“Jack!”
My voice was still hoarse and unused to being stretched for anything other than arguments and accusations, and I wasn't certain that it would reach far across the fields. Several of the closer workers looked up from where they stood, but I bypassed them and limped farther, wading through the lavender as though it was water, but this time there was no fear of drowning because I had found him – I had finally found him –
“Nim?”
He was too far away to be heard, but I could see his mouth move as he spoke the long unused nickname. He dropped whatever he had been holding and rushed forward, crossing the lavender without caring that he was trampling it as he went, and the world that had shriveled and died expanded again, closing in on us as though a dome had been placed over the spot where we stood to trap us together again, and I finally felt as though I was coming back to life.
He reached me just as my leg stiffened completely, rendering me incapable of going any further, and threw all of his weight on me in an embrace that knocked us to the ground. And he was there – he was really there, despite everything – and the knowledge of it was too much and not enough all at once, and all of the time that we had been apart seemed to be eaten away as nothing more than something that I could once again shove to the back of my mind and not think of again until it became necessary.
“I thought you weren't coming,” he said, his voice muffled as he spoke somewhere off to my side. But the sound of it was still every bit as familiar as it had ever been, and even the overwhelming scent of lavender had done nothing to mask the smell of smoke that clung to his clothes, and everything about him was every bit the same as it had always been. “I thought – I thought you weren't coming.”
I shut my eyes and didn't respond. There was nothing to say about it now – he knew better, and I knew better, and I had found him after all.
“I tried calling, at first, but then I realized you'd moved,” he said after a moment. “Then I thought that Karl might've been taking the mail, so I called the school, but they said that you weren't registered there anymore ...”
“No, I got … pulled out after what happened.”
“Did you get into trouble? Did they think we were both in on it?”
I shook my head.
“No, they just blamed you. My father and Karl made sure of that.”
“Good old Uncle Karl,” Jack mused. His eyes lifted upwards to the sunlight and he closed them briefly. “He was always good for something.”
I nodded as he rolled to the side to sit on the ground next to me. There were a thousand things that I had to tell him about the months that we had been apart, but none of them would come to my tongue. The thought of telling him about what I had done to Beringer, and the diagnosis, and the time in the treatment facility and the recurring hallucinations would mar the moment, and despite how long it had all been waiting to be spoken, it was still too soon.
“So everything's still the same?” he asked. “On the island, I mean? No one knows about the girls or Miss Mercier, except to think that I killed her?”
“I … yeah,” I said, shaking myself from my thoughts. It was all still unreal to be sitting there next to him again, but his familiarity and the comfortableness that he brought allowed me to shake the feeling away. “I mean, I don't know too much about it. I've been – Karl had me in Connecticut, so I didn't really get to hear much about it.”
“Right, me neither. Bardom Island doesn't really make the news around here, if you can believe it.”
“Shocking.”
“I know, especially given how good they were at reporting news on the island.” He sat back and clawed at a clump of grass beside him, the smirk unable to linger on his face. “But … I don't know. I didn't really expect you to know, I guess I just ... I sort of hoped you'd have figured it out. That way ...”
“We wouldn't have to go back?”
“Yeah.”
I dug the heels of my boat shoes into the ground, knowing that I needed to tell him now before we went any further to give him time to decide what to make of me and if he even wanted to spend another moment in my company, but the words were scratching at my throat unpleasantly.
“I did try,” I said at last. “After you'd gone. I – I tried to piece everything together, but then ...”
“Karl yanked you out?”
“I … yeah. Something like that.”
I lowered my eyes to the ground, hating myself for not telling him the truth.
“Like I said, I didn't expect you to figure it out. I just … I just thought that if you had, maybe we could have stayed here. I don't really like the idea of going back.”
“No, me either.”
He swept his dark hair from his eyes and looked around at the fields of lavender, and there was a peacefulness in his features that clouded at the thought of returning to the barren island. It occurred to me that I could have told him something else – that I had figured out who the killer was and that he was done for – and that he would have believed me. But the lie wouldn't come, and even if it had, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself for giving it.
“I tried looking up the island to see if there was any news, too, but there was nothing. Their newspapers aren't archived or anything, and the only mention of it was of when Miss Mercier was killed; nothing about the girls.”
My breathing hitched unexpectedly.
“Was – was that the only news about the island?” I asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing. I just wondered.”
It suddenly occurred to me that there was probably an article about what had happened to Beringer. I could only imagine the headline – Student Drags Doctor off of Cliff – that had appeared in various papers on the mainland. I wasn't certain which town Beringer had worked in, but I was grateful that Jack hadn't looked through any of the papers from them.
“You alright, Nim?”
“What? Yeah – fine.”
