Canes of Divergence
The Dusk Gate Chronicles,
Book Six
by Breeana Puttroff
Canes of Divergence
Book Six of The Dusk Gate Chronicles
Copyright © 2013 Breeana Puttroff
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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without the prior permission in writing of the publisher or the author,
nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
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condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
7.15.13
For inquires, please contact the author at [email protected]
Visit my website: www.BreeanaPuttroff.net
Cover Design created by Mallory Rock
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Published by Thirteen Pages Press
P.O. Box 350944
Westminster, CO 80035
Table of Contents
1 Empty Chair
2 Samuel
3 Princess Annie
4 Problems
5 Abigail
6 In the Rose Garden
7 No Choice
8 William
9 Owen’s Dream
10 Thorns
11 Owen’s Strange Request
12 Linnea
13 The River
14 Coins
15 Surprise
16 The Clinic
17 Stuck
18 History
19 Bloom
20 Ben
21 Quinn
22 Crumple
23 Horses
24 The Tent
25 Charlotte
26 Exposed
27 Dinner
28 The Letter
29 A Trip
30 Mia
31 Earned
32 Weeds
33 Going Home
34 Firelight
35 Answers
36 Welcome
Epilogue
~ 1 ~
Empty Chair
Bristlecone, Colorado
“YO, CUNNINGHAM. Are you coming?”
“What?” Zander looked up, confused for a second. His friend Adam Lamos was staring at him impatiently.
“Uh, lunch?”
“Oh.” He glanced around, becoming aware of his surroundings again. Everyone was packing up their things. He hadn’t even heard the bell, but the clock read 12:00.
“What are you working on, anyway?” Adam asked, eyeing Zander’s notebook.
Snapping the black-and-white cover closed, he shoved the notebook in his backpack. “Nothing. Just an extra-credit assignment.”
“Dude, it’s almost the end of senior year – you’ve already been accepted into, what? Four colleges? It’s cruise time. Didn’t you get the memo?”
Yes, Zander had gotten the memo – about a thousand times. Adam – like half the senior players on the football team – believed nothing he did at school mattered now that the college acceptances had come in.
Even if they were right, Zander wasn’t personally taking any chances. Although, to be honest, his “extra-credit assignment” wasn’t exactly for school.
Adam didn’t wait for a response. He headed for the door, anxious – as always – to see his girlfriend, Abigail. Those two had been together for over two months now, which was some kind of record for both of them.
Zander, on the other hand, was finding the cafeteria harder to tolerate with each passing day. Like every day, he got his lunch tray and followed Adam to their usual table, and like every day, the empty seat beside him was a black hole, threatening to suck him in.
Of course, the chair wasn’t always empty. Over the last month, others had begun sitting there. For a week or two after Quinn had left, it was Melanie Fisher, Adam’s first attempt to get Zander to “move on.” Once he’d finally ended that, the seat had been used on a sort of rotating basis by different people. Today, though, nobody was there and he found himself glancing at it a few more times than he should.
“It’s time to get over her, you know.” Abigail’s voice, too close to his ear, made him jump.
“Excuse me?”
“She’s been gone for over a month, and she hasn’t even bothered to call or text anyone or anything. She isn’t coming back.”
He nodded. “I know that, Abigail … but don’t you think it’s weird? That isn’t like Quinn – to just take off without a word to anyone.”
“I wouldn’t have thought she would cheat on you, either, Zander, but…”
He flinched. Yes, that still stung; not as badly as it had at first, but it still hurt. He didn’t let it stop him, though. He looked straight into Abigail’s eyes. “Do you know that for sure? I mean, if she left to go with Doctor Rose because he was really her uncle, then doesn’t that make William her cousin or something? I don’t know that she cheated on me.”
“She broke up with you.”
“Yeah. At the same time her mom told her she’d been lying to her about her family for her entire life. Don’t you think she might have been upset about that?”
“How would I know? She never told me – she never even told any of us any of that. She just picked up and went to Europe with them without telling anyone anything. And now she can’t even be bothered to call.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have a phone.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t give a rip about us. Last I checked, there are computers in Europe. But has she e-mailed? Anything?” Abigail’s short hair – newly dyed an impossible shade of purple – bobbed back and forth in emphasis.
By now, everyone at the table was staring at them, but Zander decided he didn’t care. He’d had enough of everyone pretending that nothing was going on here. “Or maybe she didn’t tell us anything because we were all so mean to her that last week before spring break. She was your best friend, Abigail. Don’t you care? Aren’t you worried about her?”
Abigail rolled her eyes. “We weren’t mean to her. She was lying and keeping secrets from us then. Now, she’s off running around Europe with her rich doctor of an uncle. Obviously she’s not worried about us. It’s time for you to accept that. If she really ever cared about you, she would have at least called before she left.”
