Chapter 25

Chapter 25

I set the table with our best dishes, the white ones with the silver rims that used to be Mom's. The turkey's in the oven, full of cornbread-and-nut stuffing, and the whole house smells like meat, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. It's Thanksgiving. And I'm thankful for so many things. One of them is my period, which I got four weeks after returning home.

Two months have passed since the night I came back. Two months of me catching myself just standing there not sure what I was about to do next. Two months of doing things and then not remembering when or how I did them. Two months that have felt like half a century. And not one day, not one hour, not one second of those two months didn't involve me missing Brendan.

The first few weeks were the worst. It was bad enough having to scramble to fill in the huge gaps I didn't spot in my story—like how unlikely it was that three girls who all wanted to run away from home would randomly bump into each other at the Sequoia National Park visitors' center. Or why I didn't call as soon as I was all over the news. Or where exactly we traveled. I managed to find more or less plausible explanations for everything, but it was stressful.

Compared to Ethan's reaction, though, it was a walk in the park.

When he heard what I'd done, he slapped me for the first time in his life. He hasn't spoken to me since—except for during tutoring sessions, which he still gives me, but his voice is completely cold and I can sense his hostility in every gesture he makes. Avery's always trying to mediate between us, but his efforts have been in vain.

I take the orange napkins out of the cupboard with a sigh. He'll probably try to get us to kiss and make up again tonight . Guys, it's Thanksgiving, can't you just get along already? I already know it won't work. I hurt Ethan too deeply. And I deserved that slap. I feel so guilty. I could have saved him that final week or two of pain by calling for help at the river. And if Ethan knew I was kidnapped, he wouldn't be beating himself up about how strict he used to be. Avery tells me Ethan blames himself for this, at least mostly. But he's also doing everything the same way he always did—a leopard can't change his spots, as they say.

I fold the napkins into little flowers and set them on the plates. Maybe it'll be good for us to eat dinner all together tonight, whether Ethan's speaking to me or not. Liam's been spending more and more time on his own lately. His hair's nearly to his waist now, and he's woven pearls into his beard. He should probably spend more time living and less time meditating.

I frown at the table. Something's missing. Oh, right, the candles. I put them in the holders, but then I left them in the hallway. I want to make everything as beautiful as possible tonight, for Avery's sake. He's been in the kitchen cooking for us since this morning. Now he's finally slipped out to take a shower, and I know that when he gets out, he'll smell like Wild Ocean Dream, the blue soap.

I have to stop for a moment and get the trembling in my hands under control. That always happens whenever something reminds me of Brendan. I stand there for a few seconds, lost in my memories. For the hundredth time at least, I wonder why he went to the trouble of getting that soap and tracking down my whole wardrobe. It bugs me that I never asked. In retrospect, I think he must have done it so I would feel at home. He wanted everything to be the way it is here. I guess he should have kidnapped my brothers, too. The thought of the six of us crammed into a camper together actually makes me smile. I wonder what Brendan's doing right now? Playing with Grey, maybe?

"Hey, Lou." The bathroom door swings open, and my brother comes out, barefoot and smelling of soap. "Table set?"

"Of course. I just forgot these!" I grab the candles and force myself to smile. Maybe I should ask my brothers to change soaps. "Oh, and I think your pumpkin pie may be burning, Chef."

"Whaaat?" Avery raises his hands in the air theatrically and dashes into the kitchen. I know he's doing everything he can to cheer me up. I follow him, smiling, and stand in the doorway watching him. Ever since I started hearing snippets of Brendan's story, ever since I lost the things I took for granted, I've known what an amazing gift I have here. I know Ethan's the main reason we have it so good here, and I'm grateful for that, too... but the truth is, I miss my brother. I miss talking to him.

Once we've taken our seats around the table, where the piping-hot turkey is waiting on its serving tray, surrounded by roasted apples and glazed walnuts, Ethan rises from his chair with a solemn expression on his face. Being a devout Christian, he always wants to say a Thanksgiving prayer; Liam usually leaves the room until he's finished, and Jayden sits there pretending he's going to be sick. This year, though, everyone stays right where they are, listening attentively.

