Garren and I agree that if either of us is taken the other should run rather than surrender, but not return here because the house might no longer be safe. By that we both mean, although neither of us says it, that the captured person could be forced to talk. I don’t want to believe that I’d turn Garren in and I don’t want to imagine what they could do to me to make me change my mind.
Just before we go to bed, when hopefully most of the neighborhood is asleep, we do a quick evaluation of the back door. Luckily all of the visible damage is on the inside and won’t advertise the break-in.
Garren retreats to the spare bedroom and I take the twins’ room (because it feels safer than the master bedroom—like the parents have cast a protective spell over it) where I lie awake for hours worrying about Garren or me being taken. I wonder repeatedly whether Doctor Byrne remembers mentioning the Bellair Café while I was in his office yesterday and whether he’ll be expecting us, laying a trap. No amount of worrying I do will make a difference and being tired tomorrow will only slow my reaction time and increase the likelihood that I’ll be caught. But naturally, pressuring myself to sleep in that way only helps drive sleep farther away and the sun is starting to rise by the time I finally drift off.
I dream that my younger self is sitting in an airy room with my mother and she’s just told me something that has me frantic and furious. Nothing will be the same afterwards. I will never love her like I used to, never trust her. There’s a fire inside me when I go to school in the morning and when a guy, no more than a child really, bumps into me hard and fails to apologize, I turn on him in the school’s neatly manicured front lawn, pummeling him with my little fists.
I’m vicious in a way that is not me. I’ve been betrayed. Somebody has to pay for it.
The men who are not men apprehend me quickly. Hold on to me with an iron grip. I can’t blame them either because the boy’s nose is bleeding and I’m already sorry.
The dream Garren—the younger Garren, just as I am a younger me—appears beside the men and tells them, “You better be careful there—you know that’s the boss’s daughter.”
One of the men replies, “Thank you for your concern. The situation is under control.”
When the men release me after filing a discipline report I know it’s not because of anything Garren said—that’s not how they work. A tear snakes down my face. It doesn’t seem right that I can feel so lost and hopeless and yet the world carries on as usual.
“I did punch him,” I say to Garren. “I made him bleed.”
Garren folds his arms in front of him. “I saw. But I also heard what happened at your house a few days ago.” He doesn’t elaborate and I don’t know where he could have heard such a secret but he adds, “It’s inhumane, what they do.”
In my dream we both know the “what” and “they” he’s referring to but when I wake up at twenty after two in the afternoon with a dry mouth and grit in the corners of my eyes the knowledge instantly evaporates. I lurch into the bathroom and brush my teeth with one of the twins’ toothbrushes, my brain fuzzy. Then I dip into the master bedroom closet again and pick out some of the woman’s clothes to change into after I’ve showered. The things I select (a big-shouldered, belted beige sweater and tailored dress pants that are several inches too short) look nothing like what I’d normally wear, and once I’ve cleaned up and have them on I feel like a bank teller or class valedictorian waiting for a flood.
My hair, I scrunch up into a ponytail and intend to hide under one of the woman’s many winter hats. I even decide to apply her horrible blue eye shadow and perky pink lipstick. If there’s anything I can do to avoid being spotted by the men who were after us yesterday, I’m ready to do it.
When Garren sees me he jokes that he was beginning to wonder if I’d slipped into a coma. Before I can joke back that I was saving the coma for tomorrow he adds, “You look like a completely different person.”
“That’s the idea,” I tell him. I don’t say anything about my dream or the strange men who keep showing up in them; talking about that won’t help with tonight.
The next few hours go by in a blur. I toast a waffle and eat it with a fruit cup. Garren shows me the two additional flashlights and a slew of batteries he found while I was sleeping. We pore over the few bits of information we already have, comparing our life stories further. Henry has spoken about Cooke and his wife to both of us, likely as a ready explanation for his many absences while he was spending time at his other address or with his other “family.” We don’t discover any other overlaps between our lives but there are already enough to deal with and I keep coming back to Henry and the question of whether he’s our true grandfather or not. Surely if he were he wouldn’t have called those men to take us.
