“You’re sending me away.” That wasn’t a question. I wasn’t sure why I’d said the words out loud. My chest was tight, each breath hard-won. “Ivy, I didn’t mean to—”
Ivy took a step forward, closing what little space there was between us. “Right now, I don’t care what you meant to do, Tess. I asked you to do one thing. I asked you to keep your mouth shut.” Her lips trembled slightly, then pulled back to reveal her teeth. “I asked you to trust me.” She turned her head, like she couldn’t stand to look at me. “Maybe I should have known that was asking too much.”
I felt like she’d knocked the breath out of me.
“Ivy, I—”
“Give me your phone.” She wasn’t going to listen to me. She’d shut down. She was shutting me out.
I handed it to her. She popped the battery out, dropped the phone onto the tarmac, and crushed it underneath her heel.
“Ivy.”
Ivy stared at the crushed phone for a moment, then looked back up. “You won’t need this,” she said. She turned to Adam. “You have her bag?”
Adam held it out to me. I stood with my hands to my side. If I didn’t take it, this wasn’t real.
“You can go with your things,” Ivy told me calmly, “or you can go with nothing but the clothes on your back, but I swear to you, Tess, you are getting on that plane if I have to order a sedative and knock you unconscious.”
Adam put a hand on Ivy’s shoulder. She took in a ragged breath. I looked over at Bodie, who was standing a few feet away.
“Get on the plane, kid,” he said gently.
“You can’t do this,” I said. I was talking to Bodie and to Ivy and to Adam, who hadn’t said a word since he’d gotten here.
“I can,” Ivy said, “and I am.” For a second, I thought she’d leave it there, but she didn’t. “I’m the adult here. I make the decisions. You’re the kid.” She brought her hand gingerly to my cheek. “You’re my kid.”
“Ivy.” That was all Adam said—just her name—but she responded like he’d said something else.
“No, Adam. If she’s never going to trust me, if she’s set on hating me forever, she might as well hate me for the right reason.”
I don’t hate—
I couldn’t even finish the thought, because suddenly, Ivy was talking again, and it was very hard to breathe.
“You’re my kid.” She repeated the words. “Mine, Tess.”
I told myself that she meant that I was her responsibility now.
“I’m not your sister.” Those words were harder to misunderstand. “I was never your sister.”
I don’t understand.
I don’t want to.
“I was seventeen.” Ivy’s arms encircled her waist. “He was young, too, recently enlisted. It was the first, last, and only time I’d ever really let go. And then, when I found out . . .”
Found out. Found out. Found out. The words echoed in my mind.
“I was your age, Tess. I was a kid, so when Mom and Dad decided that the best thing would be for them to raise you, I said yes.” She repeated herself then. “I said yes.”
I remember my parents’ funeral.
I remember my sister carrying me up the stairs.
I remember my head on Ivy’s chest.
Except Ivy was saying that they weren’t my parents. They were her parents, and she wasn’t my sister.
She was my mother.
“I am going to keep you safe,” Ivy told me, her voice shaking. “I have to.”
I stood there, staring at Ivy, a hundred thousand thoughts and memories and moments rushing through my head.
And then I got on the plane.
And then I shattered.
CHAPTER 53
For the longest time after the plane landed, I just sat there, staring straight ahead, feeling like a hitchhiker in someone else’s body. My limbs had grown unbearably heavy. I felt like I might never move again.
I was seventeen, Ivy had said.
I didn’t want to replay the words. I didn’t want to picture Ivy at my age. I didn’t want to think about the one year we’d lived in the same house, before she’d gone off to college and it had been just Mom and Dad and me.
Not my mom. Not my dad.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they’d died, and it wasn’t fair that Ivy had taken the few memories that I had and twisted them until I didn’t recognize them anymore.
My parents died when I was little. How many times had I said those words? But it wasn’t true—none of it was true. I wasn’t an orphan. I’d never been an orphan. The woman who’d given birth to me wasn’t dead. And my father?
He was young, too, recently enlisted.
Six words—and that was all I knew.
My parents were never my parents, I thought, forcing my brain to actually form the words. And my grandfather . . . I thought of Gramps forgetting that I existed and mistakenly believing that I was Ivy and that Ivy was his daughter.
Gramps knew, I realized suddenly. Of course he knew. He’d lied to me.
They all did.
I closed my eyes, memories flooding over me. I remember the funeral. I remember Ivy carrying me up the stairs. I remember sitting on the floor in front of Ivy while she brushed my hair. I remember Ivy kneeling down next to me. I remember patting her wet cheek.