The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(85)

And with that, relief melted through him, liquefying his joints. “Jesus, Adam.”

Gansey’s father was looking at him, so he nodded, once. Immediately, his father started looking for a place to pull over.

“I couldn’t remember your number,” Adam said miserably. He was trying so hard to make his voice sound ordinary that it sounded dreadful. He either didn’t or couldn’t suppress his Henrietta accent.

It’s going to be all right.

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know.” Then, a little quieter, to someone else, “Where am I?”

The phone was passed to the other person; Gansey heard the sound of cars rushing by in the background. A woman’s voice asked, “Hello? Are you a friend of this kid?”

“Yes.”

The woman on the other end of the phone explained how she and her husband had stopped by the side of the interstate. “It looked like there was a body. No one else was stopping. Are you close by? Can you come get him? We’re near exit seven on 395 south.”

Gansey’s mind shifted abruptly to adjust his image of Adam’s surroundings. They had been nowhere close. It hadn’t even occurred to him to look that far away.

Richard Gansey II had overheard. “That’s south of the Pentagon! That’s got to be fifteen miles from here.”

Gansey pointed to the road, but his father was already checking the traffic to make a U-turn. When he turned, the evening sun suddenly came full in the windshield, blinding both of them momentarily. As one, they both threw up a hand to block the light.

“We’re coming,” Gansey told the phone.

It’s going to be all right.

“He might need a doctor.”

“Is he hurt?”

The woman paused. “I don’t know.”



But it wasn’t all right. Adam said absolutely nothing to Gansey. Not while curled in the backseat of the car. Not while sitting at the kitchen table as Margo brought him coffee. Not after standing by the sofa with the phone clutched to his ear, talking to a doctor, one of the Ganseys’ old family friends.

Nothing.

He’d always been able to fight for so much longer than anyone else.

Finally, he stood in front of Gansey’s parents, chin lifted but eyes faraway, and said, “I’m very sorry for all the trouble.”

Later, he fell asleep sitting up on the end of that same sofa. Without any particular discussion, the Gansey family in its entirety moved the conversation to the upstairs study, out of earshot. Although several engagements had been canceled and Helen had missed a flight to Colorado that evening, no one had mentioned the inconvenience. And they never would. It was the Gansey way.

“What did the doctor call it?” Mrs. Gansey asked, sitting in the armchair Helen had slept in earlier. In the green light through the verdant lampshade beside her, she looked like Helen, which was to say she looked like Gansey, and also to say she looked a little bit like her husband. All of the Ganseys sort of looked like one another, like a dog that begins to look like its owner, or vice versa.

“Transient global amnesia,” Helen replied. She had listened to the phone conversation and following discussion with great interest. Helen very much enjoyed climbing down into other people’s lives and muddling about there with a pail and a shovel and possibly one of those old-fashioned striped bathing suits with the legs and arms. “Two-to six-hour episodes. Can’t remember anything past the last minute. But the victims — that was Foz’s word, not mine — apparently know they’re losing time while it’s happening.”

“That sounds dreadful,” said Mrs. Gansey. “Does it get worse?”

Helen doodled on the desk blotter with a two-inch pencil. “Apparently not. Some people only have one episode. Some people get them all the time, like migraines.”

“And it’s stress related?” Richard Gansey II broke in. Although he didn’t know Adam well, his concern ran deep and genuine. Adam was his son’s friend, and so he had inherent worth. “Dick, do you know what he might be stressed about?”

It was clear this was a problem that all of the Ganseys were intent on solving before Gansey returned to Henrietta with Adam.

“He just moved out of his parents’ house,” Gansey said. He had started to say trailer, but he didn’t like to think of what his own parents would do with that visual. He thought for a moment and then added, “His father beat him.”

“Jesus Christ,” his father remarked. Then: “Why do they let these people breed?”

Gansey just looked at his father. For a long moment, nothing was said.

“Richard,” his mother chastised.

“Where is he staying now?” his father asked. “With you?”

He couldn’t know how much or why this question smarted. Gansey shook his head. “I tried. He’s staying at a room that belongs to St. Agnes — a local church.”

“Is it legal? Does he have a car?”

“He’ll be eighteen in a few months. And no.”

“It would be better if he stayed with you,” Richard Gansey II observed.

“He won’t. He just won’t. Adam has to do everything himself. He won’t take anything that looks like a handout. He’s paying his own way through school. He works three jobs.”