by Lisa Beeson
Ari winked with a small smile as she gently ushered him through the portal.
As soon as he walked through, he heard a familiar voice say, “There’s my man. Pluckier than ever.”
Soren turned his head with an excited gasp, to see Cam smiling and dressed like one of the Big Man’s men. He looked like a grown up soldier. “Cam!” Soren shouted as he ran to his friend.
Cam scooped him up and hugged him close. “You are the bravest kid ever, you know that?”
“I’m not brave,” Soren said, looking down and fiddling with the Velcro on Cam’s black vest. “I was scared the whole time.”
“Me too, buddy,” Cam admitted. “Ever since you, Val, and Ari left, I’ve been scared.
Soren looked up to see if he was serious. How could someone as big and strong as Cam be scared?
At Soren’s doubtful scowl, Cam switched Soren’s weight to one arm, used his free hand to cross his heart, and then raised his out-turned palm to swear it. “Scouts honor.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “But you know what?”
Soren shook his head, playing along.
“That’s the only time when someone can be brave. It doesn’t count if you’re not scared.”
Soren thought it over, and decided that it made sense. Maybe he really was brave…
“But what do I know?” Cam said with a shrug. “I’m just the prettiest princess in all the land,” he said in a high girly voice, making Soren burst out laughing at the inside joke. It felt good to laugh. It made all the ugly things disappear for one blissful moment.
“You ready to go home to your sister?” Cam asked.
Finally…
Soren nodded vehemently. “More than anything.”
Chapter 29
Cotton Candy hues streaked across the sky as the sun began its decent towards the tree line. Val soaked in its beauty as she made her way towards the little cemetery on the hill – towards her sister.
Alvaro had said that he had seen Skylar run off that way, and Noah said that she liked to visit Enzo’s grave sometimes.
A shiver ran down Val’s spine that prickled her skin as she walked up the hill. The last place she wanted to be was in a cemetery after everything she’d just been through – after everything she’d done.
She had a feeling that the phantoms of those she killed would follow her for the rest of her life – a life that had been given a reprieve, a second chance. Making the best of it, she couldn’t help the pull she felt to talk to Skylar. Diana deserved to be remembered for the person she really was and Skylar deserved the truth about her mother.
Cresting the hill, Val slowed. The weathered gravestones were as conspicuous as billboards, reminding her how easily she could have been buried in some unmarked grave, forgotten.
Shaking off the thought, her eye locked onto the crying little girl, curled into herself behind the sweeping veil of the weeping willow tree.
There was so much she needed to say, but the only thing that came out was, “Hey.”
Skylar’s head popped up from her knees as she swiped at her nose and sniffed, her dirty face streaked with tears. “Hey,” she replied in a ghost of a whisper.
Searching for the right words, Val’s eye darted to the gum wrappers stuck in the little girl’s hair and the array of random trinkets scattered around her.
Skylar noticed the direction of her gaze and answered helpfully, “I think the crows are trying to cheer me up.”
As if on cue, a big black bird landed on one of the branches and dropped something onto Skylar’s head, accompanied by a loud abrasive caw that jangled Val’s nerves. The small, green plastic soldier, frozen in the act of looking through his binoculars, got caught in the tangled wavy mess of Skylar’s hair.
…You and your sister got that from my mother, Henry’s voice echoed in Val’s mind.
Violently shaking the thought away, Val covered up the action by waving her arms to shoo away the big black bird, which seemed to be looking at her a bit too keenly with its weird silver eyes. It gave her the creeps. “Go away!” Val shouted, and the peculiar bird finally got the hint and flew off with the sound of mocking laughter.
Val looked back down at Skylar, who seem to be giving her the same keen look. Val knew she looked crazy wearing Ellie’s bright, trendy clothes – which were definitely not her style, but the only things that fit – and sporting a shaved head, and an eyepatch that Jamie said used to be her brother Adam’s from an old basketball injury.