I’m glad it’s dark by the time we have to leave the house. Because the only thing keeping the broken back door closed is the stopper Garren shoved underneath it last night, popping out the front entrance seems like our best bet. If we’re spotted by someone who knows the owners are away it will look extremely suspicious but the sound of the back door banging open and shut with the wind for hours would be a problem too. There’s a chance we might have to return to the house later and if that’s the case the fastest way to slip back inside will be through the unlocked front door.
Garren and I are both in disguise, my feet squished into the woman’s tall boots and each of us wearing a borrowed coat and hat, but if I saw Garren on the street I’m sure I’d still know it was him. I’d feel it and as we’re sneaking out of the house (after we’ve scanned the street twice to make sure no one’s around to see us go—once from an upstairs bedroom and once from the living room) my nerves flare one second and then die down the next. The secret sliver of my mind that knows things doesn’t believe we’re at risk yet.
I shouldn’t rely on that feeling too much. Anything can happen. The future hasn’t been written. In this instance the feeling’s correct, though. We make it safely out of the neighborhood and take the long way down to Lawrence Station.
From 6:40 onward we stroll Cumberland Street awaiting Doctor Byrne’s arrival while keeping a cautious lookout for whoever might be watching us. At about ten minutes to seven Garren says, “Do you see anything? Any visions?”
I don’t but maybe it’s just that the sense doesn’t work on command. We round the corner onto Bellair for the umpteenth time, then cross the street and circle swiftly back to the restaurant where a fifty-something-year-old woman in a long green coat and high heels is emerging from a silver car. I stare at the driver through the front window as the car pulls away. Without enough time to look him over I can’t be positive it was Doctor Byrne but there was a general resemblance and I grab Garren’s arm. “Did you get a look at the driver? Was it him?”
“I think it was,” Garren concurs, and my heart starts galloping.
He must’ve gone to park the car and in that case he’ll be back soon. We pace the sidewalk directly in front of the restaurant, intermittently checking our watches like we’re expecting someone long overdue. Then I spot Doctor Byrne trundling down the sidewalk, the gap between us fast closing. “There he is,” I gasp.
We stride forward and stop directly in front of him, Garren and I binding together like a human wall so he can’t get by. At first he doesn’t recognize us because he’s doing the typical big-city thing of not looking anyone in the face, but as Doctor Byrne glances up to step around us, he wrinkles his nose and then frowns deeply in recognition, his shoulders sagging.
“Come with us,” Garren commands, sinking his right hand into his pocket to suggest that he’s armed and that Doctor Byrne doesn’t have much of a choice.
Doctor Byrne glances from Garren to me, a mild amount of surprise in his eyes but no fear. “What do you intend to do to me?”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Garren tells him. “We just need information.”
“Walk with us,” I bark, indicating that he should turn and continue onward. Doctor Byrne obliges, swiveling on
the sidewalk, and Garren and I sandwich him between us. We storm off in the opposite direction from the restaurant.
Doctor Byrne’s shorter than I am and I can see the bald spot on the crown of his head as we head west along Cumberland. The two things make him look vulnerable, despite the fact that he doesn’t appear to be afraid. He pinches his coat lapels together as he says, “Where are we going?”
Since we’ve been able to stake out the restaurant and make it this far down the road with the doctor unimpeded, Henry and his people must not have suspected we’d be here, but I’m afraid our luck will run out at any second and I say, “Why do they want us? Who is Henry Newland really? You need to tell us everything.”
Doctor Byrne touches his glasses. “I can’t, Freya. That’s physically impossible.”
“Physically impossible,” Garren repeats darkly.
“You mean you won’t tell us,” I clarify, because Doctor Byrne can’t literally mean what he said about it being impossible. We veer down a lane, the doctor still in lockstep with us.
