Flutter (22 page)

“Thanks,” I told her.
Heartbroken. And she didn’t even know the half of it
. “You’ve been a big help.”

I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to go about trying to find Ash. I didn’t know what to do about the church, about my mystery in the loop.

“Thank you,” I told Sylvia, “but I think I’m done in for today.”

“We’ll be here, should you want to come back,” she answered.

I grabbed a hot dog and a Coke from a nearby deli and waited at the bus station for the next bus back to Esperanza.

I sat on the wooden bench in the small waiting room, my backpack at my feet, and I slouched down and ate my hot dog, sipped my Coke. I kicked at the dirty and sticky tiled floor. I was drained, exhausted. But the food and drink helped to perk me up a bit.

It was then that I noticed a man dressed in a dark suit, leaning against the wall, near the vending machines. A woman with a small child waited on the bench across
from me, reading picture books. They didn’t seem to give this man any notice. Neither did the clerk behind the ticket window. He sort of blended into the background. Yet, when I took the time to turn and glance at him, he seemed to be staring at me.

I got goose bumps on my arms. But then I talked myself down a bit. I mean, it was just a guy. A slightly suspicious-looking guy.

Charlevoix was a fairly big town. Could Dad be monitoring each of the larger suburban public transportation depots? Did he know I was in the area? Did the NSA? I considered this. It seemed far-fetched. But this guy was wearing dark sunglasses. And it was really overcast today. At the moment, it was sleeting outside, gray and gloomy.

I could feel my heartbeat pick up a bit.
Calm down
, I told myself.
They’re just sunglasses
.

My bus pulled in, number eighteen, and I stood up, my knees knocking a little. I boarded the bus, watching my ticket shake as I handed it over to the driver.

My stomach lurched right into my throat when I saw the dark-suit guy get onto the bus behind me.

I was trapped. Found. Caught. Freaked.

I couldn’t really explain how I was suddenly so sure he was following me. I just was.

I moved to the very last seat, and I put in my iPod headphones, slouched down very low, and tried to look nonchalant, tried to look unsuspecting.

I watched Dark Suit walk down the aisle of the bus, his sunglasses off now. And he looked straight at me. There was no denying it. For a moment, I thought he was going to come right back and pull me up out of my seat by my ear and take me back to Dad, but he didn’t. He just sat down, three seats ahead of me.

I noticed he had a small Bluetooth in his ear now. And he was talking into it.

As the bus got going and we started up Route 31, I calmed my breathing, tried desperately to get a grip. Could this guy really be here for me?

I thought about what Gia had said. CIA haircuts. I didn’t know what a CIA or an NSA haircut looked like, but I was willing to bet it looked something like this guy’s. I thought about her text. I took my cell phone out of my pocket. Still no response. That had to mean something. I decided I would ditch it, leave the phone here on the bus.

How was I going to get away from this guy? I flew over the possibilities in my mind. And I made a decision. I had come too far just to give in and be caught, just to be a helpless victim again. I calmly thought out exactly what I needed to do, and I made a plan.

I hunkered down low in my seat, kicked my feet across the empty seats next to me, and feigned sleep. Inside, my stomach swirled, my heartbeat pounded, my palms sweated. But I had to make this look believable.

After what seemed like a decade, the bus slowed to a
stop near Good Hart, and I figured that this town was as good as any other. I kept myself still and resisted the urge to steal a glance, as the bus brakes squeaked and ground to a halt.

At the very last moment, after the five standing passengers had already left, I hopped up from my faux slumber and quickly, quietly took three large steps toward the back automatic door, sliding down the steps and out the door, onto the sidewalk.

I immediately took off running when I hit the sidewalk. I turned my head for just a second once I found my gait, to see if Dark Suit had seen me leave, to see if he was after me, to see if he’d noticed.

It was difficult to tell as I glanced over my shoulder at the bus windows. Maybe it had been my imagination. But the breath quickened in my throat when I saw the silhouette of a figure, a figure that looked a lot like the dark-suit guy, standing up, looking out the back window as the bus took off. I kept going down the sidewalk at a good clip then and turned into a small coffee shop. I immediately sat down, getting my bearings, looking over my shoulder the whole time. Did that really just happen? Was that guy really after me? Or was I simply becoming a paranoid nut?

