“Were you hoping?”
“Heck, yes. I really didn’t want to drive all that way.”
“Did it ever occur to you to just—I don’t know—maybe talk to me about it? Tell me how miserable you were? I mean, really? Was all of this really necessary?”
Sam looked down at her blanket, picking at nonexistent pills. “I didn’t know what to say. I figured it’d be easier for you in the long run if I just turned out to be impossible … not ungrateful.”
“So you set out to be impossible.”
“Yeah. And I had a good run for a while there. But you’re so damn tolerant, Gabi. It’s frustrating as hell.”
Gabi felt a laugh sputter out. “I’m really sorry.”
“So…” Sam’s face grew serious. “What happens now?”
Gabi took a deep breath. Damn if she knew. “What are you hoping happens now?”
“It’s not obvious?”
“I’m not taking you back to Boston, Sam. I won’t. You deserve a better life than you were living.” Gabi shook her head fiercely. “You can fight me till you’re blue in the face, but I’m not giving up on you.”
Sam raised her eyebrows. “I’m not some sort of pity project, Gabi. You don’t actually get to decide that.”
“Oh, yes I do.”
“No. You really don’t.” Gabi watched a spark come into Sam’s eyes, and she almost backed up in response. “If you won’t let me go back to Boston, then I’ll just keep trying to get there the hard way. You know I will.”
“Stop it, Sam. There are other choices. We can figure this out.”
Sam shook her head. “I’m done figuring. Next time I leave, I just need to make sure I don’t get caught.”
* * *
“Hey.” Luke settled into the Adirondack chair beside Gabriela on the beach later that evening, not missing the defeat in her eyes as he did. “You okay?”
She sighed, her shoulders slumped. “Well, I won’t lie. I’ve had better days.”
“Yeah.” He handed her a beer. “Me, too.”
She looked at him, and he physically felt the pain in her eyes. “Thank you for all you did today.”
“It was a team effort. You should be damn proud of your girls.”
“I am. I don’t think any of them knew they had the … strength they used today. I sure didn’t.”
Luke nodded. “Hard to believe these are the same four girls who could barely stand each other when they got here.”
“I know.”
“How’s Sam doing now?”
“I honestly don’t know how she is. We still have a lot to talk about. Obviously.” Gabriela sighed, pulling her knees up to her chest in that way that made him want to pick her up and comfort her like she’d probably been comforting Sam for the past few hours. Who did comfort her when she needed it?
“How’s—the baby?” He already knew the ankle was good and broken. She’d managed to avoid all of the creatures of the night, and had walked for miles without GPS or any knowledge of the terrain, but eventually, she’d been felled by a stupid rock when she’d jumped over the stream and landed badly. He still couldn’t believe how far she’d walked on it before she’d given up, but he imagined fear and adrenaline had kept her going until she’d found a clearing that had seemed safer than being in the deep woods.
Gabi shook her head miserably. “There’s no baby, Luke.”
“Did she lose it?”
“No. There never was one.”
“But—”
“I know. And believe me, if I could make sense of—anything—right now, I’d have an explanation. But I don’t.” She put her hand to her forehead like she needed to physically hold it up, and again he ached to somehow comfort her, but he sensed an invisible, electric fence between them. “She was hoping … if I believed she was pregnant, I’d have no choice but to tell Pritchard, who’d have no choice but to expel her.”
“That’s pretty extreme.”
“She was desperate. Her pranks hadn’t gotten her booted. Stealing the van and heading off in the middle of the night hadn’t gotten her booted. Her escape had failed. I guess it was the best she could come up with in a pinch. She hates it at Briarwood, Luke. Hates it so badly that she’d rather head back to foster care.” She sighed. “How do you do this?”
“Do … what?”
“Work with kids like her? This is your thing. This is the kind of kid you see all the time. It must break your heart ten times a day. It’s breaking mine ten times an hour here, and I am dying here because I can’t fix her. How … how do you do it?”
He looked at her, stripped completely bare of any armor she’d come with, tears in her eyes and the weight of the world on her shoulders, and he slid the heel of his hand over his chest, disturbed by an actual, physical ache. He felt his eyebrows furrow as he realized it came … from her—from her vulnerability, from her trust, from her belief that he had some sort of wisdom to impart, even at her lowest point.
“I had a little sister.” The words were out before he could run them through his head and be sure he was ready to deliver them, and it shocked him. Only Oliver, Piper, and Noah knew this story, and it had taken him a hell of a long time to tell.
“Had?”
“In foster care. Not by blood, but we were together for almost six years—got moved five different times together. It was as close as I ever came to having a real sibling.”
“What happened?”
He took a deep breath. “Our last place was a crap deal. Got assigned to a house in the suburbs. Three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, garage, the works. When we drove up, I was old enough to know better than to hope it’d work out, but she was blown away by the pool, the dog, her own room. She was sure this was it—that if she was good enough, they’d adopt her.”
He looked at Gabi, who had her thumbnail between her lips, her eyes firmly on him. In her face he read concern, interest … but not pity, and that’s what made him continue.