“Believe me, the matter of telling you has nothing to do with whether I’d like to or not. I can’t. It’s not possible. The second I attempt it …” His voice trails off. “In effect, you could do whatever you want to me and it wouldn’t make a difference. What you’re looking for is an impossibility, or at least seeking it through me is.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Garren says, his hand in his pocket again.
Doctor Byrne is quiet. We’ve reached a parallel road and Garren closes his right hand around Doctor Byrne’s arm and guides him across the street. People watching us might think we were out for a stroll with our aged father or grandfather.
“I don’t believe either of you would hurt me,” Doctor Byrne says. “And I would help you if I could. I’ve tried, in my own way. You have to understand none of this was meant to hurt you.”
“If that’s true, why do they want to hurt us now?” Garren asks as we veer onto Hazelton Avenue.
“Things aren’t as they seem,” Doctor Byrne replies cryptically. He turns to me and adds, “If you’re smart, you’ll take the advice I’m about to give you and follow it to a tee.” Garren and I lean in closer and listen to him say, “Don’t say anything about any of this to anyone else you meet. Get as far away from here as you can and don’t leave a trail. Don’t contact your families. Get yourselves new names and new identification. That’s the only way you’ll remain safe.” Doctor Byrne reaches inside his coat and Garren’s head jerks like he’s expecting the worst but the doctor opens his wallet and hands me two stiff fifty-dollar bills.
I hesitate and Garren reaches between us to take the money.
“Will they leave our families alone?” I ask. “They don’t know anything.”
“Both your families are fine. I’m sure they’re very worried about you but they’ll be safer now if you stay away from them. Do it for their sake if you can’t do it for your own.” Doctor Byrne relaxes his hold on his lapels and adds, “I don’t want to be your enemy. But sometimes there’s a greater good to consider. I know you can’t understand that from where you’re standing.” He quivers in his coat. “If I don’t get to my wife soon she’ll raise some kind of alarm. I don’t think you want that to happen.”
The doctor stops walking and I can read in his face that he’s made up his mind not to take another step with us, no matter what we say.
I stop too. Desperation surges through me. I can’t walk away from this meeting with nothing. “Please, you have to tell us something. None of this makes sense to us. Our fathers, our grandparents. And I can’t … I can’t remember certain things and then there are dreams that feel like they must be memories but can’t be because they’re so—”
“Freya.” Doctor Byrne’s hand grazes my shoulder in sympathy. “I can’t help you. If you think memory is a problem maybe there are other places you can look for help eventually, but the best thing you can do now is leave here as quickly as possible. If they find you …” Doctor Byrne shakes his head like he doesn’t even want to consider the matter.
Garren’s hands hang limply from his arms. “What happens if they find us?”
The doctor’s stare is frank, his pupils heavy with apprehension. “Something you wouldn’t want.” With that, he turns on the sidewalk and begins walking steadily away from us. Neither Garren nor I make a move to follow him. Doctor Byrne was right that we wouldn’t hurt him. I guess he knew each of us just well enough to make that call.
I stare at Doctor Byrne’s back and watch him disappear into the distance. Now we have nothing. No information and no further plan of action to get it. I feel empty the way I did in my dream last night. There’s nothing left to hope for. Just the gnawing sense that Doctor Byrne’s words are no exaggeration.
I felt it when the men were coming for us. I didn’t know where they’d take us or what they’d do. Only that whatever it is makes me want to recoil and revolt.
“We have to go,” Garren says. “He might call them.”
Doctor Byrne said he wasn’t our enemy but obviously he’s not on our side either. How does he expect us to leave town? Are we supposed to live out the rest of our lives hiding under a rock somewhere while still wondering what the truth is?
“We have to go,” Garren repeats, and he sounds hollow but with a streak of urgency, as though he’s trying to put on a brave front for me. It’s because I can hear all that in his voice that I start moving and don’t make him say it a third time.
