Page 58 of The Luminaries
“No,” he begins.
“Is it because I’m not radioactive anymore andnowyou have permission to be my friend?Nowthat I’ve got that glossy Luminary stamp of approval?”
“No, Winnie.” He reaches for her, but she sidles away. His hand falls. “It’s not like that. I’ve had my own stuff going on, okay?”
“No,” she snaps. “Not okay, Jay. You were my best friend. You and Erica. And I needed you, but you weren’t there.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yeah, well, you’re about four years too late.” Winnie snatches the flannel from his grip—blessedly dry—before flying down the stairs to once more face the rain.
Jay doesn’t follow.
CHAPTER30
By the time Winnie gets home, Mom has gone to her shift at the grocery store and Winnie feels the beginnings of a cold. Everything aches, her throat is starting to swell, and her ankle is puffy too. Jay’s flannel hadn’t stayed dry for long on the bike ride home, and she’s frozen to her core by the time she strips down and crawls into bed to finally crash.
She sleeps horribly, awakens even worse, and she’s so glad she didn’t have to go to school today. She doesn’t want to talk about last night or the banshee. She doesn’t want to deal with Marcus pretending they’re friends. She doesn’t want to be looked at by anyone except the bear on the back of her door.
She’s never noticed before that its eyes sort of follow her wherever she moves.
For four years, she has wanted to be a Luminary again. Welcomed back to the Wednesday estate, back into the clan, back at the Sunday training grounds. And for herwholelife, she has wanted to be a hunter. But now that she has it all, it’s nothing like she’d hoped for.
Part of that has to do with what she said to Lizzy and Jay—and what Mom had vented about too: Why is everyone kissing their buttsnow?Another part of it is that she’s still living with this lie about a banshee she didn’t kill. But most of it is that nothing feels like she remembers.
Sheremembersgiggling with Erica in the back seat of Marcia’s van. Sheremembershiding with Jay in a dusty closet while Erica searched for them in a sad three-player version of sardines. And sheremembersher dad cooking dinner most nights because his job as an estate gardener ended way before Mom’s work as Lead Hunter. Darian still lived at home then too, and it was just all sodifferent.
Winnie wasn’t naive enough to think she would get all that back if she could regain the family’s standing in the Luminaries…
But she also was kind of that naive, and as she stares at the bear banner from her spot huddling beneath her covers, she almost wishes she could feel those banshee tears again. It had cleaned out so much poison. It had freed up so much that is now festering inside again.
Winnie flings off her covers and stumbles from bed. Her feet kick crumpled nightmare sketches across the carpet. She grabs a sweatshirt, leaves the room, and aims crookedly down the hall, her ankle tender but manageable, to where the attic hatch awaits. After dragging a folding stool from Darian’s room (because of course he has a stool for reaching the top shelf in his closet), she yanks down the creaking panel of wood.
Old dust whips down. Winnie coughs, which then triggers snot-coughing, and she has to hurry into the bathroom to blow her nose. Three times. And grab a cough drop.
Finally, sniffly but soothed by Ricola, she unfolds the ladder on the hatch, and clambers into the attic. She pulls a dangling string and the lone light bulb winks on, revealing the slanted eaves of the roof and old pink insulation.
There isn’t much in the attic. Mom has never been a hoarder, and Dad was super organized (Darian comes by his passion for clean lines and containers honestly). So there are only a handful of boxes to explore, one containing holiday decorations, one containing old baby clothes Mom insists she’s keeping in case Winnie or Darian ever need them, but they all really know it’s just because Mom’s a big softie. And finally, the box in which Darian must have found the locket.
It’s the biggest of the three, and when Winnie peeks inside, she spies a bubble-wrapped clock that was Grandma Winona’s, a bubble-wrappedmug that was Grandpa Frank’s, and then… another box. One Winnie suspects holds stuff that used to be Dad’s.
She grabs the box. After all, it’s the reason she came up here. She has always suspected her mom hadn’t trashed everything from Dad, and the locket is confirmation of this.
It’s a big shoebox that probably held snow boots once upon a time. Now, as Winnie folds up the lid, she finds some old sketches she’d given Dad. He’d loved flowers, so she had attempted tulips, carnations, and goldenrods. They’re all terrible, since Winnie had still been new to drawing and her interest had never been in plants.
A weird feeling tickles through her. It’s warm and heavy at the same time. Like she’s sad to see these flowers—sad Dad hadn’t taken them with him (which is ridiculous)—but also pleased to know Mom kept them.
She hadn’t needed more confirmation of her mom’s awesomeness and Dad’s crappiness, but she has a boxful of proof anyway.
Below her old sketches, she finds photographs. The real kind, since these came from back when there were more real cameras than phones and real film instead of a cloud and they feature Mom and Dad, not much older than Winnie is now. Like Darian, Mom went away for a year to Heritage University. Her mother, Grandma Winona, died facing a pack of hellions that had escaped the forest. Mom had been devastated and abruptly renounced all things hunter or even Luminary. So the Council had given her permission to leave, along with the usual stipulations:Never speak of the forest, never speak of the Luminaries.
While away, though, Mom had realized—just as Darian had—that Hemlock Falls was where she belonged and hunting was in her blood. Shemissedthe forest, despite what it had taken from her. But in that year away, she’d also met Bryant, a landscape architecture grad student. He was four years older and almost done with his master’s; he begged Fran not to dump him when she went back home; and somehow they’d secretly continued dating until his graduation. Then Mom had brought him to Hemlock Falls, where he had, like all other outsiders, been thoroughly vetted by the Wednesdays before being welcomed in.
In the first photo Winnie studies, Dad has a very unfortunate mustache and sideburns—and he’s grinning like the happiest man on earth,his arm slung around a much younger Mom. She is leaning into him, looking safe. Relaxed in a way Winnie has forgotten her mom can ever look. Behind them is a building that must have been somewhere outside Hemlock Falls, since Winnie doesn’t recognize it.
She sniffles. Wipes her nose on a tissue in her pocket, and looks at the next photo. It’s Dad and Mom in front of this house, Mom’s hands on her belly even though there’s no belly yet to see. The house looks a lot better than it does now.
And Mom does too. She grins. Dad grins. They are happy and blissfully in love. This is not a man who is secretly the enemy. This is not a man who is plotting to betray his family and steal Luminary secrets for the Dianas. This is a man whom the Wednesdays approved and who is about to become a papa.
