Escape from Eden (37 page)

Gabriel waved me over. I examined him for a moment. He wore simple clothes like mine: a fleecy dark shirt and jeans. He watched me between strands of hair falling over his forehead. The half-moons of gray beneath his eyes could have been a trick of the light, but I knew he was as exhausted and devastated as me. But that familiar beauty of his was still there. The dark hollows beneath his cheekbones, the smudge of his eyelashes, the way a shadow dented his bottom lip. The emptiness that clouded in my chest since arriving at the hospital started to melt away. Adrenaline sang through my veins. I wanted to run to him, but instead, I waved him over to my table.

“Ricci … ” he mouthed.

I slapped my hands on the tabletop, the sound causing a hospital employee to turn, and I stood. I took my time making my way around the chairs to the other side of the room. His eyes, lit with a sleepy kind of danger, tracked my progress, causing my skin to heat. He hadn’t bothered to come see me during the past few days, but I hadn’t bothered to seek him out, either.

“You summoned me?” I asked and folded my arms across my chest.

“If it were only that easy,” he said and pulled out the chair next to him. “Will you please sit down? You’re making me nervous just standing there.”

“I’m making you nervous?”

“Even outside of Edenton miracles happen. Sit.”

I plopped down in the chair, my arms still crossed.

“They wouldn’t let me come see you,” he said. “We can’t go into the women’s wing of the hospital.”

I felt a tiny bit elated. He did try. “Really?”

“Yeah, and if you’d bothered to try to come see me, you’d know you can’t come into the men’s wing either. Unless you couldn’t come see me for some other reason. Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “It’s just weird being here. And not in Edenton.”

“Better, though, right? Not being in Edenton?”

I smiled. “Yeah, better.” I shifted in my seat, a little closer to him. “Are you okay?”

He waved me off. “Sure, you know, still emotionally rattled but no one knows trauma like me. I layer traumatic event over traumatic event, and they start canceling each other out.”

“Mia!” Max called and ran up to the table. “I got you chocolate pudding.”

He slid a bowl in front of me. He held a second bowl in his hand, spoon shoved into the pudding, ready to eat. I thanked him, but he’d already started shoveling pudding in his face. Mama approached with a tray. She moved the pudding aside and placed the bowl on the table.

“Gabriel.” She smiled in greeting.

“Hi,” Gabriel said with uncharacteristic shyness.

“Mia, please eat. Max and I are going to the recreation room to play some games. Join us there after—” She flicked her gaze between Gabriel and me. “After the two of you talk.”

“Sure,” I said.

Mama kissed me on the top of my head and left with Max in tow, pudding and all.

Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. “My dad said the network didn’t find Thaddeus.”

A familiar fear chilled my spine. “Of course he had an escape planned. He seemed to have everything planned.”

“Except you kneeing him in the nuts. He didn’t see that coming.” Gabriel reached a finger out and stroked the skin on my hand. “You were incredible. Through all of it, you know that?”

I watched his finger trace a pattern of little circles, shocked by the feel of it, and said, “You were, too. I didn’t expect you to come back to Edenton after we escaped.”

“I didn’t expect to, either. But I had a lot to come back for.”

“Your parents?”

“Yeah, them, too.” His hand gently squeezed mine and then he drew it away. He took in a big breath. “So.”

I poked at the salad on my plate. “I guess you’re headed back to New York after they release us.” My heart felt as small as a stone in my chest.

A tiny line appeared between his brows. “Um, maybe.”

“You said that’s where you belong.”

“I have to tell you … ” He stopped, shook his head once. “No, I
want
to tell you something. Something I’ve never told anyone.”

I leaned in a bit closer, throwing a glance over my shoulder at the cafeteria workers cleaning up the dinner tables. “Okay,” I said.

“A few years after Griffin died, I found a note he left for me.”

“A few years after he died?”

“Yeah. He died when I was eight, and I found it when I was thirteen. I’m sure it was kind of a joke on me, too.” He shrugged. “He hid it in a book on the bookshelves in my room, and I wasn’t the most voracious reader.”

I tilted my head. “Was it hidden in the Bible?”

“Jesus Christ, no. Why would I have a Bible in my room?” He lowered his chin and stared at me. “You know me better than that, Ricci.”

“I was kidding. I do know you better than that.”

Gabriel’s lips curved up. “Good. Well, it was hidden in
The Stand
, by Stephen King. Ever heard of it?”

“No,” I said, a little embarrassed. “We weren’t allowed to have secular books in the house when I was young.”

“Oh,” he said, and looked like he wanted to say
I’m sorry
. “My dad,” he continued, “used to get me entire series of books. I had hundreds in my room, even though all the books I read for school were on my phone. I think he hoped they would keep me company because he couldn’t–or wouldn’t. Spine after spine of titles stared at me, begging me to read them. I would pull them down and look at the covers. Decide if I wanted to read them on my phone.”

“Wait,” I said. “You actually judged books by their covers?”

“Idioms are idioms for a reason,” he said with a shrug. “That’s what I was doing when the note fell out. Staring at the two figures on the cover—one in white with a sword, the other in darker colors with a sickle.” He paused and studied a scratch on the wooden surface of the table. “I remember wondering
why a sickle?
when the note slipped out from between the pages.”

I asked the question cautiously and slowly. “Was it a suicide note?”

“Not really. A message maybe? It was dated the day Griffin died and scrawled in his twisted handwriting, like his fingers were all cramped.”

“Are you sure it was from him?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. The handwriting was his but it was just a little … different. Rushed, maybe? I sat on the floor of my room right in front of the bookshelves and read it over and over until I’d memorized it.”

