The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,65
recent storm. Each time I passed one heading the opposite way, back toward the lake, I wondered if it had belonged to Liam or Ruby.
But the thought only filled me with rage.
I felt the heat of it clawing under my skin like a charge desperate to find a circuit to complete, to renew itself.
They didn’t tell me.
Two weeks. Two goddamn weeks they’d been gone, and Chubs couldn’t find a second to mention it to me? Lisa told me they’d made contact with him immediately to let him know. He could have gotten word to me somehow, in person or through Vida. He didn’t think it would matter to me that two people we love were just—just gone, and that they’d left Haven, the most important thing in their world, behind?
I knew I was shaking. Crossing my arms over my chest did nothing but trap the furious heat in, wrapping me in it.
“—see that it’s grown quite a bit since you were last here. We have about twenty kids now. The youngest is nine. Suzume?”
Finally, I looked up from the trail.
At one point in its life, Haven might have been someone’s summer home. A secluded house on a lake, with all the privacy anyone could ask for.
Liam and his stepfather had done considerable work expanding out what had been a simple two-story wood house. The dark, woodsy colors, all deep greens and browns, were meant to help the property blend into its surroundings. Despite the sharp angles of its roof, the first—and last—time I’d seen Haven, I’d had the wild thought that maybe the house had grown up out of the forest, rising up from dirt the same as any of the surrounding trees.
As we approached, the familiar rope lines peeked out through the trees, but…wait. We were still far away from the house, and the last time I’d been here, the ropes hadn’t extended this far into the woods.
I tilted my head back, following the line that passed over our heads to where it was knotted to a tree on our right.
It was a live oak, massive in stature. A silver ladder leaned against its side, a bucket of hammers and nails hooked on it. Nestled between the sturdiest of the branches was the beginning of a wooden platform.
“It’ll be Tree House Ten whenever Liam…well, when one of us gets to finishing it,” Lisa said. “There are nine completed ones on the grounds. After some of the kids took to the first one Lee built, he and Ruby decided to create more to give others their own private spaces. Then it just sort of got out of hand, because Liam doesn’t like the word no, and here we are with more tree houses than actual houses.”
“They’re great,” I somehow managed to choke out.
“The kids usually sleep up there, too, unless the weather gets too hot or too cold and forces them to come into the house,” Jacob added.
The sudden guilt that flooded through me was so overwhelming, I couldn’t speak. The missing years had never felt more pronounced than they did standing there. Each tree house was like a cut that carved down to the bone. My body tensed with the urge to turn and run, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.
This is what you missed.
Why didn’t I come back?
Look at what they did without you.
Why didn’t I just find a way to call?
You don’t belong here.
It was the last thought that made me reach up to my throat, trying to rub away the thickness.
“I know you don’t agree with Haven…” Jacob began, misreading my look.
I held up my hands, cutting him off. “It’s not that. It was never that.”
“Then what was it?” Lisa asked.
“Lisa—” Jacob interrupted.
“No, I want to know,” she said, turning to more fully face me. “You never came back, but they never stopped hoping that you would.”
The accusation in her words, a realization of the truth I’d managed to sweep away for a time, brought me up short.
I’d hurt them. I’d hurt the two people who Lisa and Jacob and all the kids here loved. Even old wounds could reopen with the right amount of pressure.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to slam my fist into the nearest tree and let the years of silence between us pour out of me like blood.
Instead, I took a breath. I clasped my hands behind my back. I spoke in that careful, cool voice Mel had coached me on adopting. And that numbing self-control became my