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She has a point. You can’t plan a fire. Mother Nature always has its own ideas.
Then she gasps and clasps a hand to her mouth.
“What?” I ask.
“I can’t believe I forgot this. Remember yesterday morning when I said a dream woke me up?”
“Yeah…”
“I was going to tell you about what I remembered, but then it got lost in the shuffle with the old bones and planning an impromptu trip to London and all.” She shakes her head.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“When I was with Pat that night in Cage’s van—the night we… God, I hate even thinking about it—he said something that I’d forgotten until I had the dream, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time, or even afterward, until now. Now that Pat is claiming to be a Steel relative.”
My skin chills. “Uh-oh. What is it?”
“I asked him why Diana was hospitalized from the hairy buffalo but no one else was, and he said he didn’t know. But then he said something like, ‘the Steels get what they deserve.’”
Icy shards scatter across the back of my neck. “What?” I grit out.
“I know. Callie, Jesse, and I talked about this one night a while back. We were wondering if Pat somehow poisoned Diana on purpose. It was just a theory at that point, but now…with this new memory…”
“You’re saying he poisoned Diana directly?”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t put it past him, especially now that we know he thinks he’s a Steel. Maybe he knew about his alleged lineage then. I mean, isn’t it strange that only Diana was hospitalized with drugs in her system? We all drank that stuff, and he admitted to spiking it, but I think he spiked Diana’s particular drink with something else. If he’d put the PCP and meth in the punch, it would have either been diluted enough not to make anyone sick, or we’d all have been hospitalized.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “Do you know how much Diana drank?”
“I have no idea,” Rory says. “Diana was a freshman, and I was a senior. We didn’t hang out. But there were people there who drank cup after cup of that stuff, but Diana was the only one who ended up in the hospital that night.”
“Jesus Christ…” I wipe the emerging sweat from my forehead with my hand. “Is it possible he knew then? Is it… Fuck.”
“I wish we could just forget about the stuff for a few days,” Rory says.
“Sweetheart, you have no idea.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner,” she says. “It was purely a theory at the time, but now that I remember what he said that night…”
“The Steels get what they deserve…” I echo.
I can’t. I just can’t with this. Rory and I are on a plane to London. Fucking London, where I was hoping, other than talking to Ennis Ainsley, we could actually spend some time together seeing the city and not ruminating on Pat Lamone and everything else.
So damn it, that’s what we’re going to do.
I meet her gaze. “We’re going to put this on hold. Just for now. Just for London. That’s my plan.”
“Can we, Brock?”
Her eyes are so big and brown, and I love her so much. I’ll promise her anything in this moment.
“Yes, we can, and we will.”
“Iwouldlike to see London. I mean, I wish we could enjoy it without this stuff always hanging over our heads like a rain cloud. I feel like one of those cartoons, where a rain cloud follows the person around. Or like Charlie Brown when he always gets a rock in his Halloween bag. It’s like bad luck is everywhere.”
I smile then. “This isn’t bad luck, Rory. Not for you and not for me. It concerns my parents, but not even my parents. My grandparents mostly. My great-grandparents and my grandparents brought all of this to fruition.”
“But itdoeshave to do with us, Brock, because we’re caught in it now. We’re the ones whose lives are being upended. We’re the ones who will ultimately suffer and pay the price.”
