbell. We waited forever and a millennium and a day. Then the door opened.
Mom with her corn-silk hair, pale skin, and unfaded freckles. She looked just as we remembered her.
“Addie!” she said.
And that hurt.
It shouldn’t have. Or should have hurt less, because I should have been prepared. I’d thought I was, but I wasn’t.
It hurt, deep to the core of me, that my mother could not recognize me.
I didn’t say anything. Mom was making strangled, gasping noises that were the precursors to tears, her face crumpling, and I thought,
Please, please don’t cry
. I’d always hated to see our mother cry. Hated to know it was so often me who caused it.
She threw her arms around us. Hesitantly, I hugged her back. With only one arm at first, because our other hand was interlocked with Ryan’s, gripping on to him for dear life. Then, slowly, our fingers slipped from his. I wrapped both arms around Mom’s shoulders and closed our eyes and tried not to think about how small she felt in our arms.
“Addie?” a boy’s voice said.
Our eyes snapped open again. Saw, over Mom’s shoulder, the little boy with the mop of yellow hair and the uncertainty in his eyes.
I faltered. Mom gestured at Ryan and the others. Her eyes didn’t seem to want to leave Addie and me, but she spoke to them, said, “Come in. It’s cold out.”
We’d heard her say something similar so many times. To houseguests. To family friends. To Addie’s classmates who came over for school projects.
Lyle slipped away, back down the hall. Away from us.
One of the strangest things in the world was looking at my own mother and feeling like we were strangers. Knowing she was avoiding our eyes. That she felt guilty because of something she’d done to us—and it wasn’t something small, something casually forgotten. It was a decision that had cast us apart for more than half a year, and changed all our lives. Nothing would ever be the same.
Part of me was gratified that she felt guilty. Part of me felt guilty for wanting her guilt.
All of me just wanted her to look at me. Acknowledge me.
Call me Eva, instead of Addie.
“Your dad’s out, but he’ll be back soon,” she said, leading us through the hallway. She glanced at Ryan. Had she spoken with the Mullans at all in the months since our simultaneous abduction? Had the loss of their children brought them together? Or driven them apart the same way Addie had avoided Hally at school for years, afraid to draw even more unwanted attention?
“Are you hungry?” Mom said. “They’ve just set out lunch.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I’ll eat,” Dr. Lyanne said, and eyed the others until they all mumbled something about eating as well. Mom pointed them to the kitchen.
But even Ryan, who usually read me so well, left with the others with only a slight smile and nod of his head.
“Do you want to shower?” Mom asked. “You’ve been on the road all day—”
“I don’t need to shower,” I said.
She nodded.
“Did Lyle get the transplant?” I blurted. It was the only thing of importance I could think of saying that wasn’t
Look at me. Say my name. Please.
Mom faltered, then nodded. Her eyes finally met ours. “He’s doing a lot better. He has to take immunosuppressants, of course, but it’s better than the dialysis.
Addie
—”
The
Addie
was because I’d started to cry.
Even through the blur of my tears, I saw the way Mom’s throat jumped. “Addie . . .”
“I’m going to go find him.” My words stumbled over one another in their rush to get out. I dashed our hand over our eyes. The tears, thank God, stopped. “Lyle—I want to talk with him.”
I hurried down the hall before Mom could say anything to stop me.
I wasn’t sure if she wanted to.
F
inding Lyle was easier said than done. The house had looked huge enough from the outside, but I’d been too distracted to really take it in. Walking through it now, Addie and I got the full effect of its ornate scope, the walls hung with paintings and photographs, the rooms airy. There was more than enough room for an eleven-year-old boy to hide.
Like they could never fix us.
It wasn’t fair to say. Or to think.
The night Mr. Conivent came to take Addie and me away, he’d threatened our parents with denying Lyle the dialysis sessions he needed. Then bribed them with getting him bumped up the transplant list.
I leaned against the wall, closing our eyes for a moment. My emotions were so tangled I was helpless to decipher anything.
Addie and I found evidence of guests everywhere. The bedrooms were filled with suitcases, the office floor covered in sleeping bags. The bathroom bore the marks of being shared by too many people. Towels hung everywhere. Tubes of toothpaste lolled about the sink, next to a myriad of brightly colored toothbrushes. Some woman’s underwear had fallen behind the toilet.
Judging from the photographs, the house belonged to a family of five—a couple a little older than our parents, and three college-aged children. Were they here now? Why had they chosen to open their home to strangers?
We’d almost given up looking for Lyle when a woman poked her head out of a bedroom and said, “Addie, right? Your family’s staying in that room at the end.”
The door at the end of the hall was shut. I knocked the short, staccato pattern Addie had always used before entering Lyle’s room.
“Yeah?” came our brother’s voice, and I opened the door slowly.
Lyle sat on a bed, a worn paperback in hand. “Oh,” he said when he saw us. He turned back to his book. His eyes weren’t moving, though, just staring at the same stretch of text for far too long.
“Which one is that?” I asked. Lyle held up the book so we could see the cover. I recognized it from his shelf back home. “You’ve read that one at least ten times, haven’t you?”
Lyle shrugged, still not looking at us.
“Aren’t there any other kids here?” I said.
“Not anymore.”
“Mom said you don’t have to go to dialysis anymore.” I smiled. “That’s pretty cool.”
Finally, Lyle looked up from his book. He shrugged again. For a long moment, neither of us moved or spoke. I didn’t know how to cross this gulf that had sprung up between us and our little brother.