“Why would throwing trash on you cheer you up?” Val asked, humoring the little girl’s imagination to take the focus off herself.
Skylar looked down at the stuff littered around her. “It’s not trash,” she said defensively, making Val wince in regret. This was not going as smoothly as she had hoped. She always managed to say the exact wrong thing.
“They think that they’re treasures,” Skylar explained. “They like to help me find treasures for Enzo’s grave.” She looked back up to Val’s face, taking in all the changes.
Val looked over to the new brass grave marker on the ground, cluttered with dead weeds and random garbage. Val didn’t understand it, but it seemed to make Skylar feel better so she guessed it didn’t matter.
“I like your eye patch,” Skylar said. “It makes you look like a pirate. But how come you’re covering up your new robot eye? Don’t you like it?”
“No,” Val growled, fighting off phantom waves of rage for her tormenters. Seeing the shock, and then her pain echoed in Skylar’s eyes, Val quickly clarified, “Joshua said that he’d make me a better one that looks more natural.”
“They hurt you bad, didn’t they?” Skylar asked, her face crumbling with sympathetic pain.
Val thought about lying to spare her, but she could see that Skylar already knew the truth, so she nodded.
“Then Jean-Baptiste saved you…”
“In a way,” Val said thoughtfully. “I mean, he healed me and brought me here. But in a way, I saved myself…”
“Did you see Soren? Was he with you?” Skylar asked in a small quavering voice.
“He wasn’t in the same place I was,” Val assured her. “He was kept somewhere else. They didn’t treat him like they treated me. I saw him on a video feed before I… before I got here. And he looked fine.”
“They hurt Soren too,” Skylar said with a hitch of breath. “I felt it just before they told us you and Jean-Baptiste were here.”
Fighting a pang of survivors guilt, Val sat down on Skylar’s left, so she could still see her with her good eye. Her little sister was hurting, but she had no idea how to comfort her. Val was never the touchy-feely type, so she let their knees touch as a concession, letting Skylar know she was there for her.
“Jean-Baptiste said that Ari and Adam are there on the island right now,” Val said to her. “And that they are going to bring Soren and the others here at any moment.”
Skylar tore at the grass with her grimy hands. “Why didn’t Jean-Baptiste bring him here when he brought you? They wouldn’t have been able to hurt him if he’d done that.”
Val wanted to tell her a good reason that would make everything all right, but she didn’t have one. “I don’t know why he didn’t,” she said honestly. “Life never makes sense the way you want it to. You just have to do the best with what you have. And right now…” she took a bracing breath, “right now what you have is me. I know it’s not what you want, but it’s all I can offer. And just so you know, I’ll always be there for you. You will never have to feel alone.” Val was surprised by the fierce sense of protectiveness she felt for Skylar. The little girl was still innocent and pure and Val would fight like a banshee to help her stay that way for as long as possible.
I’ll protect your babies, Diana.
Skylar looked over at her with that keen look in her eyes that she’d had before, as if she didn’t recognize Val anymore.
“Are you crying?” she asked in awe.
Val quickly wiped the tears from her face
. “I’m not crying, you’re crying,” she accused jokingly.
Skylar chuckled, then scowled in thought. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Val’s heart twinged with remorse and shame. Skylar was right to be confused. Val had never been what would be considered “nice” to the twins. She had barely given them the time of day, when she wasn’t getting them to do things for her.
Because now that I know that you’re my sister everything is different, she wanted to tell her. But in order to do that, she’d have to take away Trent and saddle Skylar with Henry Marlowe as her father. Val would never do that to the poor girl. She would never take away her full connection to Soren. He was her twin, and if Val had anything to do with it, he would stay that way. Trent was her dad, in every sense that mattered. Like Diana had said, the twins were there’s.
So instead, Val took a deep breath and tapped into her tiny, malformed sense of humility. The feeling was foreign and hard to get used to, like a wool sweater that was two sizes too small. But she’d do it for her little sister. She would do it for Diana.
