Where Silence Gathers (Some Quiet Place #2)(49)
“Maybe not, but I am,” I counter, thinking of my dreams, of the files on the flash drive. “I want answers.”
“I can’t give them to you.” He starts to shut the door completely.
I jam my foot inside. Pain radiates through my heel. “My father is dead, Dr. Stern. He never spoke about you, and I know there’s a reason. I’m not leaving until I find out what it is.”
“You’re going to get us both killed!” he hisses. “Leave this alone!”
I’m so shocked that when he moves to slam the door again, I don’t stop him.
EIGHTEEN
Time loses meaning again. One moment I’m driving back from Green River, the road signs green blurs. The next moment I’m breathing hard and concentrating on the circular movements of my feet as I pedal to nowhere. The car is back at the apartment and I’m still desperate to find out what it is my father kept from me all those years ago. As if the answer will solve everything, end the war that’s destroying my insides. Trees and signs go by unnoticed. All I know is the hurricane of air leaving my mouth again and again.
But then the road ends and I’m forced to stop. The bike falls to the dirt. Something scrapes my ankle and I don’t even look down. I stand in the clearing, heaving, closing my eyes as I try to calm.
The sensation within—like tiny soldiers live in my stomach and keep shooting or jabbing at each other—slows. I open my eyes again. It takes me a moment to comprehend where I am, where I unconsciously brought myself when I thought my destination was unknown.
The mines.
Sunlight bursts through the treetops above, casting shivering shadows over everything. Dad isn’t standing in the mouth waiting for me, and he doesn’t appear when I walk closer. I pause, the tips of my boots touching the very edge of the shadow that the lip of the entrance casts on the ground. The darkness beckons. I strain to see any sign of movement. He could be waiting. Maybe he needs me to believe, to find the strength to go into that oblivion.
“Daddy?” I whisper, as though someone else is nearby, listening. He doesn’t answer. Still, I hesitate. I wish Saul’s maps could show me the way, could lead me to the right ending of this story. The right choice. I wish that the flash drive held the answers to questions like … is it possible for the dead to come back?
The thought clings to me like a leech, propels me forward until I can no longer feel the warmth on my skin. “Daddy?” I say again, clenching my fists. Fear’s strawberry breath cools the space around us and his fingers slide down my arm, brush the edge of my top as I walk out of reach. I call for my father a third time. A fourth time. I’m so deep into the tunnel now that I can see the dim outline of the elevator farther down. Silence rings in my ears.
He isn’t here.
I stop. A tear drips off the end of my nose and plops into the dirt. I don’t know what I expected. Dad to come out of the shadows, arms outstretched? His voice, telling me that everything will be okay? His reassurances that the past six years have been nothing but a bad dream? Anything but this emptiness, this confirmation that I really did conjure everything. It wasn’t real. Any of it. The dog must have fled because she was full or heard something else on the wind. Not because she sensed my dead father.
Suddenly my knees buckle, and I fall. A sob echoes into the blackness. Mine. I wrap my arms around myself and rock back and forth, back and forth. “Please, please,” I whisper, uncertain of what I’m even pleading for. Something inside me cracks. Everything pours through that tiny opening: longing, anguish, regret, need. Emotions come like the apparition I believed my father to be. Not a single one of them speaks. I can’t see their faces, I can only feel them. On my head and shoulders and back. Their scents combine and overwhelm, but one is stronger than all the rest and resounds in my mind, even in this state.
Chocolate.
I think I whimper his name. I can’t speak past the pain searing through me. There aren’t any words that will help me, anyway. I lift my face, and my eyes must have adjusted to the darkness because now I can see. His beautiful, familiar features stay when all the other Emotions drift away. For the first time since I’ve met him, Revenge looks … helpless. His hands hover over me. “Alex, Alex, Alex,” he keeps murmuring, as if saying my name will bring me back.
And it does. Another minute passes, and the unbearable pain begins to retreat. Retreat, but not surrender. It never does. I put my palms on the ground and try to take even breaths now. “I wanted him to be real,” I say eventually, shuddering. A hiccup escapes me.
Revenge still speaks softly, probably worried that anything louder will break me again. “He’s as real as you make him, Alex.”
The wetness on my cheeks is drying. I straighten, unflinching this time when our eyes meet. The truth rises to my lips and I don’t try to stop it. “I’ve missed you.”
My best friend doesn’t hesitate. And I know that this is his truth, too. “I’ve missed you.”
I push myself up and brush my knees off. In unison, Revenge and I leave the tunnel, walking back toward the light. The moment we emerge I squint up at the sky, needing something to anchor myself to as I ask the question that’s been tossing me around like a violent wave these past few days. “Is it true? When I choose, I’ll never see you again?”
Exactly seven seconds pass. Revenge fidgets in that way of his, and it’s clear he’s trying to decide whether or not to lie. There are so many lies around us, though, that I’m choking on them. It takes the last of my strength not to beg. Please, don’t lie. Finally he meets my gaze and says, “Yes.”