I wiped the sweat from my brow and shook my head. What had just happened?

It was easier to tell myself that it was nothing—my imagination, the projection of my own fears—now that I was no
longer in Dark Suit’s presence. But what was the truth? I didn’t know.

And if Dad had sent him, if this man was after me, did he know I was going to Esperanza now? Was my hideaway spoiled? I wanted to get in touch with Gia, to make sure she was fine, but I didn’t want to risk it, and I didn’t want to put her in the middle of it all any more than I already had.

I used the coffee shop telephone to call a cab. It would be expensive, definitely. But I had money.

I didn’t have much else. But I did have money.

When I arrived back in Esperanza, I was shaken, disoriented, still unsure if I could believe what had most likely happened.

I stopped in at Betsy’s, hoping that Jeannette would know something. I leaned on the glass counter, feeling the exhaustion wash over me. I gripped the edge of the counter with both hands and fought the urge to just rest my head on the cool glass for a moment. I blinked my eyes, felt the thrum and buzz of the loop beginning to swirl behind my eyes.

“Hi, Jeannette,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, trying to sound normal.

I wanted to hear something, anything, about Ash. But no one had seen him. Not a soul. He had just disappeared.

“I never thought he was here for good,” Jeannette said.

“Why’s that?” I said, knowing I was doing a lousy job at covering my heartbreak. I pushed back the thrum, fought against it.

She seemed to consider this for a moment. “He showed up here several months ago, Emery. I hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. His mom, Dolly, she and I had been great friends. But his dad … There’s a lot of history there. Dolly and I broke contact over that man. But when I saw Ash’s face, standing at my doorstep, I knew instantly who he was. He looks just like her.” Her eyes held a far-off expression. She shook her head, went back to rolling dough for her famous pasties.

“He’s had it tough” was all she’d say. I could tell she felt as if she had said too much. Inside, I was panicking, frantic. I didn’t know what to do with myself, didn’t know how to go about trying to find Ash.

I couldn’t even think of leaving Esperanza without knowing where he was.

Jeannette pushed a pink-frosted donut over the counter to me. “You’ll still come to the anniversary party, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I said, pushing against a new swell of the loop, resisting it. “Is there something you need help with, anything?”

“You could watch the kids for me so Jimmy and I could get everything ready. The kids wouldn’t be underfoot then.”

“Consider it done,” I said. I swallowed hard, steadied myself, holding on to the pastry display case. I had won; the thrum abated. For now.

I arrived at the Wingings’ later that night, still looking over my shoulder constantly yet trying to talk myself out of the worst-case scenario.

I let Lily Winging paint my nails while I babysat. Lily chatted nonstop about Ash, how she had a picture of him up in her room, what his favorite color was, how he had taken her fly-fishing. I plastered a smile onto my face and watched the clock above the TV slowly tick, finding it difficult to keep my spirits up.

I checked that all the doors were locked in the house, the vision of the dark-suit guy in the back of my mind at all times. My ears pricked up at the slightest sounds. I expected, what? Sirens? I shook my head, tried to tell myself it was all my imagination, paranoia.

After my nails were a fabulous shade of purple, I found Garrett and Cody in the kitchen spraying a can of whipped cream into each other’s mouths, and I just let them finish it off. I didn’t have it in me to do much else.

I sat with the kids in the family room and watched an episode of
Scooby-Doo
, braiding Lily’s hair for her, and my eyes kept finding their way over to the computer that sat on a desk in the corner.

“Lily?” I asked. “You don’t think your parents would mind if I used the computer? Checked my email?”

Lily shook her head and turned back to her Magic Tree House book. I tied her braid with a pink ribbon and got up. I sat down at the monitor and wiggled the mouse, taking a deep breath.

