Page 135 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I took a deep breath. “If we just had the other three relics, I…”Should I bring it up?“I can talk to Robert and get that cane…” The thought that we were related still felt foreign and hard to manage in my head, and instead of tackling my new reality, I studied Jessie’s face. He wasn’t arguing with me about going; he wasn’t agreeing either, only watched me like he was considering shutting me up in Haven’s secret room to keep me out of harm’s way. I knew that look.
“What are you afraid will happen if I go there?” I asked. “Will he tell me more secrets?”
He steeled himself and I realized with some worry that those same walls he used to fortify himself against the world were building up against me. “I don’t want him to hurt you,” he said finally.
I met his blazing eyes. The room felt charged with the emotion I saw there.
The doorbell rang. Haven had set up a musical sound that mimicked church bells—one we hadn’t heard because Abby kept barging in.
This wouldn’t be her, would it? My breath caught in my throat as Finn barked at the door.
“Wait here.” The words hadn’t even left Jessie’s mouth before I was marching down the ladder to get to the living room first. He wasn’t keeping another thing from me! We reached the stairs and his hands went to my back. “I mean it,” he said.
I jerked around. “I have a right to knoweverythinggoing on around here…”
He stepped back, not looking happy about it.
Taking a huffy breath, I headed for the curtains instead and drew them aside to take a look at who was waiting on the porch.
No one. Only a clever arrangement of cheerful peonies.
They were beautiful, but flower deliveries were usually reserved for the day. “Flowers,” I shouted back to Jessie. He winced in pain as I pushed back our dog’s eager face and eased past his whipping tail to open the door. I leaned down to gather the bouquet. The best case scenario was that we had a kind-hearted neighbor mourning the loss of Haven, but was it? I searched the distance, hoping to find a good Samaritan, but the frozen grass was deserted.
Jessie leaned next to me, his shoulder running into mine. “Those are from Brecker and Caitlyn.”
No! We’d sent them on their way with an impossible mission at the bottom of the ocean. They wouldn’t be giving us flowers in an odd-shaped… blue vase.
I let out a gasp. An odd-shaped vase made ofblue glass. This wasn’t a vase at all! They’d found the seventh Relic! Against all odds, our strange new allies had delivered the mysterious antique like they said they would. My fingers tightened over the odd texture—the surface was bubbled and holed with jagged edges on the top. On the side was an impression of a sword next to the snake insignia, and on the other was… an “R.”
“Jessie,” I whispered. “I knew we could trust them.”
He covered up his revulsion with a shrug. “This wasnoton the bottom of the ocean,” he argued.
Clearly! They’d sent it to us much too fast. No, Caitlyn and Brecker’s source must’ve helped them get to this. And now? We had seven Relics!
I took the flowers inside. Jessie ran his fingers through his hair, looking overwhelmed, though I was sure he’d never admit he was in over his head. He plucked a note tied to the stems and scanned silently through the message before passing it off to me, so I could read it next:“We’ll hold off Hunter and his crew—as always, it’s a joy working with you.”
Unbelievable. For some reason, we had inherited some invaluable connections. Had they truly chased Hunter away from our place earlier? Jessie looked torn; his initial reaction was never to trust anything, but he’d be as desperate as I was to outwit Hunter. He kept his mouth shut and followed me back to our lair in the attic. My fingers shook when I set the glass cylinder next to the others. “How does the ‘R’ fit,” I muttered aloud.
I rearranged the letters into “DIRE SON.”
Jessie took them from me, and spelled “NERD,” and then with the leftover letters, could only make “ISO.”
“Is o’ nerd,” he read in his best pirate twang.
I elbowed him. He gently caught my arm. “Roxy?” he breathed. “I’m sorry”—he cracked a grim smile—“not for spelling out nerd.”
He chuckled darkly at the answering smile I was barely able to paste to my lips—we both knew how sad and forced it looked. I didn’t have it in me to laugh about any of this.
He tried again: “I’m sorry for—for everything I said and everything I didn’t say. Abby’s right.” He reached into his pocket and sprinkled the tattered remnants of his sister’s note onto the desk in front of me. “I push everyone away—not because I don’t trust you… because I don’t trustmyselfmost of the time. And… that sounds like a line, and I hate that! I hate that I’m some stereotype, you know? I’m the guy who can face sharks and shipwrecks and storms, but I can’t face…” He swallowed. “And I hate what I can’t face even more—I hate that I’m too much like my father.”
“You aren’t!” I had to make sure he knew that. “Youdefinitelyaren’t.”
He let out a grim sound. “It’s just… it would kill me if you looked at me like Haven did, and—”
“That wasn’t your fault!” I also had to make that clear. “Aunt Haven…” I hesitated. Strange after all this, that I’d also discovered Haven was trulymineby blood—these discoveries weren’t all bad. “Haven just let her hurt from the past get in the way of her feelings.”
As much as I loved her, it was her greatest failing.
