I’d like to push one of them for an explanation, but Molly turns my eyes toward Sam. “Tell Pa I love him. I already told him, and he knew it anyway, but tell him again. And don’t let him get too lonely, okay? Love you guys, too.”
Molly doesn’t wait for a response, simply slips backward with those last words. And it seems like she’s farther away—smaller, lighter—than she’s been at any time since I picked her up. Part of me would like to stay back there with her, where it’s peaceful and quiet. Where no one is staring at me. Just curl up and sleep. But I’m being sucked back to the front, almost like an undertow. Except in reverse, because I’m being sucked upward, toward the surface.
I feel a little bad for putting the wall back up. It might not even be necessary the way Molly seems to be fading. But I do it anyway.
Sadness hangs in the silent room like a heavy fog. I was only the conduit, Molly’s mouthpiece. Deo and I are intruders now, and I suspect the others in the room are wishing they had some privacy, that we weren’t here to witness their newly reopened grief.
I don’t know what to say, don’t know how to deal with all of that raw emotion. So I steer things back to the practical.
“Daniel, could you take us back to Bart House now?”
Deo looks a little alarmed, but my distraction tactic worked. Daniel seems surprised at first, but he agrees with me.
“No,” Aaron says. “Very, very, very bad idea. You’ve already said they don’t have decent security, and I heard every thought going through that Badea woman’s head when she was leaving. She was ready to rip you to shreds. The only thing that held her back was that she was in the middle of a police station, and she had somewhere to be. And I think maybe she didn’t want the security goon with her to know she failed.”
Sam and Taylor take Aaron’s side. It’s noisy, but at least I no longer get the sense that everyone in the room is going to shatter into pieces.
I let them squabble for a few minutes, then jump back into the fray.
“Listen, it’s after eleven. I’m completely exhausted and my head is killing me. This . . . situation . . . isn’t easy on me physically. I don’t think anyone is going to come looking for me tonight, and Daniel’s orders were to drop us at Bartholomew House. He may have quit the force, but—”
“What?” Sam’s question is almost a roar, and the look Taylor and Aaron exchange make it clear that they weren’t privy to Daniel’s recent career shift either.
Daniel glares at me.
“I didn’t know it was a secret,” I say. Not that I owed him any favors in the first place.
“Whatever. Listen, Sam, I appreciate everything you did, with the references and so forth, but I need to cut my losses. I’m better off in the military.”
“This is going to tear Mom to pieces,” Aaron says.
“I told her before she left last week. She understands.”
“No big difference,” Taylor huffs. “Not like you’ve been around much the past few months anyway. How does your mystery girl feel about you being a soldier boy again?”
Then they’re all talking at once, which seems to be a Quinn family trait.
I clear my throat. Then Deo pulls Sam’s trick with the loud whistle. When they all stop and look at him, he makes a gracious little gesture, turning the floor over to me.
“Thank you, Deo. You clearly have family matters to discuss, and no offense, but I’m tired and I truly could not care less where Daniel works or where Daniel lives. I was simply suggesting that he might have less explaining to do if Deo and I actually show up at the place he told his former employer he was taking us. You can ask the police to keep an eye on Bartholomew House, right? Given what happened today?”
Daniel nods.
“And Aaron, we can set up a place and time to meet tomorrow. There’s a lot of stuff you need to explain to me about all of this. But I cannot handle it tonight.”
As I’m talking, I reach into my backpack and pull out the prescription bottle. I shake two pills into my hand and finish off the last of Molly’s soda as they return to the debate over leaving us at Bart House.
Sam shifts his support to my side, and ten minutes later, over the fervent objections of Aaron and the more tepid objections of Taylor, Deo and I are again in the backseat of Daniel’s car. I close my eyes, lean my head against Deo’s shoulder, and pretend to sleep, but my fingers are tracing the outline of the two pills in my pocket.
The two pills I didn’t take.
Everything I said about being tired and having a screeching headache is completely true, but I have absolutely no intention of sleeping. I won’t be sleeping until Deo and I are on a bus out of Maryland, heading as far away from this insanity as the money we’ve saved can carry us.
CHAPTER NINE