“You did?” He didn’t stop his stroking.
“I did. I even asked the girls what ghosts they were carrying. I thought about my ghosts.”
He sighed. “I was so afraid you were going to be one of my ghosts. We couldn’t find you anywhere. Like the world had swallowed you up. I couldn’t… never mind. What were your ghosts?”
“My family. Your family. Parts of my life. ThePoor Relation. Pretty much everything. I wasn’t going to go back to New York. I can’t let my family near me again. When I turned eighteen I was going to vanish. And I thought… maybe I would reach out as soon as I was safe at some point to see if you had all moved on or you might like to see me again sometime. Somewhere else.”
His voice was low. “Oh, Alatheia, we will never move on. We would still be looking.”
My eyes closed.
There was only so muchI could do in the room. Days later I could stand. I could walk. I could shower. I could eat. And I was going stir crazy.
Phoenix arrived to replace an exhausted Julian. I didn’t think he was sleeping even when I wasn’t with him, but he stared at me with a smirk. “It’s pretty bad once you start to feel better. Come on. You’re not locked in. Let’s walk to a place I found.”
A place he found? “How long were you here?”
Phoenix handed me some slippers and, when I’d put them on, placed his arm around me, drawing me to him. He was… calmer. Less jittery than I had ever known him. Not to mentionhe actually seemed to be present mentally when he was with me. His eyes really dove into me, like he saw me very clearly all the time. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I did know that he was attentive beyond what I could have imagined.
“I was in your room. The same one. For a week. Before they moved me to elsewhere in the hospital. This is detox. That next place is ‘okay, let’s tackle the addiction.’ They’ll be moving you soon, too.”
I squeezed his waist. “What made you finally decide to do it?”
“What made me finally decide?” He actually sounded confused. “Really? I got my girlfriend arrested. She was sent off and we couldn’t find her, and we find everyone. Vanished. It was my fault. I had to get clean. There was no other way. Clean or dead. That was it.”
Dead? “Don’t say that.”
“Well, I preferred clean. So I am. Every day. It’s new. I have no answers about it in any way that makes any sense. Not yet anyway. But, I’m here. You got yourself rescued and we are going to get you feeling better.”
I’d been avoiding questions. Jer had given me quite a lot to ponder. But maybe it was time to push a little harder. There was only so much I could handle at one time. Processing was slow.
“How did I get myself rescued? You came and got me.”
We came to a stop in a room with a view with a lake. I gasped. “Is this thelake?” I deliberately emphasized the word.
“This is the lake. Granny thought you would know it from where you were in the journals. This is the good lake.” He rolled his eyes. “I hate placing that kind of value on things. But there it is. The other lake is the problem, where my family who may have kidnapped me and killed people still live. We’re avoiding them. Most of them don’t come here.”
Most? It dawned on me. “That nurse?”
“The mean one? Yes. Distant cousin. Very distant. But this one is ours. Or where we come from. On my fathers’ side.” He motioned for me to sit, and he sat next to me. “You rescued yourself because you left that message, which only you could have left, and I traced the comment to the island you were on. Then, Kit found out there was a fucked-up school there, which we knew nothing about and showed up on no research, so your family dug deep to find the worst place ever. Getting you out wasn’t hard because you don’t belong to your family anymore. So we were able to convince your paternal grandmother to let us get you out and take care of you for a while. Stephen sweetened the deal with the island by making it financially better to simply shut down. It took two weeks. Two of the longest weeks during the longest time.”
I put my head on his shoulder. “I’ve lost all time.”
“Yeah. I bet.” He strung our fingers together. “Ask me. You have questions. Jeremy told you days ago about your dad’s family. Ask. You’re brave enough to ask. You always have been.”
I swallowed. “Who are they? Where have they been?” Something niggled in the back of my mind. I knew something, didn’t I? My mother had said something? Or maybe I had dreamed it. What was it? I couldn’t remember.
“You’ll never believe it, but actually Kit had started to suspect before you were taken because he’d started to look into your mom and who she hung out with. Alatheia, your real last name is Monk.”
I sat up. “What?”
He nodded. “Monk.”
“As in Murial Monk?” She had been my frenemy for a little bit in that she scared the shit out of me but also was kind of nice to me at the same time.
“Yep. Your first cousin.” He shook his head. “She’s ecstatic.”