"Lord Jesus." Even Jayden's sitting in silence, looking toward the head of the table, where Ethan is standing in his best shirt and his freshly ironed pants. "Normally, this is the day we give thanks to you for allowing us to share in your bounty. You make sure that our table is always richly laid, that we have work and a place to sleep. But today, we want to thank you for a completely different reason. While Louisa was away, you protected her, day and night, hour after hour. You made sure that no harm came to her, and helped her find her way back to us, safe and healthy. Thank you for allowing us to sit at the same table today... and thank you for the strength you gave us to get through those difficult times." He swallows and looks over at me. I smile tentatively. "We want to thank you... for this second chance. And this time, I want to do better." His eyes are shimmering faintly as he adds, "Amen."

I stand up and hug him, and he holds me close. I'm lost for words all over again.

Jayden isn't, though. "Come on, you guys," he says, "there's a turkey waiting to be eaten here. Can you at least save the waterworks for later this time?"

Everyone laughs.

After dinner, Ethan and I break the wishbone, and I get the bigger piece, so I get to make a wish.

I think about Brendan, and about how much I want to see him again.

Everything's been so much easier since Ethan's started talking to me again. He says he noticed almost immediately how much I've changed. He saw how much I was studying and how much effort I was putting into the tutoring sessions, though I sometimes got exasperated with the material.

I'm not getting into trouble at school anymore, either, and I'm following all the rules he laid out before vacation. The weird thing is, they don't bother me in the slightest. I could care less about Hades in Love now.

Ava and Madison obviously thought it was totally cool that I ran away, while Emma and Elizabeth have been mostly eyeing me warily from a safe distance since they heard the story. The news spread through Ash Springs like wildfire; there was even an article in the paper about my return. One week later, two women came from Child Protective Services to ask me a bunch of questions about my brothers, and to ask my brothers a bunch of questions about me. They told us they'd be visiting us once a month from then on, and suggested I go to the school psychologist, but I haven't gone. I feel so terrible about this whole CPS thing—now everyone thinks Ethan is the bad guy. But I know who I'm doing this for. All I can do is emphasize again and again that this was nobody's fault but mine.

It's early December now, and it feels like time is going faster, because so many things are happening to distract me. Jayden's writing a new story about a girl who runs away from home, so obviously he has a million questions. Liam surprised us by showing up one day with a trimmed beard and short hair and announcing he'd converted to Christianity and was planning on getting baptized. School is all end-of-semester tests, all the time. I'm getting my first C+ in math. Avery and I are planning Christmas dinner together, plus I have to buy gifts, and once in a while I get together with Emma. I still feel out of place at school, but I'm managing to hide it. I laugh at the right moments, and I act like I'm listening, although my mind is somewhere in Canada.

And then it's Christmas. Liam and I set up a colorful blinking sled and reindeer underneath the apple tree, while Jayden and Avery hang a string of red-and-white candy-cane lights along the roof. The four of us laugh and mess around like kids; only Ethan watches with a slightly disapproving frown. He was against all these kitschy decorations, but after I got my C+ and Liam suddenly converted, he couldn't say no.

Avery takes Christmas Eve off, so we have time to start cooking for the 25th. We're going to serve cream of chestnut soup to start, and then roast goose with red cabbage and dumplings. For dessert, we're doing banana pudding with toasted marshmallows on top.

On the evening of the 24th, Avery and I are totally dead. I've got bits of dumpling dough and pureed chestnut sticking to the ends of my hair. As I'm rinsing it out in the sink, I realize that my hair's finally reached my shoulders again. I give my reflection a melancholy smile and feel a pang in my heart.

"Hey, Lou, hurry up!" Liam calls from the living room. "Hero of the Week's about to start!" I look at myself again. The new me doesn't feel like quite as much of a stranger anymore. Outside and inside match again somehow.

When I come into the living room, my brothers are already gathered around the TV. Even Jayden's here, since he finally finished that short story about the runaway girl earlier today. I squeeze onto the sofa between Ethan and Liam and pick up the bag of chips lying on the table. The second I get it open, Jayden walks over and grabs an enormous handful, then retreats to the Moroccan pouffe ottoman from Dad's wild years.

