Page 32 of After All The Wreckage
Gage
HURRICANE
Performed by The Fray
Everything was going halfway decentlywith Rory until Ivy had one of her visions. I wasn’t even sure she’d be in the car when I got back or if she’d have run for the hills.
I signed Ivy in, held her tight, and whispered, “I love you,” before watching her wander farther into the day care center with her stuffed animal clutched to her chest. She didn’t look terrified anymore as she sat next to two kids on a carpet woven with brightly colored letters and animals, and yet my heart remained heavy. I had an overwhelming desire to keep her close, even though it didn’t make sense to bring her to D.C.
Reluctantly, I turned away from my sister and headed back to the car.
Rory wouldn’t let what had happened slide. She’d want to talk about it. Analyze it. Understand it. But the truth was, whathappened with us—what Demi had given us—wasn’t something you could understand unless you experienced it personally.
A piece of me sighed with relief when Rory was still in the SUV, but her narrowed eyes told me she’d considered bolting. It wasn’t just Ivy’s words that were freaky, it was the way she said them in a voice that wasn’t quite hers. With wild eyes. And then, when it left her, and she looked at you with vague forgetfulness, it was even creepier. As if, for two seconds, she became someone else. Someone much older and wiser and weirdly connected to the people she loved most.
I sat behind the wheel, and the tension radiating between Rory and me was no longer of the sexual variety.
“I’m still heading to D.C.,” I told her, without glancing over. “You coming or not?”
“You really think I’d abandon you over that?” Her words were sharp. Angry. And they jerked my gaze to hers.
She’d been freaked out—it was still there in her eyes—but her shoulders were back, and she was full of the same stubborn defiance I’d seen the very first time I’d met her. At twelve, she’d had more assurance than many grownups.
I swallowed. Admiration and longing welled through me in equal measures.
How had I never seen exactly how special she was?
You did, a little voice whispered.
The memory of her sitting behind me on my motorcycle hit me. We’d ridden toward a storm with lightning flashing, thunder booming, and Rory screaming her head off as if she was standing on a hilltop daring the gods to come and get her. We’d laughed. A sense of joy and freedom had surrounded me that day, spurred on by Rory’s pleasure, taking the place of the ugly words I’d just had with Demi.
Rory hadalwaysbeen special. I’d just purposefully put blinders up. I’d had to. She’d been fucking fifteen that day to mytwenty. Was it any better now simply because the numbers on our driver’s licenses were different?
I started the car, backed out, and headed down the cobblestone streets until they bled into the paved roads and eventually the highway leading to our nation’s capital.
The air around us grew increasingly strained. The tension wasn’t just about Ivy, but it was the one thing I could address at the moment. The only thing I could handle discussing. So, I finally said, “Just ask.”
“What’s there to ask? She’s a little girl who’s worried about her missing brother. I’m sure she believes he’s scared. He probably is. Even if he’s holed up somewhere that he chose to go, being alone in the city at night by yourself can be terrifying.”
I heard in her voice what she wasn’t saying.I don’t believe in any paranormal bullshit.
I didn’t respond right away, wondering how much of my family’s truth to expose.
“She doesn’t have visions in the way Monte does,” I admitted. “But she’s tied to us somehow. One time, I sliced my hand on a broken bottle at the bar. I ended up at the ER getting stitches, and the day care called while I was there. Ivy was crying and complaining about her hand hurting, but they couldn’t see anything wrong with it. She was inconsolable and didn’t calm down until I arrived. She was holding her hand right where I’d cut mine.”
I risked a look at Rory. Her eyes were still skittish, and she tugged on the sleeve of her sweater, pulling it over her palms. “What’s your supposed superpower? Do you see visions too?”
“No.” The retort came quickly and naturally. I wasn’t sure why I was willing to tell her the truth about my siblings but not me. Maybe it was an intimate line I couldn’t yet cross with her. Maybe I never would.
It didn’t matter, because the abilities I had—the sense of a person’s innate character and the ability to feel a storm brewing—were nothing compared to what Monte and Ivy had. Nothing that kept me up sleepless. Nothing that would allow me to save someone’s life if we could ever get the authorities to listen to us.
As if she had picked up on my lie, she huffed out a little sound of disbelief. “I should have addedno lyingto the contract you signed.”
My gut twisted, but I still didn’t come clean. “So. You’re working with your mom now. Were you supposed to be on a different case today? Something with her?”
She scooted sideways in the passenger seat, leaning against the door so she could look at me while I drove.
“You really haven’t heard?” Pain filled her voice. The anguish I’d seen clinging to her from the moment she’d walked into the bar on Friday. “She crashed into the Potomac a few days before Christmas last year.”