“I’m sorry for not being nicer to you before. And I’m sorry for making you and Soren steal from George for me. I shouldn’t have done that. It was selfish and wrong.”
Skylar’s brows shot up as she blinked in shock, then she nodded in understanding. “It’s okay. You didn’t make us do it. And we already made amends with George for it a while ago. He said that he forgave us, and that he had a feeling that it was either you or Enzo taking the plants. And as long as neither of you got in trouble for it from Gordon, he didn’t mind so much.”
“I knew it.” Val grinned in satisfaction. “George is good people.” Her eye glanced back over to the brass grave marker. “Hold up, Old Enzo used it too?”
Skylar nodded. “He put it in his pipe. It was stinky, but he said it helped him relax and made his aches and pains go away.”
“I always thought he was just some weird old creeper, but I guess he was pretty cool,” Val said with a touch of admiration. “So you guys were friends?”
“Uh huh,” Skylar said, while looking towards Enzo’s grave through the binoculars that had been hanging around her neck. “Soren told me to stay with him before you guys got took-taken, and so I did. Enzo was nice to me and told me stories, and he protected me when the bad guys tried to take me.” She dropped her hands, letting the little binoculars fall back against her chest. “That’s why I bring him treasures every day. To tell him thank you, and to let him know that I’ll never forget him. It’s the worst thing ever to be forgotten.” Another sob hitched in her chest as her bottom lip quivered.
It tore at Val’s heart. She knew exactly what Skylar meant, but she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to make it better. She placed her hand on Skylar’s knee and gave it a quick squeeze before letting go.
“Do you think Mommy and Daddy forgot about me and Soren?” Skylar asked, her big blue eyes shiny with tears. “Is that why they never came back to us?”
“No,” Val insisted, as she took Skylar’s little hand in hers. “I know they loved you very much and wanted to come back to you. But the bad guys wouldn’t let them. They locked them up and they…,” the words bottlenecked in her throat and she couldn’t get them out. How could she tell this little girl that her parents had been murdered?
“They’re dead…” Skylar said in a small voice. “Aren’t they?”
Val nodded, confused how she knew. “Your mom fought them for as long and as hard as she could though. She died trying to help her friends and me. She gave everything just to get back to you and Soren… to protect you. The bad memories you have of your parents are lies the Reinholds put into your brains. Your parents loved you with all their hearts. Diana was a good, brave person who fought for what was right even if it meant sacrificing herself.”
Skylar hung her head, letting her hair cover her face as tears fell into the grass. After a moment, she sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand, then looked back over at Val. “You knew my mommy?”
Val nodded, making the tears spill from her eyes. “She used her ability, even though They put something in our necks that hurt us when we did, just to let me know that I wasn’t alone – that I wasn’t forgotten. She told me that she used to watch over me when I was little, to make sure I was okay. She was always there, even if I didn’t know it. She was like the big sister I never knew I had. She let me know I was loved.” Val met Skylar’s eyes. “And she made me promise to watch over you and Soren, so that’s what I’m going to do. I will always be there for you.”
“Like a big sister?” Skylar asked with a small smile and hope brimming in her eyes.
Val nodded as a chuckle escaped her chest. “Exactly like that.”
Skylar surged toward Val and wrapped her arms around her neck. “Thank you,” she whispered in Val’s ear.
Val tensed, then relaxed and held her baby sister close as she began rocking back and forth. The binoculars hanging from her neck were painfully pressed between them, but Val didn’t care. She will never have to wonder if she is loved. I promise, Diana.
“I’ll be there for you too, Val. Forever and always.”
Val clenched Skylar tighter as love overfilled her heart and turned into sobs of joy and release.
When Val calmed, Skylar let go and sat back on her heals. “I like your knew haircut. Your head’s got a nice shape. It’s not all lumpy like some people.”
Val smirked as her hand went up to rub the stubble on her scalp. “Uh, thanks,” she said with a chuckle, at the strange complement. She was glad that Hugo had used his clippers to make it all even.
