But that’s just the start of the things I have to do.
The connecting door is slightly ajar. There’s silence on the other side. Dominic is in one bed, sleeping. But I know that with the slightest noise, even the smallest disturbance, he’ll bolt awake, alert and alarmed, so I move slowly to where Alexei sits in an overstuffed chair that’s pointed toward the window. The curtains are open just a crack, and the light from the parking lot slashes across his face, an eerie yellow glow. He’s supposed to be keeping watch, I know, but I don’t wake him. He needs his rest.
And I need the keys.
They’re on the tiny table between the two beds. I pick them up gently, close the door behind me when I go.
Outside, I pull on my cardigan, not looking back. I just keep walking to the Buick. Only Jamie’s voice can stop me.
“Don’t do it, Gracie.”
He’s not yelling, but the words are too loud in the still night air. Dominic or Alexei will hear him.
“Do what?” I ask, turning back.
Jamie gives a weary laugh. “Do you really think I don’t know where we are? We’re five miles away, Gracie. I’d know it blindfolded.”
He coughs then, doubles over. His color is better, but he is so far from well that I step toward him, half-afraid that I might need to catch him before he hits the ground.
Jamie holds out a hand, stopping me.
“I’m fine.”
He is so not fine.
“Go to bed, Jamie.”
“Okay.” My brother gives me a smile. “When you do.”
“I can’t sleep,” I say.
“Then neither can I.”
“Jamie, you’re …”
“You can say it, you know. I’m lucky to be alive. I’m not ashamed of that.”
He’s right, but that’s not the point.
“You need to rest, Jamie. You need to get better.”
“I need to keep my kid sister alive, is what I need to do. Even if she’s dead set against it.”
I wish he were joking, but he’s not. I wish he were wrong, but Jamie is never wrong. Ever.
“I just …”
The town is a few miles away, and I glance in that direction, unsure of what I’ll see.
“I know, Gracie.” Jamie’s voice is soft and understanding. He’s maybe the only person in the world who has some idea why I’m out here in the dark, what has called me to this place.
“I need to see it,” I say.
“Okay,” Jamie says, no longer fighting. “Tomorrow we’ll tell Dominic we need to make a pit stop. He won’t like it, but—”
“Tonight,” I say. “Alone. I need to see it alone.”
But Jamie’s already shaking his head. “Alone isn’t an option.”
“No.” I’m not shouting, but I want to. “You saw it after, didn’t you? Well, not me. I was …”
Tied up. Locked up. Dying.
Jamie doesn’t need me to say any more. When my brother walks closer, every step is a struggle. He’s going on steam and sheer force of will. He should be in a hospital. At the very least a rehab center or that motel bed. But he’s not going back. Not without me. He just drags himself to the Buick and reaches for the door.
“You drive.”
It’s been almost five years since we moved here, since Dad surprised our mom with a little white house in town. Since they sat Jamie and me down and explained that Fort Sill would be Dad’s last post, our last stop. But it wasn’t the end, our parents told us. No. It was the beginning.
But of what we had no idea at the time.
“It’s up here,” Jamie tells me. I turn the Buick off the highway and onto a street that is bathed in the yellow glow of streetlights. They’re so different from the gaslights of Adria; their light doesn’t flicker. The fire inside them doesn’t burn. Everything around me feels too foreign, too new. The town is small, even by US standards, and it feels like we’re a world away from Embassy Row.
It’s the dead of night, but morning comes early in an Army town, and I know the streets won’t stay empty for long. A few lights shine inside the cute little shops on Main Street, but there is one shop that stands in darkness—like a string of Christmas lights with one blown bulb, a solitary dark spot, fading into the night.
That is where I park. And sit. And stare.
“We don’t have to get out,” Jamie tells me.
I turn off the Buick. “Yes. I do.”
I honestly don’t know what I expected to see. It’s been three years, after all. “It’s still …” I start, easing closer to the brick walls, a burned-out shell of what used to be one woman’s dream.
“Dad never sold it,” Jamie says. “He hired a crew to come in and clean it up, remove the debris and make it safe if kids should wander in or something. But yeah. It’s still the same. I think he … I think he was afraid to change anything without her permission, you know? It’s still hers. In his mind, it will always be hers.”
I remember the first time our mother ever brought us here. She made us stand across the street with our eyes closed until she yelled, “Ta-da!” Then we opened them to find her standing in front of an old hardware store, her arms thrown out as if she was showing us a palace.