"I can't believe you still have room to eat anything." Avery blinks at me in amazement. "You ate half the dumpling dough."

"That was you, not me."

"Can you guys be quiet? I can't hear!"

"Jeez, Ethan, you must be crushing pretty hard on David O'Dell." Jayden sighs.

"Shut up."

There's a loud pop.

"Since when do you drink alcohol?" Avery asks Liam, who's putting a freshly opened bottle of beer to his lips.

"Since I became a Christian." Liam grins.

"You're drinking to forget, huh?"

"Be quiet already, Jay."

"Tell Lou to stop chewing so loudly, then."

"Lou, don't chew so loudly," Ethan says, sounding defeated. "Now, can we please listen to this? I think they said today's hero is from Canada..."

Everyone goes completely silent immediately. We all watch the images flicker across the screen: a steely blue sky; a wintery forest full of snow-covered pines, spruces, and larches; a single blackbird soaring above the treetops; a grey-green river. In the background, a mountain range rises majestically into the heavens.

I recognize everything. Of course it's not exactly the same area, but it looks just how that part of Canada would in winter. My mind wanders to the lake singing itself to sleep as it hibernates. I swallow my mouthful of chips with some difficulty.

"Today's Hero of the Week comes from the lonely Yukon Territory in Canada," I hear David O'Dell say. The once-shy moderator smiles confidently into the camera. "Some people think of the Yukon as a place for hermits and eccentrics, but the Great Frozen North is also a land of myth and mystery, of wisdom dating back thousands of years. The original inhabitants believed that the raven brought the sun each morning, and that bears had souls most similar to our own."

"Did you learn that on your trip, too?" Jayden crunches his chips way too loudly.

I don't respond. I go right on staring at the television, mesmerized.

"Today's guest may be a lone wolf of sorts, but he's definitely a hero as well. At the age of just twenty-two, he's already saved five lives. Please join me in welcoming Brendan Connor."

Brendan ?

I barely register the euphoric applause as the hero steps through the door into the studio. My hand flies to my heart. Bren! No, that's impossible. I close my eyes and open them again. It's still Bren. He looks so familiar, in his old dark-brown cargo pants and his black hoodie. It's like I just saw him yesterday, just touched him yesterday. My throat tightens, and my hands start shaking wildly. I'm totally helpless against the pain and the longing ambushing me from the shadows. A storm of bittersweet memories rolls over me. Involuntarily, I crumple the bag of chips into a ball as I try and fail to follow what the moderator's saying. I half-hear something about Bren having saved a five-person family from a grizzly attack, but mostly I'm focused on other things: the way he keeps shyly averting his eyes, seemingly embarrassed at all this attention; the way he's trying to get out of the blinding spotlight by stepping further and further away from the moderator. Mentally, I tell him to be strong, and I wonder if he knows I'm watching. Yeah, I'm sure he knows, or at least he's hoping.

A strange feeling comes over me as I watch him and David O'Dell. What if he doesn't want me anymore? What if, now that he's Hero of the Week, hundreds of people start sending him offers of marriage?

I'm squeezing the bag so hard that the chips are probably crumbs.

"Jeez, he's got some balls," Jay snorts admiringly. "Yells at a hungry bear to distract it, without first figuring out where he's gonna escape to?"

"What would he have done if he hadn't made it up the tree?" Liam adds. "Hallelujah!"

"And then he carries that dude for miles and miles through the ice and snow so he won't bleed to death... Hey, Lou, throw the chips over."

Mechanically, I stretch out my hand, and Jay takes the bag.

"The hell? They're totally smushed!"

I can't reply. I can't take my eyes off Brendan.

"So, Brendan," David O'Dell says, "among all of our many Heroes of the Week, do you have a personal favorite that you think ought to win Hero of the Year?"

"Not a hero, a heroine," he replies quietly, and then turns to look into the camera for the first time. "She was never on this show, but she did save my life."

David O'Dell beams. "A hero saved by someone else? Sounds interesting. Who is she?"

The camera zooms in on Brendan's face, so that it fills the entire screen. I see his pupils dilating, flooding the brown of his eyes—like he's looking at me. Before I realize it, I'm clutching the silver coin on my necklace.

