The Fixer (The Fixer #1)(81)

But Adam worked for the Pentagon. He could do something.

“You’re not the only one who loves her,” Adam said softly. “But I know where your sister would want me, and that’s here. With you.”

I swallowed. “You called her my sister.”

“Force of habit.” He looked like he might stop there. “She wanted to tell you, Tess. Years ago, as soon as she was set up here, as soon as she was in a position to take care of you, she wanted to tell you the truth. She wanted you here.”

“And then she changed her mind.” The words escaped my mouth before I could bite them back. Ivy was missing. She was gone, and I was so angry at her—for doing this, for leaving me.

Again.

“She stopped visiting. She barely even called.” I closed my eyes. “She never told me why. I don’t know what I did, why she left—”

“Hey,” Adam said, capturing my chin in his hand. “You didn’t do anything, Tess.”

I believed that. But the thirteen-year-old inside me couldn’t. Ivy had left me. She was my mother, and she’d chosen to leave.

She chose to stay with Kostas. I should have been grateful for that. She’d traded herself for me, she’d saved me, she loved me. But there was nothing I could do to keep from feeling like she’d thrown me away, all over again.

“Your grandfather asked her to go.” Adam’s voice broke into my thoughts. His words knocked the breath out of me. “He said she was being selfish. That being a parent wasn’t about what she wanted. That she had to think about what was best for you.” Adam cupped my face in his hand. “He sent her away, Tess, and she came back here, and something happened that convinced her he was right.”

What happened? I didn’t ask the question out loud. It didn’t matter. Gramps might have sent Ivy away, but she’d gone. She was the one who hadn’t said good-bye. She was the one who’d stopped calling.

“There was never a day, not one,” Adam said softly, “that she didn’t think about you.”

She should have been there. I closed my eyes, more to keep them from tearing up than because I was tired. She should be here now.

“Come on,” Adam said. “You need to rest.” He steered me toward his bedroom, toward the bed. Adam waited until I’d actually sat down on the edge of the mattress before retreating.

Sleep never came.

Every second, every minute, every hour that passed was time I wouldn’t get back. Time Ivy wouldn’t get back.

In the dead of the night, I started pacing: the bedroom, the hallway right outside, the bathroom. As I came to the living room, I paused in the doorway.

Adam was awake. He was bent over his desk, looking at something. A note? A photograph? Whatever it was, he tucked it back into a drawer. He looked up but didn’t see me. From the expression on his face, I was willing to bet he didn’t see anything at all.





CHAPTER 59

The next morning, I had a visitor. Vivvie hovered in the doorway to Adam’s room. It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d stood outside the door to my room, wrapped in a blanket, wanting to come in, not wanting to ask.

I looked down at my hands, unable to meet her eyes. My wrists were still angry and red. The raw skin looked how I felt.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I whispered. The second those words left my mouth, Vivvie flew across the room. She hugged me like hugging was a contact sport.

“Are you okay? Last night you sounded . . . not okay. And before that, you were just gone. Asher told me you went to the state dinner last weekend. Henry said your sister was there, and that she took you away, but we couldn’t figure out where, and you weren’t answering your phone—”

“Vivvie.”

Belatedly, she realized that she still had me in a death grip and relaxed her hug, her arms falling to her sides.

“Ivy sent me away,” I said, saying Ivy’s name the way a cutter might press a blade to skin. It hurt. It was supposed to. “She did it to protect me,” I continued. That was what Ivy did. She didn’t ask me what I wanted. She didn’t give me a choice.

She left me, and she sent me away, and she gave up her own life for mine, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she could do this to me, and it wasn’t fair that I was the one who had to live with the results.

It wasn’t fair that I was here, and she wasn’t.

“Ivy told my aunt to get me a bodyguard,” Vivvie said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “For protection. He’s waiting in the hallway.”

It occurred to me then to wonder how much Vivvie knew. Telling her—about Ivy, about Kostas, about what had happened to me—seemed insurmountable.

“You don’t have to,” Vivvie said quietly. “If you’re not ready to talk about it yet, you don’t have to.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.” I swallowed, then pressed on. “Your father didn’t kill himself.”

I wasn’t sure how long we were in my room, but by the time I finished, Vivvie knew everything except the truth about Ivy’s relation to me.

“You aren’t listening!” Adam’s voice cut through the walls. He was yelling.

For a split second, Vivvie and I sat there, frozen, and then our eyes met. I slipped off the bed and out of the room.