When I logged in to my email, I saw that there were lots of messages from Dad, none from Gia. I counted the
ones from Dad—twenty-nine messages since the last time I checked. I opened a few at random, and they were mainly accusatory in tone. The farther down I went, the more desperate, the more violent, they began to sound.

I know where you are, Emery
, read one from three days ago.
I will find you. We will get you back here
.

Earlier, at Dala Cabin, I had constantly been checking out the window, expecting Dark Suit to appear from nowhere, cart me back to Dad. I had talked myself out of it for a while, but now, after this email, I knew there was no talking myself out of it. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, but Dad was near. Coming. I sighed deeply. I realized then that I had to stop hoping and waiting for Dad to turn into the future version of Dad, the kind Dad of my loops who would never, ever do this to me.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

And that was when I noticed the most recent email, from yesterday. In the subject line was one word:
apology
.

Two lines of text, and it hit me in my core. It was horrible and honest and real. Dad knew he would never be able to let
me lead a normal life, he would always need me in the lab. For scientific reasons, for parental reasons.

He understood why I had to run. He just couldn’t
let
me.

And that was the problem, the essence, of what was between us, because I too understood why he couldn’t let me go. I just had to go.

As I sat there in the Wingings’ family room, surrounded by the familiar theme song to
Scooby-Doo
, I realized that this conundrum was probably at the center of all the worst problems in life, all the real problems. The ones that you could solve for yourself, but in turn, you couldn’t solve for others. Or if you solved them for others, for the ones you loved, you couldn’t solve them for yourself.

“Are you okay, Emery?” Cody asked. He had come over from the TV then and had his hand on my shoulder.

I quickly closed up my email and tried to raise the corners of my mouth, tried to find a smile.

“Yes! Oh, I’m fine,” I told him, giving his belly a tickle, but he looked at me for a moment, and then he jumped into my lap and kissed me on the cheek.

I felt this kindness, this moment, deep down, and it took all I had to bury a sob inside me. I pushed back the emotion that the email from Dad had brought to the surface—the betrayal, the guilt, the sting of the reality coming down on me from all sides.

I glanced at the time. Seven o’clock. I slipped into the
bathroom, changed quickly into my only good dress, the cream sweater dress from my last night with Ash, which only made me feel worse, as if that was possible. I swiped on some lip gloss, pulled my hair into a quick knot.

“We should go!” I told the kids when I was finished, trying to sound chipper. I then helped the kids into their fancy shoes, their dress coats, and we walked over to the round barn together, Cody holding my hand the whole time. Dress shoes or no dress shoes, Garrett, of course, jumped into three piles of snow in the two hundred yards that we had to walk, but I couldn’t blame him. The snow looked fluffy and smooth, like cotton candy.

“You look so pretty, Emery,” Lily told me as we walked up to the barn.

“So do you,” I told her, giving her hand a squeeze.

The barn had been transformed. The whole place was covered in winter white—white Christmas lights and tulle bunting hung from the rafters. White chairs and tables sat upon a newly laid, white-tiled dance floor. White lacy tablecloths and golden Christmas-tree centerpieces sat upon the tables, with white and gold balloons forming a canopy over the dance floor. There was even a five-piece band setting up their instruments on a raised platform, a makeshift stage. The party was no small feat. I even found myself smiling a bit as the kids ran up to their parents, giving them hugs and kisses.

My eyes scanned the barn, desperately hoping for a glimpse of that certain line of Ash’s shoulders. I saw Daisy, the others from the diner, that odd Mr. McGarry, the ladies from Betsy’s, everyone from the town, really. But no Ash.

“Thank you,” Jeannette told me as I gave her a hug. Her hair was expertly done, a few well-placed bobby pins keeping it from her face. She looked radiant.

“Congratulations,” I told them. “You have pulled off a beautiful party here.”

Jeannette leaned close in toward me, whispered in my ear. I didn’t hear her exactly. I heard the word
dad
, and then it sounded something like “phone call for Ash.”

“Oh” was all I could manage. But before I could ask any questions or really process that, Jeannette was pulled away by what must have been Mrs. Crane, a thin, waiflike old lady with beautiful blue eyes and a mass of pearls at her neck.