He was looking at me oddly and I quickly rearranged my expression as I thought of something to say.
“My father told me that you'd died,” I said. “I thought you'd drowned in the ocean.”
“What?” He looked momentarily startled as he considered it, but then his expression alighted mischievously and he let out a cackle. “He wishes that I'd died.”
“Probably,” I said, doing best to keep the hint of lightness in my tone.
“Undoubtedly, more like it. But I'd sent the brochure, so you knew better anyhow.”
Something shifted off to our side and we both turned towards it. I had nearly forgotten that we were still at the farm and that a myriad of other people were around; it had felt as though we were in the safety of the small dorm room again, undisturbed but for the possibility of Sanders entering in the hopes of catching us doing something against Bickerby rules.
Ilona had come around the building to look for me. She gave a slight smile upon seeing Jack there with me, but hesitated without coming any closer. I hastily stood and limped over to her.
“You find boyfriend, yes?” She glanced at Jack over my shoulder. “This is good.”
“Yeah, it's – it's great,” I said. I looked down at my hands, suddenly unsure of what to say. “He's not really – we're friends, Ilona.”
She gave a pointed smile.
“I am knowing this,” she said. “But it was fun to tease you all of same.”
“Right.” I scratched at my lip. “I – thank you, Ilona. For finding him.”
“It is not problem. Taxi will not wait any longer, so I take it back to train station now. I did not want to leave without making sure that it was him, though.”
I glanced at the drive where the car was waiting, and something pulled at me unexpectedly.
“What? You're leaving now?”
“Yes. You have found him; you are not needing me anymore.”
She shifted the bag on her shoulder and reached into it to pull something out. When she handed it to me, I realized t
hat she was returning the wallet that she had taken back at the hotel.
“But ...” I paused without knowing what to say. I didn't know quite what I had been expecting her to do now that I had found Jack, but I was also quite certain that I didn't want her to go. “Right, but – you can't leave now.”
“No?”
“No, I – I mean, I haven't paid you for the day. Or the last couple days, really.”
She nodded.
“This is oh-kay. You do not ask me to stay with you, it was choice. You are not needing to pay me.”
“No, I want to. That was our deal.” I opened the wallet and looked at the few remaining bills there. “I don't have enough – I'll have to go to a bank machine.”
“No, I am not wanting this. You use money to go home.”
“Right, but –” I hesitated and looked down at the wallet, still unable to say what I had hoped to. “But where will you go?”
“I go back to Holland, yes? This is what passport says.”
“Right, but … I mean, you'll just go back to doing what you were before?”
“This is plan, yes.”
“But ...”
She watched me carefully as she waited for me to go on.
“But … I mean, you don't have to,” I said at last. “I mean, you could … you could come with us if – if you wanted.”
“Come with you and Jeck? To Connet-cut?”
“Well, no, Maine,” I said. “Bardom Island, really. But you could come, if you wanted.”
“Bardom Island,” she repeated. “What do I do there?”
“I … I mean, we're actually – we're actually going back to figure something out. A riddle of sorts. You're – you're good at riddles,” I said lamely. “You could … you could help us.”
She gave another half-smile, but I couldn't interpret what she was thinking behind the dark eyes.
“This is why you are asking me to come? To help with riddle?”
“I … well, yeah,” I said, giving a shrug. “It would be … I mean, you could definitely help us.”
She was silent for a long moment as she looked at me, the overly-done face poised and unreadable, but then she shook her head.
“No, I do not think so,” she said. “I go back to Holland. This is best.”
“But … are you sure?”
“I am sure, Eh-nim.” She looked over at Jack again. “You tell him to take passport from other worker, yes? Get to island before it is reported.”
“I … okay.”
“And Eh-nim?” She righted her bag on her shoulder again and smiled. “I will figure riddle out, yes? What is born each night, dies each dawn.”
I let out my breath.
“No, I don't think you will,” I said.
She nodded and returned to the taxi. I watched it pull away from the drive and disappear into the green with a hollow feeling, suppressing the urge to run after her and will her to change her mind. I should have said what I had meant to, or grasped onto her like I had wanted to grasp onto my mother before she went to the bridge or Jack before he had left the dorm room, but the taxi was far too far away now, and what I had wanted to say was something that couldn't be said, not by me, though I felt it all the same. I was quite certain that she was a better person than anyone that I had ever known, and I was more grateful to her than I could have ever hoped to express.
When the car had completely vanished from view, something brushed my shoulder and I looked over to see Jack.
“Who was that?”
“Oh, no one,” I said. “She … she helped me find you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I bit the insides of my mouth and sighed. “She told me to tell you that you should take a passport from one of the other workers to get back with.”