Skylar started picking out the bits of paper and gum wrappers in her hair. “I want to shave my head like you. My hair’s too crazy and annoying.”
Val reached over to untangle the green army man out of the hair on the top of her head. “That might not be a bad idea,” she admitted, noticing all the knots and tangles. “And if anyone gives you a hard time about it, just tell me, and I’ll set them straight.”
The Army man finally became free, and Val held it out to the little girl.
“Thanks, Val,” Skylar said with a grin as she took the toy. She looked it over for a second, noticing it had binoculars just like her. She smiled, searching the branches and the sky for her bird friends. Then she crawled over to where a small marble cube stuck up from the ground by the roots of the willow, and placed the toy on top of it. “Here you go, Baby Lennox,” she whispered.
Just as Val was about to ask who Baby Lennox was, they heard commotion down by the farmhouse.
Skylar scrambled up and pushed through the willow branches as she brought the binoculars up to her eyes. She gasped, and Val scrambled up herself to see what was going on.
A huge man carrying an unconscious woman in his arms, followed by some black-ops soldier pushing big metal carts full of containers were coming through what looked like a hole in the fabric of reality.
Is that what it looked like when Jean-Baptiste and I got here?
“It looks like Cam’s friends, the ones that went to go save you and Soren,” Skylar said, still looking through her binoculars. “I wonder what’s on the big cart thingies. Look, there’s Myles!”
Val squinted with her good eye, which wasn’t that good with distances to begin with, as she watched the people from the farm come and greet the newcomers. Once all the soldier-looking people came through, some thin people in familiar bubblegum pink jumpsuits came through.
Diana’s friends…
“Hey, can I use your binoculars for sec?”
Skylar hesitated for only a moment, before lifting the strap from around her neck and handed them over.
“Thanks.” Val brought them up and looked through with her good eye, as Skylar bounced nervously from foot to foot. She was just in time to see Hugo and Joshua run from inspecting the contents of the metal carts towards the jumpsuit group, yelling something excitedly. They collided with the young black man, and the three of them he
ld onto each other, smiling and crying. Hugo pulled back, to look him over. The guy looked a lot like Joshua. Hugo kissed his forehead and wrapped him in his arms again.
The rest of the people at Paradise Glades greeted the others, everyone shaking hands and introducing each other. Cass and Jean-Baptiste led the big man with the woman in his arms towards the back door of the farmhouse, ushering him quickly inside. Then she saw Marin meekly exit the portal, looking around uncertainly and hanging her head.
Skylar stopped bouncing just as the others froze, all of them looking back and forth between Marin and George. The tall, skinny white dude from the jumpsuit group and a girl that looked like a younger, prettier version of Marin, closed ranks around her and said something to the crowd. Then the Joshua look-a-like said something too and everyone looked back at Marin.
“I wonder what they’re saying,” Skylar said as she started bouncing again.
Whatever it was, it made George walk towards Marin. She was crying as he came closer, and it looked like she was saying something like, “I’m sorry” and “I love you so much.”
He stood in front of her for a moment, still as a statue. He had his back towards Val, so she couldn’t see his face. The tall guy said something, then the younger girl, as if they were explaining something to him.
George hung his head then closed the distance between him and Marin. He lifted his head just as Marin jumped into his embrace. They held onto each other, then pulled back to give each other a long deep kiss.
Everyone began backing away awkwardly to give them some space. Then the soldiers, one of the jumpsuit group, and what was left of the science crew, started pushing the carts towards the stables. The others were led towards the lavish spread on the picnic tables they had prepared earlier. Someone turned on the back porch lights and the strings of outdoor lights strung over the long branches of a nearby tree hanging over the tables.
Skylar’s bouncing became more frantic as she started to whimper. “Where is he…? Where’s Cam, Ari, and Adam?”
“The portal’s still open,” Val assured her. “They’re coming.”