At first I follow him without an awareness of where we’re going, through busy city streets and then back underground into the subway system where I hear Winston Churchill in my head, as clear as day. The way his voice keeps returning to me is a minor enigma enfolded in a larger one, like a trove of Russian nesting dolls. He says, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”
I don’t feel courageous but I can’t stand for both of us to feel defeated either—it’s much worse than just feeling it for myself—and my mind starts whirring again. Doctor Byrne said if I thought there was a problem with my memory maybe there were other places I could look for help. It didn’t mean much to me when he said it but maybe there was something to those words. I repeat them to Garren and ask if he thinks they were a hint.
He shrugs wearily. “I don’t know that there’s any connection between your memory issues and the rest of this. Even if there is, you can’t go see another doctor here. You heard Byrne—we have to get out of here as fast as possible.”
And go where? I’m barely sixteen, not ready to take ultimate responsibility for my life.
“The greater good,” Garren says bitterly. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? How can we be any threat to the greater good?”
“We don’t have to be. They only have to think we are. Anyway, how can you not believe my memory—and maybe yours—isn’t related to this? I knew you. I knew you before we met two days ago.”
Garren leans down over his knees, his long arms stretched across them like a blanket. “You have some ESP thing, that’s for sure. But I’m telling you, we’ve never, ever met. There’s nothing wrong with my memory and I’m not having any weird dreams the way you are. All those things have to somehow be linked to this ESP thing you have.” He sighs through his teeth. “And thank fuck you have it because otherwise those guys would’ve had us yesterday. Maybe it’ll help us get out of here and figure out what to do.”
I’m not ready to leave without answers. I won’t go anywhere near my family since that will put them at risk but there has to be something else I can do. Other places I can look for help. Who helps people remember things when they can’t? A hypnotherapist.
The subway train screeches as we pull into the next station. I watch Garren grit his teeth and I know he won’t like what I’m about to say either but on a certain level it doesn’t matter; I have to do this. “There’s one last thing I have to try before I think about going away. Not
a doctor, but a hypnotherapist.”
Garren doesn’t even blink. “We have to leave, Freya. We don’t have time to worry about your memory.”
“But it could help. We don’t know what we’re really running from. We need all the information we can get if we want to outrun them.” And I can’t stand not to know. I’m like a shell of a person.
“Just give me one more day,” I continue. “It’ll take us that long to figure out what we’re going to do anyway, won’t it? We’ll have to go back to the house and get supplies and—”
“We’re lucky they haven’t caught us already. You can’t take that kind of risk on a whim when there’s every chance that it might not help at all.” The vein in Garren’s neck is throbbing. “And do you know how much something like that would cost? We can’t afford to waste a cent.”
“I’ll get the money.” There has to be more back at the house—or things we could pawn for it. Whatever I thought was the matter with my life, I didn’t think it would come to this. We’re about as far from safe and sound as two people can be. We have nothing and no one, except each other. We’ve stolen from people and will probably have to do it again. The grim facts make me more determined to uncover the truth.
“How the hell do you think you’re going to manage that? You don’t have a clue what you’re doing.” Garren slaps his pocket, the one with Doctor Byrne’s cash in it. “This is for getting us out of here and believe me, it won’t last long or take us far. The last thing we need right now is to make a stupid mistake.”
I don’t need a lecture in priorities—my life is on the line same as his—and two seconds later we’re hardcore arguing in the middle of the subway car, the two teenage guys sitting closest to us grinning toothily like they think it’s funny.
It’s not remotely smart calling attention to ourselves this way and the second that hits me I shut up and refuse to say another word. When Garren realizes I’ve taken an unofficial vow of silence he joins me inside it, the two of us glowering quietly. We pass station after station, descending Yonge Street. With every second we’re putting distance between us and the house near Lawrence Station until I finally say, “Where are we going?”
Yesterday Page 14
