Page 138 of Creeping Beautiful

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Just try, OK? If you wake up in a few hours, we can try again. And there’s always tomorrow.”

“But he thinks—”

Donovan cuts her off. “It doesn’t matter what Adam thinks. You’re here now. You’re home. And you’re with us. We’re gonna figure it out. OK?”

He pauses to let her agree but it takes her more than a few seconds to even manage a half-hearted nod.

“OK. Good. McKay and I will be right out in the kitchen. If you need anything, just come find us.”

“OK.” Indie’s voice is small and for a moment she sounds like little Indie again. The little girl I knew before we turned her into… this.

Donovan grabs me by the arm and turns me towards the door. I leave the office and walk down the hallway into the kitchen. Sit on a bar stool and prop my elbows on the granite island so I can hold my head in my hands.

It’s pounding too. Like it was that day everything happened.

Then I have this sudden, irrational fear that someone got to me too.

No. That’s not even possible. I was never one of the kids like Indie.

But Adam could’ve been. I say ‘could’ve been’ and not ‘might be’ because I know he’s not like Indie. If the Company got inside your head, you don’t make it to thirty-seven without knowing that. They trigger them young. And if these kids don’t have people like Adam on their side, they get used up and thrown away by the time they’re twenty.

Ironic then. Isn’t it? That we thought we did everything right for our girl and on her twentieth birthday all that hard work was gone in an instant.

“Well.” Donovan sighs.

“Yeah. At least now we know where it all went wrong, I guess.”

“It’s not gonna help us much though.”

“Do you…” God I don’t even want to ask this question. “Do you think that Indie’s been with this Carter guy for the past four years?”

Donovan doesn’t answer right away and that gives my stomach plenty of time to roil with the thought of someone controlling her like that.

“I don’t know, McKay. But the most important thing is that she’s here with us now. And we need to make sure she doesn’t leave.”

“How do we do that? I mean… if she wants to leave…” I don’t finish. Just let the obvious hang there in the moment.

When I look up at Donovan, he’s chewing his thumbnail, his lips forming a deep frown as he thinks. “We need to tell her.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No. She doesn’t even remember Maggie, Donovan. How are we gonna tell her? And she looked right over at the empty space across the lake where Nathan St. James used to live and didn’t even comment that the fucking house isn’t there anymore!”

“I don’t even know what happened to that fucking house, McKay.”

“I bought the land. After… you know. And then I had the house razed.”

“What?” Donovan looks at me. And for a moment I think… he’s gonna figure it out. That genius brain of his is gonna put two and two together and come up with the square root of something I barely understand.

And then he’ll know the truth. He’ll know what else I did four years ago.

But he just lets out a long breath. “That was a good idea. I don’t think I would’ve thought of it. So… you? You handled all the… details after?”

I nod. Hesitantly.

“OK. Well… that’s good to know. But Indie can’t move forward until she remembers what happened that day. She needs to know, McKay. We’ve come this far. Just… we have to fuckin fix this.”

“She will lose her mind all over again. I think we should just concentrate on where she’s been and who this Carter guy is. He’s the threat, not her. Forget the fuckin’ past. It’s over now.”