A sudden fierce anger rose inside him, and he knew that if he stayed here, something – not good – was going to happen. He stood up, shoved his chair in and walked off, not even bothering to throw away his untouched tray of food.
He didn’t stop walking until he was outside in the parking lot, staring at the front of his little black pick-up truck. After only a moment of considering, he climbed inside, turned the key, and drove off.
Everything Abigail had said was true – Quinn had broken up with him. She was the one who hadn’t called anyone, who wasn’t returning calls, or texts, or e-mails, or anything.
At first, he had to admit, he’d had been hurt, and he’d been angry with her. The last time he’d talked to her had been the last day of school before spring break, and he’d seen her standing in the hallway, talking to William Rose, after she’d just broken up with him the night before…yes, that had been like a knife in his gut. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her or see her.
Then, over spring break, on the day that Adam had convinced him to go and hang out with him and Abigail and Melanie Fisher, he’d run into her. Sort of. She’d been eating breakfast with her mom at the café, and he’d seen her through th
e window. Her eyes had met his for just a second, though she’d looked down as soon as she saw Melanie. He’d taken some satisfaction from that – her seeing him with another girl after what she’d done to him.
But then there had come the night, the last day of the vacation, when Quinn’s mom, Megan, had come over to Zander’s house for dinner, alone. When Megan had told them the news.
There were a lot of parts to the story – Doctor Rose being offered a prestigious research position somewhere in Europe, Quinn finding out that Doctor Rose was really her uncle and that Megan had been lying to her. Zander hadn’t really been able to listen to it – he’d missed most of the details because they weren’t important. All that mattered was the news that Quinn was gone.
Megan didn’t even know when – or if – her daughter was coming back.
For the first week or so, the anger had been overpowering. She’d just up and left without saying anything to anyone – as if they didn’t matter to her at all.
Gradually, though, other thoughts had occurred to him. She had been fighting with everyone before spring break. Zander and Abigail, especially, hadn’t exactly been nice to her. If Quinn wasn’t cheating on him – if she’d broken up with him because she just didn’t know how to deal with finding out about her mom lying to her – now he felt guilty that she’d seen him with Melanie.
Had they really been that awful, though, that Quinn would think they wouldn’t even want to know she was leaving? That they wouldn’t even want to hear the details or say good-bye?
And really, he’d started to think later, wasn’t it all just plain weird? The more time passed, the harder he was finding it to believe that Megan would just allow her daughter to run off to Europe with her dead father’s family.
It wasn’t like her uncle had custody of her. Quinn had been legally adopted by Megan’s new husband, Jeff, when she was eight years old. Megan didn’t have to let her go anywhere.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more things just didn’t add up, and all of it caused a sick twisting in the pit of his stomach.
As he drove, he tried to clear his thoughts, tried to remember everything that had happened with Quinn before spring break.
She’d been acting weird, even before any of this had happened. One of his most vivid memories was the night she’d gasped when he’d touched her arm. The look on her face when she’d pulled up her sleeve to reveal painful-looking bruises and stitches still haunted him.
That was the first time he realized she was keeping secrets from him. And right after that – the same night even – she’d disappeared for the entire weekend, without telling anyone, not even Megan. He’d found out later that she’d spent that weekend with William Rose.
Only a few days later, she’d broken up with him, right before spring break. And right after that, she’d disappeared.
There had to be more to it, didn’t there? Maybe she’d known she was going to be leaving, and that’s why she’d broken up with him in the first place. But why not tell him?
Something was wrong here. But what? Nothing seemed to add up, and each possible answer only led to more questions.
Thinking that a drive up into the mountains might help clear his mind, he flipped on the radio and headed toward the highway.
Of course, in Bristlecone, it was always difficult to drive the way he wanted to right now. The light at River Road turned red just as he was approaching, even though there were no other cars in sight.
Mumbling under his breath as he pulled to a stop, he looked around the intersection, noticing that the county still hadn’t repaired the guardrail on the other side after that tourist had crashed there back in January.
He remembered the incident well. He hadn’t seen it, but Quinn had. Megan had called Zander’s mom the night it happened; apparently it had freaked Quinn out quite a bit. Not that Zander blamed her; he found out later that she’d actually stopped and administered first aid to the banged-up tourist. A situation like that would probably have bothered him, too.
Maybe it was selfish, but he’d been glad for the excuse to talk to her. At the time, the two of them hadn’t been close for quite a while, and he’d been feeling like a jerk about it. He’d realized how much he regretted not making the effort with her it earlier this year, after that disaster of a homecoming date with Adrianna Marrs.