"A girl from Nevada. She showed me that I'm not quite as bad of a person as I always thought. She believed in me when I had stopped believing in myself." He clears his throat briefly. "She brought sunlight into to my darkness, and showed me that grey is really just silver that doesn't shine. And I want to thank her for that, because it's the only reason I'm here today."

I must have made some kind of noise, because I feel all of my brothers giving me sidelong glances. Jayden especially. I can hear him practically grinding the chips in his hand to flour. The cameraman zooms in even closer, probably sensing that this is the love story of the year. Bren's eyes are shimmering. I can only imagine how difficult this is for him.

"When we parted ways, she wanted me to make her a promise. At the time, I wasn't sure whether I could keep it, but today..." He swallows so hard that his Adam's apple bulges out. "I want her to know that I'm in therapy and... and that I'll be here waiting for her whenever she's ready to give me another chance."

The image on screen blurs into a wet veil. The pain of having lost him gives way to an immense feeling of joy and longing that hurts just as much, maybe more, but in a different way. He wants to try. He still wants me.

As if in a trance, I get up and walk to my room. I can't stay in there with my brothers, not right now. I throw myself on the bed, and through the closed door, I hear the moderator summarizing the past month.

The things Bren said about me wash through my head as the tears stream down my face. When I got home nearly four months ago, I knew that he'd made the right choice—for me. But now I understand that he made the right choice for us, too. Because now I know that my feelings are real. They're not Stockholm syndrome, they're not sick or abnormal. I would have fallen in love with him anyway; he just made it unnecessarily hard on himself by kidnapping me. I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling, but all I can see are colors and mental snapshots of our summer together. I miss the forest and the scent of pine needles, I miss Grey and the cool morning air. The scent of firewood. I miss Bren. June is so far off.

The minute the closing credits music starts, Jay barges into my room without knocking, and slams the door shut behind him. "Grey is silver that doesn't shine?" He raises an eyebrow at me—curious, not angry. "A girl from Nevada?"

I straighten up, already trying to figure out how to talk my way out of this, but I can't come up with anything on the spot. "Jayden..."

"I never did buy that story about the two girls."

I stare at him in horror. There are still tears in my eyes, so I can only see his blurry outline. "Why not?"

"The answers you gave me... none of it really sounded like you." One corner of his mouth quirks upward. "Can I sit?"

"Sure." I pat the blanket invitingly.

He drops down beside me, then scoots back to the wall and puts his feet on the edge of the bed. "Okay, little sister. Who's Brendan Connor, and what did you do with him?"

Suddenly, it's all too much for me. I'm desperate to share my secret with someone else, to have someone else know what I went through, how terrified I was at first with Bren, and how that fear turned to trust and then love. I want to have someone nearby that I can cry to, someone who will understand me.

Weird—I never thought it would be Jayden. I always figured I'd end up telling Avery, many years from now. Then again, Jayden's the one who loves crazy stories.

"You can't tell anyone," I say now. "You have to swear."

"Hm." Jay regards me indecisively. "Did he do something bad? Or did you?"

"He did."

Jayden's expression darkens.

Hastily, I shake my head. "Not the way you think."

He doesn't look convinced.

"Really," I add emphatically.

His face relaxes again, and then he nods slowly. "Okay, I swear."

"And you have to promise me something else."

"What?"

"You have to drive me to Sequoia National Park on June 25th."

He gives me a baffled look.

"Without the others finding out. And then, once I'm gone, you can tell them everything. The whole truth."

"Lou, what are you talking about? What do you mean, when you're gone? I'm not driving you somewhere so you can disappear again. You're out of your mind."

"I just want the summer."

Jayden sighs. "I probably don't really want to hear this story, do I?"

I smile, and the question makes me think of Brendan. Under different circumstances, with different pasts, I bet Brendan and Jay would have gotten along great. I clasp Bren's silver coin.

"Is that from him?" Jay eyes it quizzically.

I nod and hold the charm out. "He has this design tattooed on his back, too. This coin used to belong to his mom."

"Cool."

"But sad, too." I let the pendant drop and take Jay's hand. I'm going to need it—otherwise I'll never find the words to describe everything that happened to me.