“Turns out the house made a pretty picture from the outside. It even looked okay when you stepped in. But they were into some really bad shit, and Trina was so desperate to fit in and stay that she fell under the spell of the stuff they were cooking in the basement, and before too long, she was hooked.”
“Oh, Luke.”
“So I did what I knew how to do. I acted out, tried to get us kicked out so I could get her out of there before it got worse. Randall—the father—kept talking about how pretty she was … how sweet … and I knew it was only a matter of time.” Luke felt his hands ball into fists. “We ran once, together, but he found us before we got far enough away, and he promised not to turn us in if Trina behaved.”
He took another breath, the rest of the story hurting worse as it banged to get out of his head.
“I knew what Trina behaving was going to mean, even if she didn’t, but I’d been such a rotten shit for so long that nobody at social services believed a word I said about any of it. I stayed so I could keep an eye on her, but things just kept getting worse. She was losing weight, getting that wild-eyed look, and I knew an OD was on the menu, just as much as the other crap was. Around the same time, Randall figured out I was onto him, and he got me booted. Just me.
“I raged and called my social worker ten times a day, and finally they sent somebody out to investigate, but surprise, surprise, Trina said everything was fine and I was a nut job. By that time she was so hooked there was no way she’d risk cutting off her supplier. So I did the only thing I could think of—I tried to bust into the house in the middle of the night to get her to come with me.”
He stopped, remembering the scene—the pleading, the crying, and eventually, the shouting. Randall had called the police, and Luke had been yanked off the porch in cuffs as Trina’d sobbed. He’d landed in the drunk tank downtown, completely sober, and had been contemplating options for ending it all when Oliver had shown up.
As he told the story, Gabi’s jaw dropped, and he watched her carefully, desperate to know what she
was thinking … desperate to know if she understood. When he finished, he blew out a long breath, staring out at the lake.
“That’s why I’m here, Gabi. And that’s why I’ll never leave willingly. I can’t not do this. I can’t not hope I make enough of a difference for some desperate kid to make this all worthwhile. I couldn’t save Trina, but I can do my damndest to help save somebody else. Or a hell of a lot of somebody elses. I don’t have a choice. And if Briarwood does close us down, then I’ll have to find another way to do it. I’ll just be doing it with Oliver’s entire life on my conscience, because I guarantee you this will kill him.”
“What happened to Trina?” Gabi’s voice was shaky.
Luke steepled his fingers in front of his face, thumbs under his chin. “She OD’d a week later.”
Chapter 32
“Hey, Gabi. How are you doing?” Piper banged through the back door of the dining hall early the next morning carrying three shopping bags stuffed with food, and Gabi immediately felt guilty, because they wouldn’t be here to eat it.
“Jury’s out, I think.” Gabi tried to smile as she helped lift the bags to the counter, but after spending the night flipping and flopping on her cot, her exhaustion was getting the better of her.
Piper peered over the service counter. “Where are the girls?”
“Up in the garden, believe it or not.”
“At seven in the morning? They doing penance for yesterday’s epic getaway-gone-wrong?”
“No. Not really. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s going to be hellishly hot, and weeding’s apparently on the agenda, so they wanted to get done before the sun gets any higher.”
“Wow.” Piper nodded as she started emptying the grocery bags. “That’s kind of … initiative-ish.”
Gabi wrinkled her nose, smiling. “I know.” Then she felt her face grow serious as Piper took three giant trays of eggs out of one bag. “I wish I’d known you were going shopping this morning.”
“Why? Did you need something?”
“No.” She blew out a breath. “I would have told you maybe not to worry about it. I had a long talk with Luke last night, after everything settled back down, and … it looks like I’m going to head back to Briarwood with the girls this afternoon.”
“What?” Piper’s eyebrows flew upward, and Gabi knew she’d better come up with an explanation that made sense before she faced Luke. The truth was, she didn’t know if she had one. As he’d told her about his foster sister last night, she’d been struck not only by the story, but by the purity of purpose that drove him here at Camp Echo.
She didn’t have that.
Well, she’d thought she’d had it—thought she’d been doing her best to change lives, but the events of the past twenty-four hours had her questioning everything.
Everything except one thing.
Being here at camp for any longer was a recipe for disaster. If it wasn’t her girls getting into trouble, it was her heart, and that had left her so distracted that she hadn’t even noticed Sam taking off last night.
She needed to go back to Briarwood and get her head on straight, get the girls back to an environment she understood, even if she didn’t like or respect it all that much at this point.
And maybe, with time—and distance—she’d be able to figure out what to do about Luke.
She took a deep breath. “It seems like the best option right now.”
“Does Luke think it’s the best option?”
Gabi suddenly found a crack in the countertop that needed her attention. “Um, he doesn’t actually … know.”
Piper stopped unpacking bags, instead leaning against the counter and appraising Gabi. “Are you scared they’ll run again? Or someone else, I guess? Guess Sam’s not going too far at this point.”
“Yes and no. I don’t know.” Gabi blew out a breath. “That’s what’s killing me.”
