Page 68 of After All The Wreckage
“Why did you think he might be involved?” I asked.
“He followed us yesterday and then tailed me again today.” Shock reverberated through me at her words. Before I could ask more about it, she waved it off, saying, “He isn’t important at the moment. If it’s okay, I’d like to hear Monte’s story.”
Monte shrugged, and then he told her everything he’d told me and Bradshaw. He repeated the story about his conversation with Dunn and West and their weird reactions, getting jumped in the alley, and the kidnappers recording him talking about the visions while asking questions about Demi and our family.
“So, your mom, she’s like you? She sees things?” Rory asked.
“No. She’s not like me.” Monte’s shoulders sagged. “She can touch people and tell you about them. Not just their past, but like what will happen to them in the future. Like that saying about your life flashing before your eyes when you think you’re going to die? That sort of thing. She sees everything before, but also what can happen beyond that moment. It’s not always bad like with me. Most of the time, it’s not.”
I could see the doubts fly over Rory’s face again. We were lucky she believed us as much as she did.
“Wow. Does it happen whenever she touches anyone? Or only sometimes?”
“Not all the time, but she wears gloves just in case because if she doesn’t, she can’t control when the images hit her. She could hold your hand twenty times, but on the twenty-first time,wham, she’s drowning in it.”
“She sees the person’s future as well as their past?”
Monte nodded, but I answered. “The future she sees is different from the past because the future has choices being made that can affect it. If she touches you today, she’ll see one future, but then you might make a big decision or change your mind about something or get offered a new job, or do something little, like take a different route to work, and all of it impacts everything going forward. So what she saw today might be different from what she sees tomorrow.”
Rory had a weird look on her face. Like she’d just eaten something bad.
“What?” I demanded.
“Just think about that for a minute. Think about what kind of power it could give a politician who makes thousands of decisions every day. What if they believed in her power? And what if they had one future in mind, but every decision along the way might impact it? Wouldn’t they want someone who could tell them if they were making the right ones?”
My stomach fell, and I was sure I’d paled in the same way she had.
Monte pushed the ice cream container away. “You think… You think she’s not with the congressman by choice?”
He’d pretty much said the same thing before and I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but maybe it was true.
Rory shrugged. “Maybe she was with him for other reasons at first. Does she tell people about her abilities?”
Monte and I shook our heads. “Demi might not have been around to teach us much, but that was the one thing she drove home loud and clear. We had to be really careful who we told. Ithad to be people you trusted completely. People who loved you and wanted the best for you.”
And now we were telling Rory. I swallowed hard, something large swelling inside me, but it wasn’t fear I felt about Rory knowing our secrets. It was relief.
“Except on Halloween,” Monte said. “Then, she loved to dress up as a fortune teller and play it up.”
“I forgot about that,” I said softly. I rarely let myself think about Demi, and when I did, most of my thoughts weren’t good. Most of them were about her leaving. Sometimes with a goodbye kiss, but many times without. My memories of her were coated in bitterness and anger.
But we’d had some good times. She’d loved Halloween, and the Victorian we’d lived in had always been decorated to the hilt if she was around. She’d set up a purple velvet tent covered in moons and stars in the front yard, dress in a black gauzy gown, wrap her long strawberry-blond hair in a turban, and tell the parents their futures as their kids trick-or-treated.
Laughter had always rung from the tent. One year, I’d asked her why everyone was always so happy as they left when she’d obviously seen bad things too. She’d told me there was enough grief and sorrow and ugly in the world. It wasn’t her job to share more of it, but shecouldspread joy and hope. That’s what she focused on.
Even then, I’d wanted to ask how she could so easily spread joy to others and then walk away, leaving only pain behind for those she supposedly loved most.
“Wait.” Rory’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Your abilities.” She waved a finger between Monte and me and my heart skipped a beat. Her narrowed gaze landed on me. “You told me you didn’t have any abilities.”
Monte shifted uncomfortably on the stool in my peripheral view, but I didn’t break our stare. Instead, I lifted a shoulder as ifit wasn’t a big deal. As if telling her wasn’t the first time I’d ever told a living soul outside of my immediate family. No one knew. Not even River and Audrey. No one.
“You asked if I had visions, and I don’t.”
“I also asked you what your superpower was, and you sidestepped the question,” she said without any bite. Instead, she sounded resigned. As if she was used to people not being honest with her, and that stabbed at me. That I was just another person in her life who hadn’t told her the truth.
“And… on that note, I’m heading to bed,” Monte said with a wry grin directed toward me.
He put the remainder of the ice cream back in the freezer and started down the hall before stopping and turning to face us. “Rory?”
