“Didn’t turn out that bad, did it?”
“You’re defending my ex?” she asked.
“He sent us flowers and bourbon money,” Roland said.
“I guess he’s not so bad,” she said. “And we did have fun those sex years.”
“Six years?”
“You heard me,” she said.
Roland laughed. The laugh didn’t last long, but it was a good laugh while it lasted.
“So...” he said, perching himself on top of the dining room table. A no-no in the old days but the old days were over. “You’re leaving tomorrow morning?”
“That’s the plan,” she said.
He sighed. He didn’t look surprised but he didn’t look happy, either. Simply resigned.
“And you?” she asked. “Back to the monastery?”
“I suppose,” he said. “But not right away. I don’t want to leave Deac and Thor alone to clean up all the messes. Dad had money, lots of it. Lots of paperwork when there’s lots of money.”
Allison wondered what they would find when they went through the paperwork. Would he find out about the dead kids? The kids who hadn’t been so lucky? Not likely. Dr. Capello had burned all the evidence.
“You all rich now?” Allison asked.
“We have trust funds,” he said, and the tone implied they were substantial but not enormous. “But Dad’s also donating a big chunk of his money to a few children’s charities. He left a separate trust fund just for upkeep on the house, which is nice. I’ll have more than enough money to buy your bookstore if that’ll keep you here.”
“Nice try,” she said.
“Had to do it. Dad would have wanted me to.”
“You want to,” she said, raising a hand to his face. “Because you are the nicest boy in the world.”
It was a teasing compliment but Roland took it hard. He lowered his head and stared at his hands clasped across his lap.
“Am I?” he asked.
“I think you are,” she said.
“I didn’t used to be.”
“You used to be a kid. Now you aren’t. Now you’re a grown man, and a very handsome one at that.”
She stepped between his knees and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and she sensed him flinch.
“What?” she asked.
“You hit my sore shoulder,” he said. “See?”
He pulled the collar of his shirt down and Allison saw the black bruise that mottled his entire shoulder. She stared at it, long and hard, and realized she hadn’t seen him shirtless since the night before Dr. Capello died. And this was why.
“I thought you used the ax.”
“I tried, but it was taking too long,” he said. “Brute force did the trick.”
“You plowed through a locked door with your shoulder.”
“I heard you scream,” he said. “What else was I going to do?”
Far more gently this time, Allison put her arms around Roland and held him to her.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she whispered.
“Don’t go,” he said into her ear. “Tomorrow, I mean.”
“Roland...”
“I know I’m making it harder for you. But I let you go the first time without a fight, and I’m not going to do that again. So let me fight.”
Allison pulled back to face him and gave him a weak smile. “Okay, fight me then.”
“I lied to you about one last thing.”
“Huge surprise,” she said. “What about?”
“Chopping wood. I told you I was chopping so much wood because it was relieving my stress about Dad. That’s not why. I couldn’t stop thinking about you being here this winter, and winter in Arrow Cape is why fireplaces were invented. I wanted to keep you warm all winter. I pictured you and me on the sofa in the living room with the fireplace going. I was dreaming about how I was going to read to you every night before bed, the fireplace roaring in front of us and you’d be lying in my lap half asleep. And I was dreaming about how you would hide with me under the covers when it rains. And it rains a lot out here so that’s a lot of hiding. And I know you’re leaving because we had to lie to you and you had to lie to us...but you lie when you love someone and you don’t want to hurt them. Maybe those lies don’t have to be a wall between us. Maybe they can be a bridge. Anyway, the truth is I chopped so much wood because I want to keep you warm forever.”
It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her. How could she say anything back that was worthy of his confession?
“I...” she began.
“It’s okay,” Roland said. “I know you’re still going. I just wanted to get it off my chest.”
“I love you,” she said.
His eyes widened.
“You can’t say stuff like that to a monk,” he said.
“Let’s go have sex all night long.”
“You really can’t say stuff like that to a monk.”
“I guess I can’t,” she said. “Too bad.”
She started to drop his hand and found that she couldn’t because a monk with a ponytail was hanging on to it.
“Maybe you can,” he said.
“No, you were right. You’re a monk and you’re going back to the monastery.”
He pulled her a little closer to him, a little closer still. He took the flower from her hair, McQueen’s flower, and tossed it on the table.
“But not tonight.”
