The sadness in her voice when she says those words makes my chest tighten even more. If she’s constantly moving, it doesn’t sound like that’s by her own choice, or if it is, it isn’t necessarily because she wants to, but more like she feels like she needs to.
“I’m the opposite. I’ve spent my whole life here.” I pull my hand out of my pocket and spread it out as we reach the end of Main Street. Pausing, I turn and look back at downtown McBride Mountain. “It’s always been home, this town and the mountain itself, but sometimes, I can’t help but wonder what’s beyond it.”
She glances back and looks at everything, the dark mountain towering up behind the quaint street lined with small shops. “I don’t know why you’d want to leave when you have a place like this.”
Because she doesn’t know who I really am or what really happened here.
To anyone else, this place probably feels ethereal. It exists in a bubble of sorts, where the outside world rarely enters and everything is predictable and understood. That bubble burst for me, though, and I don’t know how to get it back.
I shrug as we return to walking toward Elaine’s. “I don’t know that I want to leave. I’m just curious, I guess.”
If going somewhere else would end these nightmares and visions…
If leaving McBride Mountain might quash the agony I’ve lived with wondering what I’ll become because of this poisoned blood flowing through my veins…
Lucky peeks at me again. “So, why don’t you go somewhere?”
I chuckle. “Well, my brothers and I own a lumber company here. We have a lot of really big contracts, and we’re the largest employer in the area.”
“And they couldn’t handle it without you?”
I think about that for a moment, but I don’t really need to. The answer is yes, they could. When Killian took so much time off to try to figure out what happened to Willow, then to be with her and their son, Connor and I held everything down just fine.
“They might be able to, but I’d feel guilty about leaving them, abandoning the business and everything my mom built for us.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.” I smile thinking about the woman who did so much for so many people, especially me. “Killian’s father died when he was really young, and Connie raised him by herself as well as took over his family’s business. Then she took in Connor when he was two. And I was left on her doorstep as a baby.”
“Left on the doorstep?”
There I go again, dropping information I never had any intention of giving her because around Lucky I’m just more open, more relaxed. I feel more like the person I was before I knew about Earl Byers.
“It’s a long story…”
One I definitely don’t plan on telling her, but thankfully, she seems to sense that I don’t want to talk about it and doesn’t push.
Elaine’s house comes into view, and we slowly make our way toward it in a comfortable silence, nothing but the chirping crickets and the occasional call of a night bird filling the air.
It is peaceful.
It’s home.
I never really could leave McBride Mountain.
I love this too much.
Even if it does hold the darker realities that haunt me at night.
LUCKY
Walking up the stairs to the small apartment above Elaine’s garage, I can’t help but feel every step Liam takes behind me as strongly as I hear them. Heavy boots thud on each tread, matching the rhythm of my heart beating in my chest.
Somehow, completely in tune with him.
Because I understand him so much better now after a five-minute walk than I think I have most people I knew for years.
The way he talks about his family, about how much love there is between people who aren’t even related, makes so much sense to me because that’s how I always felt about my foster brothers and sisters in the various homes I spent time in.
