“He left without saying anything, without even waking me up.”
The anguish in Jack’s voice makes my heart ache. While I understand why Mort involved Jack, I dearly wish he hadn’t, that my best friend was tucked safely back in Seattle. Then again, depending on how all this ends, even that might not keep him safe.
“I don’t like what’s going on,” Jack says. “We should leave. I know you said you couldn’t, but things are different now.”
I’m sitting up, nodding like I agree with him. He’s crouching next to the bed, field gear on, umbrella strapped cross-body.
“I think Mort hid your umbrella, or maybe took her.” He touches the handle of his own umbrella, and it shudders. “We’ve spent the last half an hour searching.”
“You won’t find her.”
She is in stealth mode, that’s all I can tell; it’s the safest thing for her and me. No one will think to use her to find me. No one will think to deactivate her permanently, either.
“Let me get changed,” I say.
“So, you’ll go?”
The hope in Jack’s voice nearly crushes me, but I nod. Since the only light in the room filters in from the hallway, I hope it’s convincing. I palm my mother’s letter, slip from bed, and ease into the closet, shutting the door behind me.
Back against the door, I ease the letter from its envelope. One last time. I can read her words, let them soak in and flow through my veins. I can read her words and know, absolutely, that rule seven on her last list is true.
Always know that you are loved.
My mother did everything in her power not only to tell me that but also to make certain I’d live as well.
Chapter 83
Rose
King’s End, Minnesota
Tuesday, May 29 (five years ago)
My Darling Girl,
Every summer, while you’re still at the Academy, I write one letter I never mail to you. I tuck it into the false bottom of the memory box and vow not to look at it again. Invariably, the following summer, I do, only to watch it disintegrate into so much ash.
This is your last year and my last chance. Through the front window, I can see my destiny rumble down the road. That backhoe in particular looks ominous. I’ve done all I could to warn King’s End. Sadly, it wasn’t enough.
By now, I hope you understand why that is, and why I couldn’t sit you down and explain what happened three decades ago between myself, Harry Darnelle, and that third agent. How your mother—unwittingly, it’s true—helped unleash a curse on King’s End and the world and then barely had the capacity to contain it.
The weight of that can’t compare to this: I must ask my own daughter to risk her life to fix the mistake I made.
I will never forgive myself for that.
I imagine you have questions, any number of which I can’t answer directly. I will do my best to point the way, to guide you through this journey fraught with ambition, avarice, and malice. For yes, I was ambitious, as was Harry. We were greedy for a different world, a better one. Perhaps we were arrogant as well, believing ourselves the ones who could bring that about.
As for that malice? I’d like to think neither of us brought that into the equation.
It’s perhaps not the most pressing question, but I suspect it’s one you have. Yes, I was deeply in love with Harry Darnelle. If Henry is anything like his father—and I imagine he is—oh, my dear girl, you may be in for it. Darnelle men have an undeniable charm.
As for your father? Ah, your father. Combative and prickly, fiercely loyal, and, in short, a born curmudgeon. And yet, there’s no one I’d rather spend eternity with. Indeed, I’ll have an eternity to convince him of that.
Given half a chance, your father would have upended the Enclave. Let’s be real. He would’ve destroyed it and brought forces from his dimension to do so. That, however, wouldn’t solve the issue in King’s End. What was put into motion must be completed. With each passing year, the hunger for that completion grows. Fortunately, the instigator in all this—yes, I’m choosing my words carefully and not naming names—doesn’t know what you are.
You are the key to everything.
Do you remember the willow tree and that ill-fated picnic with Daniel? That was a trial run. Strange as it seems, that was the Sight, preparing you, arming you for the events to come. I don’t know if you’ve visited the willow since then. I wouldn’t blame you for avoiding it. I have, however, returning there after you left for the Academy that summer.