“That's a good idea,” he said offhandedly. “I forged a Canadian one – not well, mind you – but they weren't looking at it very hard here. It'd never get past airport security.”
“Right.”
We wandered back inside the farm so that he could collect his things, and he went through the passports in his coworkers' drawers until he found one that's picture and age vaguely matched his while I called another taxi to pick us up. As we waited for it to come, we sat on the front steps in the last bit of quiet of the day.
“Will you be sorry to leave?” I asked.
“What – here?” He looked around the front of the building with disdain. “No. France, maybe. But I'm not sure it's what I thought it'd be.”
“Right. Being in a lavender field and all.”
“Being here without you, more like it.” He sat up and brushed his hair from his eyes. “Did you hurt your leg?”
“What? Oh, yeah. I fell.”
“It's those shoes, Nim,” he said. “You really have to get another pair.”
He leaned back against the steps and smirked at me, and though I smiled back, I couldn't help but wonder if he would have done so if he had known what I wasn't telling him.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
It seemed to take an age to get through the airport, the long lines and security only made worse by my constant fear that at any moment Jack would be discovered and hauled away, never to be seen again but through the glass of a prison visiting room. I was so on edge that I was pulled to the side at nearly every security check point to be further searched for the cause of my anxiousness while Jack got through without hassle. As we made our way to one of the connecting flights, he slung his arm around me good-naturedly and grinned.
“Relax, Nim. I got all the way to France with your passport, and I don't even look like you.”
I let out my breath.
“Right. I guess.”
“It's a good thing that your passport was so old,” he continued. “I can't tell you how many people commented on how they used to be blond when they were young, too.”
We boarded the plane in Paris and took our seats at the far back. There was a woman in the seat by the window who had pulled a mask over her eyes to sleep, and I leaned forward a bit to look out onto the tarmac. I vaguely wondered if Ilona was passing through Paris by train, or if she had already bypassed it on her way back to Amsterdam. The thought of her roaming around beneath the reddish lights filled me with unease, and I wished again that I had insisted that she come with us.
“But you got to Canada okay?” I asked, turning back to Jack.
“Canada was easy. I took the bus up there and they barely looked at me. It probably helped that it was still dead-winter and I was wearing a hat and scarf, plus I talked to the border patrol in French. They probably weren't too happy that I didn't come back in a week like I'd said I would, though. I figured they'd report the passport, but knew you'd have to get a new one anyhow.”
“Yeah, I told Karl I lost it.”
“He really didn't suspect you'd given it to me? Even after he saw the charges to his bank card?”
I shook my head.
“No … there was a lot going on after you left. I doubt he ever noticed.”
“Yeah,” Jack mused. “He really pulled you out of school? You didn't graduate?”
“Nope.”
“Wicked. Never thought I'd see the day – what about college? Your pre-planned future?”
I shrugged. There was no way that I could tell him now on the plane with so many people around, and I shifted in my spot as I tried to think of an answer.
“I don't know what he wants now, to be honest.”
“I can tell you what he doesn't want,” Jack said mischievously, the glint returning to his dark eyes.
I looked over at him and smiled.
“For me to be sitting on a plane with you.”
He cackled.
“Definitely.”
Ch. 18
A nippiness had come to the air despite it only being mid-September, and the ground outside the airport was damp from an unseen rain. As Jack and I stood beneath the building overhang, he flipped up his collar to ward off the chill wh
ile I pulled my sweater further about me.
“Where's Bangor in relation to Bardom Island?” he asked, looking around us as though there might be a sign that pointed us in the right direction.
“You're asking me?”
“Right. You're the one who needed a travel guide to find me.”
He grinned at the thought before wandering down a ways to view the area. The place was more barren than ever given all the months that I had been away, and the long stretch of dark sky undotted with stars paired with the lonely hotel sitting across the street only added to the effect. The moon was hidden behind the building and barely cast any light over the trees, duller and heavier than it had been in Europe.
“There's probably a bus that'd get us there,” Jack said. “There's one up from Massachusetts, but it stops in Augusta. Where's Bangor in relation to Augusta? South?”
“I don't know. I don't even know where the island is in relation to Augusta.” I paused and pulled at my sweater sleeves to cover my hands. “We could just take a taxi, you know. I've got the money.”
“Won't Karl notice?”
I shook my head.
“No, it's linked to my account now – my mother's inheritance.”
“Right. I'd forgotten about that.” He frowned at the vacant cars parked in the lot across from us. “It's too bad we didn't get that earlier; we could've been in France before all of this happened.”
“But then we would've never known about Miss Mercier and all those girls,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. I guess.”
He sighed and stepped to the side to allow someone with a suitcase to wheel past us; the sound of it clattering on the pavement filled the untroubled air.
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 26
