“Evan.”
“He was the next door neighbor’s son.” More tears pour out of her eyes. “Your father had something going on with his mother and they took off with all of you… hid out in the forest…” She starts to sob. “Hid out in a cabin in the woods for years. I thought I’d never see you two again, but then you burned it down… but Evan he didn’t make it out and you blamed yourself for that.”
Pitter-patter… I can hear the rain falling.
“Maddie, please wake up. You need to get out of here. Go get help.”
Fire. Blazing. Flames. Smoldering Smoke. Smothering. I’m going to die. He’s going to die. Watch him burn. Feel his pain. The pain you inflicted on him. I didn’t save him. I just ran and left Evan with him, trapped in the cabin to die.
We left him trapped in the cabin to die.
“No…” I trip back, slam my elbow against the wall. Hard. Tears well into my eyes, but not from the pain. “No. No. No. No. No.”
“Maddie, I’m sorry,” my mother stands up and reaches for me, but I step away from her. “See this is why we didn’t want you to remember. The pain in your eyes—it nearly killed me to look at every day.”
“I have to go,” I say, my voice sounding so hollow as I stare at the wall in front of me. All this time and I think I always knew. “I have to go,” I repeat, then go to my room to grab my jacket and wallet.
“Where are you going?” she asks demandingly as I pick up her car keys. “Maddie, you’re not going anywhere until we talk about this. We need to go see Preston.”
“You and Preston have done enough,” I snap, my voice so angry, so dark. But I know I’ll hurt her if she tries to take the keys from me, so hopefully the anger in my voice will scare her off.
She calls out to me, this time chasing me down the driveway, shouting for me to stop. The neighbors outside stand there, watching in horror, but I don’t stop, hopping in the car and locking the doors.
She bangs on the window. “Maddie Asherford, you will open this door. Now!” She wiggles the handle as I start up the engine. “I won’t let you drive off when you’re this upset.”
I buckle my seatbelt and put the car into reverse, feeling like I’m going to puke. The one thing in my life that made me feel whole wasn’t even real. It was more fake than Lily. And as soon as I drive down that road, I’m choosing to let all that go. What do I want? Fake peace? Or the painful truth?
I take a deep breath and give my mother one last look, thinking about how much she’s lied to me over the years, and how I hated every moment of it. Then I back away, heading to my secret spot, heading to Ryland.
To Evan.
Chapter 34
Maddie
I sit in the car for quite a while, knowing that the moment I get out is the moment that I’ll be admitting the truth. That Ryland is nothing but a ghost. A memory of Evan Ryan Wellings, the boy I lost a while ago and who I can’t let go. The boy I counted buttons with, who told me to be someone else, who I left to burn in this very cabin after he kept me sane all those years. I’m slowly remembering, yet forgetting at the same time, memories so distant, slipping away like pieces of sand in the wind.
It’s not raining yet it feels like it’s raining as I get out of the car. Hours feel like they pass as I walk through the field toward the cabin I burned down so many years ago. And when I approach it, it somehow looks faded, more nonexistent, as if it’s just a shadow of a memory sitting out in the middle of nowhere hidden by the grass and the trees.
I enter without saying a word and walk around the place that used to be my solitude. I can remember now, how he kept us here, chained up in the basement below, hidden beneath the floorboards. Lily, Evan, and I, the things they did to us for years until Lily got a hold of a match, struck it, and the whole place started to burn.
“I was so happy when I first saw the fire,” Ryland says from behind me, close but so far away. “All I could think was either I was going to get away or burn to death and I was happy with either way, because I knew I’d be free.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, staring at what was once the trap door that led to where he kept us hidden. “I let you burn… You told me to run and I did… I just left you.”
I don’t hear him step up, but I feel him right behind me, the coldness that brings me warmth. “There was no way for you to get me out.” I swear I feel him touch me, trace a finger up my back, but it might just be me remembering another place and another time that doesn’t exist anymore, even though I’m trying to hold onto it. “I was locked up with chains. All you could do was run and get help.”
“If I wouldn’t have tried to shoot him.” I struggle for air as I recollect pulling the trigger, missing the shot, the man coming at me, but Lily stepped in the way and took the gun from my hand. After that, there were only flames and the feeling of melting. “Then maybe I would have had enough time to get help before the place burnt down.”
“You know that’s not true,” he says. “You knew the moment the place started on fire, that I wasn’t going to make it out.”
I shut my eyes, remembering how he kept Evan chained up, wanting nothing to do with him, but wanted everything to do with me and Lily. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” he says quietly. “What’s done is done. You need to stop blaming yourself and let me go.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to… you’re the only person that makes me feel like everything is going to be okay when clearly it’s not.”
“Everything is going to be okay,” he promises as I open my eyes and face him. His hair is in his eyes that look brighter, not as sad as they usually do, like he can sense that he’s about to be free from the place. Free. “Once you admit the truth, it’ll all get better from there. You just need to accept what is.”
“I don’t even know what is or what was,” I say, reaching for him, wanting to touch him just one time. Just once.
“That’s life Maddie,” he says, my hand moves toward him, so close, just a little more and I finally feel him. Just once. “No one knows much of anything, whether they have amnesia or not. But they keep on living, just like you need to. It would be a tragedy if the fire ended up destroying all three of us.”
I stand on my tiptoes and lean in toward him, our lips so close. “And what about you?” My hand hovers right beside his cheek, a sliver of space between us, just another inch and I’ll touch him.