Chapter 30
For the first time in all her days at The Dragon, Allison woke up before Roland. She got up and left him lying in the bed. In the dark room she dressed and by dawn she could see him and the bruise on his shoulder, a bruise nearly as blue and ugly as the bruise around her neck. She stared at it and wondered why Roland never asked her what she did the day she was gone, what she remembered about the “fall” that had taken her from them. Maybe he’d guessed? Maybe he decided he didn’t want to know. Or maybe he did want to know but knew she would lie to him. And he loved her enough to spare her the lie. Allison wrenched her gaze from his sleeping form. She wanted to make Crescent City, California, by nightfall. That drive would take all day.
Since they were too valuable and too fragile to pack, Allison’s glass dragons she’d left sitting on the bookshelf where bookends belonged. Thora had promised to pack them up carefully and mail them whenever Allison figured out the next step in her life. She’d miss them until then. In the watery light of morning they glinted like they were covered in dew. Allison touched them one by one for luck. Four glass dragons all in a row, with claws that didn’t cut and teeth that didn’t bite and fire that wouldn’t burn.
And yet so lovely. So awfully lovely.
She picked up her purse and her suitcase. She decided to leave without kissing Roland goodbye because if she stopped for a kiss, even one, she’d never leave.
As she was walking out the bedroom door, Allison heard a sound, a sound she’d been missing, a sound she’d been waiting for since the day she arrived.
It was a dark and stormy morning.
She put her suitcase down on the floor by the door and walked to the window. Water was falling and falling and falling. It rained on the ocean and the ocean got wet. She put her hand on the glass and the glass steamed around it. The gold sand turned to brown and the sky glimmered a light black. It looked like Xanadu out there, like a magical kingdom. She thought of poor Coleridge, who wrote Kubla Khan after a vision he had while on opium. Some silly man knocked on his door and jarred the poet into waking. He never did finish his masterpiece. There was no going back to his dream. And for the rest of his life he was left to wander outside of Xanadu but never again pass through the gates.
But she had been allowed to come back to her Xanadu. Coleridge would chide her for thinking of leaving. It would be a shame to disappoint the great poet. Eat the honeydew, he would say, and drink the milk of Paradise. No matter the price, pay it.
Why was she leaving, then? Because of the lies, of course. Because of the secrets. Because
she’d made this mistake before, traded her integrity for the promise of something like a family.
But they were a family, weren’t they? And she had gotten very good at lying. It didn’t even feel like lying anymore. It felt like forgiveness, leaving the past in the past. It felt like mercy. It felt like moving on. The God Roland believed in said suffer the little children to come unto Him. In his sleep, Roland looked like a little child. If God was as old as they said He was, then they were all little children in His eyes, weren’t they?
And what was one more secret in this house packed to the attic with secrets? Roland had secrets. So did she. It gave them something in common. Roland might be onto something. Maybe the secrets didn’t have to be a wall between them. Maybe they could be a bridge.
And...she did have McQueen’s money in her suitcase. She hadn’t given it all away. It would be more than enough to live on for a while...
“I thought you’d be long gone by now,” Roland said, his voice distant as if he were speaking from out of a dream.
“It started raining,” Allison said. “I’ll wait until it stops.”
Roland raised his head off the pillow, pushed his hair off his face and gave her a bemused and sleepy look.
“You know the coast. It won’t stop raining till June,” he said.
That was true. It would rain until June. That’s how it happened out here. And maybe she wasn’t ready to sign up for an entire lifetime of lying to someone she loved, but maybe, just maybe, she could do it a week or two, or a month or two. Or three. Or four...
Allison slipped off her shoes and Roland held back the covers for her.
“Storms scare me,” she said as she crawled back into bed. Roland pulled her to him as Brien hopped up on the pillow to supervise the new developments. “Maybe I better just stay here with you.”
“Maybe you should,” Roland said before kissing her like he wouldn’t stop until June.
Allison had always loved the rain.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Michelle Meade, and my agent, Sara Megibow, for their support and invaluable assistance during the writing of The Lucky Ones. I would be lost in the book world without you both.
Special thanks to the designers at MIRA for their beautiful work on my stunning cover. I can’t stop staring at it.
I’m indebted to Dr. Kent A. Kiehl and Dr. Robert D. Hare for their published research on psychopathy. While their books are not easy reads, they were fascinating and informative, and made me very, very nervous.
I’m also deeply indebted to author and neurosurgeon Dr. Henry Marsh for his wonderful memoir Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the true muse of The Lucky Ones, the windswept, rocky and terribly Gothic northern Oregon coast. I will be back someday.
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