“What’s killing you?” Luke’s voice preceded him into the kitchen. Looking wary, he matched Piper’s pose against the long counter.
Piper raised her eyebrows at Gabi. Are you going to tell him?
“Not sure I know where to start,” Gabi finally replied, feeling like the ultimate coward.
“She was just telling me that they’re leaving today.” Piper turned to open the fridge. “She was wishing I hadn’t gone grocery shopping, because apparently they won’t be eating all of this food.”
Luke was silent for a long moment, appraising Gabi with his arms crossed. Then, “Leaving.” He let the word drop between them, and guilt clawed at her throat.
“I think I forgot something in the car.” Piper grabbed her keys. “Be back in a bit.”
They both watched her go, then Luke turned to Gabi. “What the hell?”
“I … I talked to one of the deans yesterday. Our dorm is done. We can go back. So … I feel like, given everything, that’s what we need to do.”
“Because?”
“Because everything!” She put up her hands. “I mean, seriously! We had to call out mountain rescue on one of my girls, Luke.”
“So you’re going to give up and go back?”
She sighed. “My girls are a walking disaster, and we have turned your lives upside down for three weeks already. I thought we were making progress … was starting to think maybe this hadn’t been such a horrible idea after all … and then Sam. I mean, seriously. I can’t risk them making another plan.”
“So you’ll bring them back to the hallowed halls of Briarwood, where you can keep them safe?”
“Yes.”
“Because there, things like hotwired vans and unlicensed trips to neighboring states never happen?”
“Put your eyebrows back down, all right? I’m well aware of what got us here, but being here didn’t … solve anything. If anything, it just made it all worse.”
“How?”
Gabi felt her eyes go wide. “Have you seen Sam this morning? Air cast? Crutches?”
“That didn’t happen because she was here, Gabi.”
“What can that possibly mean? Of course it happened because she’s here.”
“Why did she take off?”
“Because she hates Briarwood so much that she was willing to risk life, limb, and bears to get expelled, that’s why.”
“So why would you bring her back there?”
“Because I need to figure out what to do—with her, with Eve, with … me. And I can’t do that here.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. Because, idiot. You’re the reason I wasn’t there for her when she got desperate enough to take off. You’re the reason I feel like complete shit about my own skills after watching you make such huge strides with my girls in such a short time. You’re the reason I can’t walk in a straight line, because all I do is look for you.
“We just … can’t be here.”
He nodded slowly. “So let me see if I understand. For the past, what—three years?—you worked your ass off to get a scholarship program approved, despite every board member but one being against it. And although you’d rather have fifty—a hundred—girls there with help, you know you can at least do well by these two.” He paused. “How’m I doing?”
She rolled her eyes.
“So then they come, and you firmly believe they’ll embrace the opportunity, realize what they’ve missed, realize what you’ve given them, and be happy. Grateful, even.”
“I’m not looking for gratitude, Luke.”
He put up a hand. “Not what I meant. You envisioned pulling these two girls out of their hellish situations, setting them up for a better life, and having it work out, right?”
“Well, yes. That was the whole point of the program. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You would. And that’s why, when it doesn’t seem to be working out, you’re sitting here, blaming yourself, wondering what the hell you could have done differently to make it work out.”
“Yes.”
“I hate to tell you, but you can’t.”
“Can�
��t what?”
“Make it work out. You’re not that good.”
She swallowed. “Thanks. Really.”
“Nobody’s that good, Gabi.” He shook his head. “I’m not that good, Oliver’s not that good. Nobody. This isn’t something you can engineer with a handpicked roommate list, or three weeks at a summer camp.”
“Clearly.”
“But four weeks could make all the difference.”
Gabi sighed, shaking her head. “Because that extra week has some sort of special power?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “You never know when the magic will happen, and here’s the thing. We tapped that magic yesterday.”
“We were on a search-and-rescue mission yesterday.” She ground the words out.
“Exactly. And those three girls doing the searching? They weren’t doing it because we assigned them to it. They were doing it because they gave a shit about Sam. They carried her out of the woods on a litter they made themselves because they gave a shit about her. They maneuvered her up the hill to the garden an hour ago because they gave a shit. And they will bring her back down. Because they give. A. Shit.”
Gabi felt her eyebrows furrow as she heard the invisible periods punctuating his sentence. “It was an emergency. They didn’t have a choice. It doesn’t mean any of that will translate once we leave Echo Lake.”
“Wrong.” He shook his head firmly. “It’s exactly the kind of thing that will translate. These four have survived a really unique experience here. It will bond them, whether they like it or not. This summer will be etched into their memory banks forever, and the fact that some really shitty stuff happened isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Trauma bonding is some of the strongest stuff out there.”
“Great.” She laughed bitterly. “I’ve trauma-bonded my crew. The board will be thrilled.”
“They were scared out of their minds, Gabi. But they weren’t scared of you. They weren’t scared of me. They weren’t scared of the elements. They were scared for someone, and I have a feeling that’s not something that happens lightly. Not for any of them.”
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