Echo(34)

“If you’re feeling sorry for me, don’t.”

He surprises me with his unguarded bluntness when he asks, “What happened to her?”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“What do I have to lose? You’re leaving Scotland; we’ll never see each other again.”

“Okay, then,” I respond as I turn in my seat to face him dead on, and take him up on his offer. What the hell do I care? He’s right. After today, I’ll never see him again. “I don’t know what happened to her. I have no memories of her, so I assume her to be dead. It was always just me and my father.”

“You never asked?”

“My father died before I could,” I answer directly.

“Have you tried finding her?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“What’s the point?” I say with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Aren’t you curious about where you come from? What if she’s not dead like you assume? What if she’s been looking for you?”

And when he asks that last question, I start to wonder—hypothetically—if the woman did exist, she wouldn’t have had a chance finding me. I was a runaway. An invisible child. And then I was Nina Vanderwal. How would she have ever found me when I’ve made it impossible?

All I have of my mom is an old photo of her. For a while, I used to think about her a lot, wondering what she was like, if she was anything like me.

“It’s never too late, you know?” Lachlan says, and I let his words float in my head.

I’ve lost everything, but what if . . . what if I haven’t? What if there’s a chance that I have something left in this life? Is it worth trying to find? Is it worth believing in hope when that dream has failed me countless times? Can I take another disappointment?

Questions.

I have hundreds of them.

Looking back to Lachlan, I want to protect myself, but I’m so lonely. Lonely and in need of comfort, in need of a reason to go on. Because as I stand now, I’m beginning to seriously wonder why I’m still here—moving, breathing, living.

“Why do you care?” I ask the man who shouldn’t because I’m not worthy of it.

“There’s something about you,” he says with all seriousness.

“But you don’t know anything about me.”

“Doesn’t mean that I don’t want to,” he admits before adding, “All friendships have to start somewhere. Let me help you.”

But I’ve never had friends. I stuck to myself in school while everyone else picked on me. Pike was my only friend, not just from childhood, but also as adults. And let’s face it, the so-called friends I had when I married Bennett were just for show.

So I accept his offer, and with reluctance about what I’m agreeing to, I give a small nod.

“Okay then.”





I’VE BEEN PACKING ever since I got back from Edinburgh. Now that all my belongings are ready to go back to the States, I sit on the floor beside the bed I’ve been sleeping in for the past few weeks since I arrived here at Isla’s. My mind begins to drift back to the conversation I had with Lachlan earlier today. It was weird. A mention of my mother is something that never happens. It’s a part of my life that rarely creeps to the surface. But it’s there now, and I’m not quite sure how it happened.

There were times in my childhood when I would miss her. But what I was missing wasn’t real; it was simply a creation of my imagination. I’ve never known what it was to have a mom. More than anything, it’s always been my dad that I ache for and miss wholeheartedly. But when Lachlan offered to help find my mother, I agreed. I don’t know why. My acceptance of his offer came without much thought at all. Maybe I’m just so lonely that I’m willing to grasp on to anything at the moment.

Warmth slips down my neck, extinguishing my train of thought, and when I bring my hand to the front of me, it’s bloody with dark flesh under my nails. It’s then I realize I’ve been mindlessly picking at the scab that still remains from Declan. It’s grown in size. I reach back and begin to dig my nail into the soft, gummy exposed flesh, and a searing pain slices my scalp.

And finally, my mind is depleted of all thoughts as I go numb.

My eyes fall shut, and I drop my head forward, letting it hang. Fingers that work nimbly find an unpicked edge of a scab, and I grip it between my fingers. A moment passes before I swiftly yank, pulling the scab off along with new, uninfected flesh, enlarging the wound even more. Exhaling a lungful of air, my core tingles in delighted release when I feel a new onslaught of warm, thick blood oozing down the delicate skin of my neck.