I rose to follow her out the door, but Penny caught my hand and squeezed it hard enough to hurt.
“Don’t leave me.” His eyes were frantic, and he was panting again. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He’d said as much in the graveyard. In all the time we’d spent together, I hadn’t considered how new this was to him. I’d grown up crisscrossing the province and spending little time anywhere that could be remotely considered a home. I was used to caring for myself and being able to find my way back to Ashpoint no matter where I ended up. I hadn’t had a choice.
Penny hadchosento follow me, and he did so without complaint or question. I was so accustomed to doing everything alone that I forgot how it felt to follow someone who never gave you details about where you were going or what you’d be doing when you got there, to be at the mercy of someone else and reliant on them to get you home safely. Icouldn’t remember the last time I’d trusted anyone that much.
“I’m not going far, Pen.” I cupped his face in my free hand and brushed my thumb across his cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt in its wake.
He calmed slightly, and his eyes flicked between Nora and me. “I don’t want you to go anywhere,” he whispered.
I touched my forehead to his. “Just outside the door. You’ll still be able to see me. Promise.”
When he reluctantly nodded, I kissed the top of his head. His fingers lingered in mine for another moment before he released me, and I followed Nora to the doorway.
In the hall, I was careful to stay in Penny’s line of sight. Nora crowded in, poking at the puffiness around my eyes and tilting my chin back and forth while giving a scrutinizing assessment.
“You two seem close,” she said after completing her examination.
I blinked in surprise. I had anticipated a lecture about wasting my hard-won freedom and stepping right back into my shackles, or a scolding for bringing Penny into the Bone Men, but there was still time for her to bring those things up.
“We are,” I said, feeling a bit of thrill at the admission.
She hummed and reached up to brush an errant curl off my forehead. “Though, he’s not the one I expected to see you with.”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes narrowed as they met mine. “Half a year after you left here with Delmer, another young man stopped in, just like you said he might. Tall, red hair, fresh brand, worried about you. Said you told him about this place.”
My mouth went dry. It had to be Levitt. No one else inAshpoint knew which mission I’d been to, much less would have cared enough to follow me there except to drag me back. But, in all the times we’d spoken since I returned to the cult, he had never mentioned anything about it.
“I was still hesitant to tell him where you’d gone,” Nora continued, “because I didn’t want to chance setting your father after you if the boy went back and shared that information. But you’d seemed so sure your friend would follow you and escape, too… And when I refused to reveal your location, he was distraught. Even got down on his knees to beg me to tell him where to find you.”
She glanced at Penny, who sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. Her mouth twisted in thought a moment before she turned back to me.
“He was desperate to catch up to you and said the same thing you had: that the plan was always to escape together, and the fact that you were caught the first time the two of you tried was his greatest regret. He said that he loved you and never got the chance to tell you.”
A wave of dizziness washed over me. I staggered back to brace myself on the doorframe so I didn’t collapse. Nora’s words echoed in my head until they became deafening, and all I wanted was to press my hands against my ears to make it stop.
Penny called my name, and I barely had the presence of mind to wave him off to keep him from getting out of bed. I wasn’t sure I could handle trying to reassure him while my mind was a violent tangle of disbelief and grief. I couldn’t even quiet myself.
It made no sense. There was no way Levitt loved me. We’d been best friends and told each other everything, but he never said a word about love. Wasn’t that the sort of thing you toldsomeone? He knew almost every awful, vile thing my father had done and made me do, but he kept secret the one thing that might have made my life there less of a living torment.
“What?” I asked, my voice breaking. Maybe I’d misheard her. Maybe she’d misspoken. I would have preferred that be the case.
Nora’s eyes pinched with concern, and she rubbed her hands up and down my arms. The gesture was meant to be comforting, but it only fueled my agitation. My own breaths came in gasps as pressure closed around my chest like a vise.
“You didn’t know?” she asked softly. “I told him where to find you. Even gave him directions.”
For almost a year after I went to live with Delmer, I watched the road to Emberstead, desperate to see Levitt come over the hill. The people in town weren’t nearly as welcoming as the old farmer had been, and I felt so alone. All I’d wanted was someone who understood, who knew me, and who wouldn’t look at me like I was a monster. I could have had that. Levitt knew where to find me, but he never did.
My life could have been so different. I could have had thirteen years of happiness, of closeness and care instead of isolation. If I’d had that, maybe I wouldn’t have always felt so broken.
But Levitt staying away gave me the chance to build something with Penny and, even under the crushing weight of mourning what never was, I wouldn’t trade what we had for anything. He told me I made him happy, and he did the same for me. He was the sun that managed to break through my clouds.
“No,” I told Nora. “He never came.”
She closed both of her hands around one of mine and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Kit. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
