Petra insisted I stay over. “You’ll never get a cab out here at this hour,” she said. I glanced at the clock, the hands hovering just past ten. “I’d drive you, but I’ve got a crazy day tomorrow.”
I protested, but it was no use. She was right, I had no way home. Petra made me chamomile tea. “To help you sleep,” she said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“You said you met Dr. Wells when you first started at Barrow,” I said, the thought occurring to me as she was showing me to the guest room, also white on white. “Is she still there? Could we ask her about some of the details? Maybe she’d remember more—”
Petra cut me off with a shake of her head. “No. She died the year after I started. She was older, would have been in her late sixties when she treated your mother. The file seems pretty complete anyway,” Petra added. “Dr. Wells had a reputation as a perfectionist. I’ll keep looking. There are still another few years of sessions to read. Anything she learned from your mother is almost certainly in there. The rest, unfortunately, is not to be known.”
The next morning Petra drove me to downtown Ridgevale. She knew of a bus service that ran to Bering twice a day.
“I’d have asked Wayne to take you,” she’d said, “but honestly, I wouldn’t trust his car to make it.”
“Please, Petra, you’ve already been so great. I can’t thank you enough. I owe you.”
“Well, then repay me by keeping in touch. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a shortage of cool people out here,” she said. “I try to make sure I know all of them.”
“I definitely will.”
“Good. Don’t flake on me,” she warned. “I have your number. I will track you down.”
“No worries.”
I slept a little on the bus ride, having gotten only broken sleep the night before, but my head kept spinning, trying to piece together the day of the accident. Had my mother been unable to convince my father about the mark? Lucas hadn’t believed me, but we’d been dating less than a month. Was it possible that she hadn’t told him? Or had she, the two of them rushing to the hospital, worried that it wasn’t just a headache, but a stroke? An aneurysm? A tumor? I tried to imagine how I’d feel if the action I’d persuaded Lucas to take caused his death. The fated accident a slip in the bathroom rather than the skidding of brakes. Could that be what happened? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I’d never know the whole story, but I knew enough to believe that my mother, like me, could see the mark. And it had ruined everything.
“Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you. Tell me what happened—you saw another one, didn’t you?”
Lucas showed up at Drea’s apartment around four, frantic and petulant. I wasn’t surprised to see him, though he’d never been up before. Drea wasn’t due back until later, so I let him in reluctantly, wanting nothing more than to keep sipping tea and listening to Mozart, but I knew I had to deal with him eventually. I’d ignored all his messages and texts and thrown away the notes he’d taped to her door and slipped underneath it.
“I’m not doing it anymore, Lucas,” I said, walking back to my mug by the sofa.
“What? You mean warning them? What happened? Another one who didn’t believe you?” He folded his arms, preparing for another debate. “Well, don’t forget about the one you saved.”
“Yeah.” I leaned forward to toss the paper at him, glad that I’d been too worn out to burn it or throw it away like I’d meant to. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget him.”
Lucas scanned the paper, confused.
“That’s him, Lucas. The guy in the picture. Eduard Sanchez.”
I left the couch and walked to the window, staring outside at the slow-moving traffic while Lucas read.
“Cassandra …”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Lucas. I’m done. I’m not meant to meddle. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I feel it in my gut.”
He said nothing.
I turned to face him, to make sure he understood me. This was it. No more discussions. No more arguments. This was a decision only I could make, and I felt sure I was making the right one.
“I can understand why you’re upset,” he said. “You should have called me.”
I shrugged, turning back to the window. What I wanted was for Lucas to come to me, put his hands on my shoulders, tell me I was right, destiny was better left undisturbed.
Instead, he said, “I can see you need some time alone. I don’t blame you. I think when you have more distance, time to sort through this, you might reconsider.”
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said softly.
Chapter 26
I almost skipped class, but I felt I owed it to Professor McMillan to go. He’d been great, grading my exams and papers, though he wasn’t required to for an audit student. He even wrote a nice note on my last one, saying what a pleasure it had been to have someone there purely for the joy of learning.
I was late, hoping it would prevent me from having to talk to Lucas. I felt his eyes on me the minute I walked into class, but I ignored him, sliding into the first empty seat and focusing on Professor McMillan, already lecturing. He was mid-sentence when Lucas’s hand shot up.
“Yes, Lucas?” Professor McMillan turned to him, puzzled. I kept my eyes locked on my notebook.
“I was just thinking,” Lucas said, “that it might be interesting to apply the readings on determinism and free will to the hypothetical Ms. Renfield brought up in one of our earlier classes.” Lucas paused, adding pointedly. “Now that she’s here.”
He wouldn’t dare.
“What hypothetical is that?” Professor McMillan asked.
“About the patient and the doctor. The patient thinks she’s in good health, but the doctor finds something terminal.” Lucas paused to look at me. He really was. He was putting my life up for debate. “Should the doctor tell? Does he have a responsibility to share what he knows?”
Professor McMillan thought for a minute, then nodded. “Very well. Why don’t you lead the discussion?”
Lucas stood, a self-satisfied smile on his face. I closed my eyes, clenching my teeth as he repeated it: “What is the doctor’s responsibility?”
Hands went up across the room.