Page 21 of Between Here and the Horizon
“Naturally. I’m sure we’ll have cause to speak soon,” I told her, getting to my feet. Amie was still curled tight against my body, but she was still now, rigid, like a frightened animal.
“Unfortunately, I think thatwillbe the case,” Sheryl muttered under her breath.I bit my tongue and rushed upstairs before I could say anything I would regret.
CHAPTER TEN
The Mirror Man
Linneman didn’t sound all that surprised when I told him I hadn’t left. When I asked him to sit on the paperwork I’d signed, releasing the children from my care, he said, “What paperwork?” in the awkward manner of a co-conspirator who was a little too stiff to pull off ignorance convincingly.
My mother, on the other hand, was nearly hysterical.
“What do you mean,you’re not coming back?”
“I mean, I’m not coming back. Not yet, anyway. The CPS woman was terrifying. And they were going to separate the kids. How could I leave them when—”
“I know you’re worried about them, Ophelia, but listen to me for a moment. You’re a good, kindhearted girl, but you empathize with other people way too much for your own good. People take advantage of it. This Ronan Fletcher guy knew you were a bleeding heart the moment he laid eyes on you, and then he put you in a position he knew you wouldn’t be able to walk away from. How is that fair?”
I sighed. “It’snotfair. I know that. But I can’t just leave them to go off to some gross, unclean, unsafe place, where anything could happen to them, and go merrily on my way now, can I? I’d never get another good night’s sleep again.”
There was a long pause, and then my mother said something that made me hang up the phone. It went something like this: “Ophelia, this isn’t because…you know. Because you can’t have children of your own? Amie and Connor…they’re in trouble, and they need someone to look after and care for them, but don’t get confused, okay, sweetheart? They aren’t your responsibility. They’re a job and nothing more. Once these six months are up, you’re going to have to walk away from them and say goodbye. I don’t want to see you getting hurt over something that can easily be av—”
She would have gone on and on for god only knows how long if I’d let her. She probably didn’t realize I wasn’t on the other end of the line for a solid minute.
I tried not to think about what she’d said. I barely knew the kids; I wasn’t living in a make believe land where I’d adopted them as my own and we were all going to live happily ever after. They just needed to be kept safe, and it looked like I was the only way that was going to happen. At least for a little while anyway, until another arrangement could be formulated.
Connor refused to come out of his room. He lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, a rainbow striped hat pulled down low on his head, and he didn’t even blink. I sat with him for most of the morning while Amie slept in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor at my feet, sniffling in her dreams. No matter how often I tried to talk to him, Connor wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence.
At midday, I left Connor’s room to go make some food for them, though I knew neither of them would eat, and I’d made it halfway down the stairs before a figure standing inside the hallway by the front door stopped me dead in my tracks.
Him again.
Ronan.
Leaning against the wall, shoulder butted up against the freshly painted cream plasterwork, dark hair tumbling into his eyes, plaid shirt rumpled and untucked—it was really him. It was Ronan.
I screamed, high and loud, scrambling, trying to run back up the stairs. “Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”
Ronan didn’t even flinch. He studied me with a cold, detached look on his face that made him look more handsome than ever, in a cruel, regal way that sent a shiver through my body. Shouldn’t he be moretransparentor something? I had little to no experience with the recently dead, but I’d read a lot of horror novels as a teenager and ghosts were meant to be pastier and far less flushed in the face.
His cheeks were rosy almost, and his eyes were shining brightly, as deep and dark as ever. I couldn’t move my legs. Ihadto move my legs in order to run away from him, but they weren’t cooperating in the slightest.
I screamed again, hands grasping at the railing, barely able to keep myself upright.
“Jesus, woman. Hush your mouth.” Ronan pushed away from the wall, and then started toward me, anger pulling his eyebrows together into a frown. “You’re bellowing loud enough to wake the dead.”
He walked to the base of the stairs, shoving his hands in his pockets, and I nearly passed out on the spot. “Don’t. I mean it. Don’t come any closer. I swear, I’ll—” I didn’t know what I was going to do. There was just no defending yourself against a paranormal force.
Ronan shook his head; for all the world he looked frustrated. His eyes flashed with impatience. “Ophelia. That’s your name, isn’t it? Look. I already know what you’re thinking, and I’m not Ronan. If we could please skip this part and move onto the less ridiculous part of our conversation, that would be awesome.”
“You’re not…?” He wasn’t making any sense. He absolutelywasRonan. The hair, the eyes, the savage curl of his lip that made me unreasonably weak at the knees. Admittedly, his hair was all over the place, disheveled compared to the slicked back hipster cut he usually wore, but even so there was no mistaking him. My mouth was hanging open. I knew it was, but I just couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
“Sully,” Ronan said. “I’mSully, Ronan’s brother.”
“What?”
“Twinbrother, obviously. We share a passing resemblance, or so I’m told.” He was being a jerk, his voice was thick with sarcasm, and I could see why. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Ronan. He was the spitting image of the man. I still wasn’t quite sure I believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. Identical twins were very real, of course—there had been two little girls in my class at Saint Augustus’s who used to have to wear name badges because they were so hard to tell apart—but this was insane. There was nothing to define the man standing in front of me from Ronan Fletcher. They were the same height, the same build. The way they held themselves when they leaned against a wall was exactly the same; they were carbon copy replicas of one another, not just two people who had happened to share the same embryonic sack.
“Linneman called and told me what happened,” Ronan…no,Sullysaid. I had to wrestle to get his name right in my mind. “I came by last night, but you seemed spooked. I thought you’d be less crazy if I came back during daylight hours. Looks as though I was wrong.”