Working up the courage to talk to her had been hard – he’d worried that Quinn probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him after the way he had been ignoring her, and it never seemed to be the right time. After the accident, asking her if she was okay had seemed like a good way to break the ice.
Now that she was gone, he didn’t know what the right thing was anymore. Maybe she wanted him to just ignore her again, to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened. But what if she wanted him to reach out to her?
For the past month, he’d fought that battle, alternately writing a letter to her in his notebook and then closing it, shoving it under his mattress for a few days. He didn’t know if there was any way to send it to her even if he did ever finish it. Today in class had been one of the days the letter came back out again.
The light turned green and, without really knowing why, instead of driving straight ahead, he turned left on River Road. There was a little picnic area a little way up the road with a parking lot. Maybe he’d park there and then walk up to look at the damaged rail.
It was stupid, he knew, but he just couldn’t shake the idea that he’d find answers there. A couple of weeks ago, Abigail had said something about Quinn starting to act strangely after that incident. Nothing else was helping, anyway – what did he have to lose?
He drove down into the picnic area and parked.
Although the spring day had been warm enough to leave his letter jacket in the truck during school, here, in the shade of the trees down close to the river, it was cooler, and he wanted to wear it now. Pausing for a moment, he took a deep breath of the mountain air, allowing it to calm him a little.
Birds chattered in the nearby trees, and from here, the rushing of the river, overflowing with spring melt, was loud – almost loud enough to drown out the confusing jumble of his thoughts.
Wanting – needing – that distraction for a while, he walked down to the edge of the water, watching as it pounded against the rocks and swirled in waves. He stood there for a long time just staring at the river, trying not to think, to erase the questions and thoughts from his mind.
More than anything, he wanted to be able to talk about all of this – with Quinn. She was the one who could have talked him down from this – even if they’d stayed broken up, he missed her friendship. He’d have never admitted it to anyone, but what he was writing in his notebook during class was a letter to her, or some version of her anyway – he wasn’t sure it was something he’d actually want her to read even if he could find a way to get it to her, but it felt a little better to organize his thoughts and talk to her the way he would if she was in front of him.
The river was nice, though. Calming, clearing his head enough that he might be able to let some of this go for a while and make it through another day. Out in the middle, a silvery fish jumped, shimmering in the sunshine before making a huge splash and disappearing again.
Zander smiled and turned to head back for his truck. He’d almost decided not to bother with going up to the guardrail but once he was away from the water, it seemed important again.
Before he got to the parking lot, though, something else caught his attention.
A few feet away from the riverbank, there was an enormous tree. It would have been worth paying attention to all by itself. The massive pine was the largest one he had ever seen – too large, really, to only be a single tree. And, in fact, when he looked closer at the base, he could see where the one tree had started out as two trunks that had grown next to each other and then somehow twisted and become one.
But that wasn’t what had made him stop.
The whole area underneath the
tree was dark and muddy, as if someone had been digging there. In fact, as he got closer, he found several holes that had been started, but then abandoned.
The mud extended all the way around the trunk, although it was much worse on the north side of the tree, closest to the river. On that side, a big rock had been haphazardly dragged over the center of the muddy patch, leaving a trail in its place. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, he went over to investigate.
The rock was heavy, but not too heavy, and he was able to lift it out of the way and move it without much effort.
The size of the hole underneath startled him; it wasn’t very wide, but it was deep.
Someone had gone to a lot of effort to dig it, almost as if they were searching for something. He couldn’t see anything inside it, though. Kneeling down on the ground, wondering if he was crazy, he carefully put his hand down in the hole. When his arm was in the ground halfway to his elbow, he hit bottom. There was nothing there, only cold, smooth stone. Almost smooth, anyway.
He felt around some more, running his fingers along the surface of the rock, but then he gasped and brought his hand quickly back up. There was a small cut on his middle finger, just beginning to bleed. He’d run it along a sharp edge where the rock had felt broken, as if there was a chunk missing from it.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” A voice behind his head startled him, nearly sending him face-first into the hole. He spun around.
An older man was standing there – well, Zander assumed that he was older, from the long, white hair that trailed down his back, tied with a leather band. His face looked younger though, except for the bushy white eyebrows under the brim of his hat.
He had no other facial hair or wrinkles, and the gleam in his bright green eyes showed no signs of age. He was decked out in full fly-fishing gear. His dark green waders were wet, and sounds were coming from the creel that peeked around his side, indicating a recent catch.
Recovering from the sudden interruption, Zander shrugged. “I wasn’t really looking for anything.”
Canes of Divergence (Dusk Gate Chronicles) Page 1