He intertwined his fingers in front of him on the table, not looking at me but at some spot alongside the table. Quietly, almost reverently, he recited the words:

He paused and smiled again, but this time it was only a facsimile of a smile. “Not as cheery as, say, a Hallmark card,” he said, “or a bomb threat.”

I felt a slow burn of anger in my chest. How could someone do that to a little kid? Then I thought of the Reverend, of Thaddeus, and what they’d done to two hundred people.

“Their indifference? Does that mean your parents?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Griffin had, you know, problems.” I pointed to my temple. “He wasn’t right in the head.”

“We can say that, sure. But I ended up hurting everyone I cared about, everyone I loved, because of him.” He leaned against the wall. “Mia, I know it was because of him, but I can’t just forget what that note said. It fucking scarred me. I’d suffered this unbelievable trauma. I went through a trial, hours and hours of therapy, lost all my friends, occasionally lost my parents—even Miss Beverly didn’t come back to take care of me after that. We couldn’t get a nanny for months after Griffin died because none of them wanted to be near me. They were all afraid.”

He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Right before I found the note, things were getting a little better, you know? My parents tried to be with me, as much as they could. I was back in school. I was making friends. I started playing baseball again … ” He took in a deep breath. “Then I found it. And I realized he was right—”

“No—”

“Let me talk, Mia.” He sounded terse, impatient.

I tucked myself back into my chair, folding my arms over my chest protectively. “Okay.”

Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut, wincing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You need to know—” He stopped. “Let me talk for a minute. If I don’t say it now, I never will.”

I nodded.

“I like it when you obey, Ricci.”

I gave him a squinty scowl.

“Teasing. Sorry.” He shifted in his seat and his face drifted closer to mine. “I believed what he told me in that note, that if I cared for someone, I’d be responsible for the bad things that happened to that person. Like what happened to Griffin, like what happened to my parents’ relationship—before and after he died. Griffin told me that when I was born they began drifting apart, living separate lives.”

I felt my face redden with exasperation. “How could you believe anything he told you?”

“How could anyone in Edenton believe anything the Reverend told them? You believe the people you love and trust—blind love is still love.”

I couldn’t disagree.

Gabriel said, “After I found the note I said screw it and gave up on the therapy and became what Griffin was—a player, a guy I hated being, but I wouldn’t let myself care about anyone or anything. Because I believed every word of that note. I believed for years. I believed it when I came to Edenton. I believed it until—”

He stopped and glanced around the cafeteria. I followed his gaze and saw one of the workers watching us intently. Her hands were stacked on the top of her broom handle, and she let out an impatient sigh.

“Come on.” Gabriel seized my hand and yanked me to my feet.

At the end of the room was a small door. He tugged me to it and we snuck through. I didn’t notice if anyone saw us. I didn’t really care. Outside was a hallway, dark and barely lit with brass wall sconces. It was different here than in the parts of the hospital I’d seen before. It smelled of lemon wax and dust. The tiled floor led away in a series of black-and-white patterned diamonds.

Gabriel scanned up and down the long corridor.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” He craned his neck and spotted something down the hall. “This way,” he said, dragging me along.

I shot a quick look over my shoulder. There was no one around. No one had followed us from the cafeteria. The hallway was eerily quiet, only hollow knocking sounds came from the radiators interspersed down the corridor.

Gabriel pushed open a folding door. Above the door a sign read “Telephone” in blue letters. He shoved me inside the narrow wooden box. The backs of my knees met with a little corner bench. Gabriel stepped in front of me, so close our bodies touched from chest to legs. He closed the door behind him. A small, dim light above us popped on.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. My insides fluttered.

“I came back for you,” he said.

“You came back for me? When?”

“Remember when you were standing in that torn green dress and Veronica was prepping you to go back into Edenton?”

I nodded.

“I stood in the doorway of that room and thought,
she’s goddamn fearless
.”

I laughed. “I was scared to death!”

“Fearless, and strong. I came back into Edenton because I hoped you were fearless enough to be with me.”

“Be with you?”

Gently, he took my face in his hands. “You know what, Mia Ricci?”

I smiled up at him, surprised. But I couldn’t blot out the bubbling happiness in my chest. “What?”

A mischievous light lit his eyes, reminding me of that first night I’d met him in the kitchen, the night he stole my knife. The night he changed everything.

He brought his lips to mine and whispered, “I’m so happy you’re not my sister.” And he kissed me.

First, it’s crazy that I’m writing acknowledgements for a novel I wrote. Crazypants crazy. This book couldn’t have been written without the advice and support from the following people:

Brent Canfield, my voice of reason, my best friend, and B$ husband (thanks for loving me when I had scary, unwashed writer hair).

My parents, German and Mary Nader, who love and support me, even when they think my ideas are weird.

My sister, Susan Nader, who hung out with the monster so I could write.

My sister, Carolyn Nader, who would have loved this book.

My brilliant crit partner, Nina Berry, who deleted the darlings when I was too afraid to do it myself.

My unshakable agent, Danielle Chiotti, who deleted the darlings Nina did not.

My BFF Kami Greene, who has read almost everything I’ve ever written, including all the dirty fan fiction in high school.

My parents-in-law, Jane and Tom Canfield, who were enthusiastic about everything, from the writing process to the book cover.

The “Edenton” Beta Readers: Erin Bush, Suzanne Lago, Marjorie Lee, Sue McCarthy, Claudia Osmond, Lori Parsons, Milissa Tarquini, Kim White, and Juliet White.

The team at Merit Press, particularly Jackie Mitchard, Meredith O’Hayre, Skye Alexander, and Sylvia McArdle.

And Cici, the sun in my little universe.