SCINTILLATE - Book #1 of The Light Key Trilogy

Chapter 15

I had never felt so alone. So freakishly, echoingly alone.

My cell phone rang. I stared at the phone as it trilled. It was my father. The call went to voicemail. Mari and Dun didn't say anything, and we silently waited for the voicemail chime.

He wanted to know where I was, said he knew that I hadn't gone to school and that Mari and Dun weren't there, either, and demanded I go home immediately and wait for him there.

I wouldn't be doing that.

"Is a mounted posse going to come after us now?" Mari asked.

"I love it when you say things like mounted," Dun joked.

"You're twelve."

I rolled my eyes, and my phone rang again. Irritated, I answered without looking. "What!"

"Pardon? Cora?" Finn's gorgeous voice.

"God. I'm sorry. I thought you were my father."

"You and your friends aren't in school. And besides the bothersome fact that I didn't get to inscribe something cleverly stupid into your yearbook, I got worried." There was an adorable pause. "Truth is, I was afraid you were sick again."

"No. I'm not sick. I've... There's something I had to do."

"Are you okay?"

Finn's asking made the sadness pressing just under my heart's surface swell and rise to my throat. "No."

"Can I help?"

I was about to say no, but who else could wrap me in his warm aura and comfort me? I wanted Finn's arms around me. I wanted to sink into him. But I had an ulterior motive, too. I didn't know when, I didn't know how, but finding my way to Ireland was suddenly very crucial. "Yes. Meet me at the rec center in fifteen minutes?"

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Dun squeezed my shoulder as I slid from the car. I tried not to wince when he touched the tender spot where I'd been inexplicably tattooed. I hurried to the rec center with a new alertness. The flood of images from the key rotated over and over in my head. Besides the dirt, fear stuck to my skin, making me feel the need to be more on guard. I looked over my shoulder more than once as I walked through the tree-lined parking lot. Finn hadn't arrived yet.

The copy of my mother's letter and the key rested against my heart in my inside coat pocket. Emotionally wrung out, I leaned against the wall. Without warning, I burst into tears, crying into my hands. I cried for my mother, who was either massively brave or massively stupid. I cried about my father, who had let me down all while trying not to let her down. I cried for myself. I couldn't stop. Tear after tear dropped into my dirty palms.

There's a difference between old tears and new. The old ones you've held back scrape from the inside when they come up. My throat ached with the effort to battle them. I'd been battling them for so long. Too long. The new ones flowed freely, a faucet of emotion that felt like it would never run dry.

There was more to my mother than the few memories Dad thought he could hide in a box. We had something dangerous in common, and I had a right to know what it was. I was at the core of a secret storm swirling around me, and my father wanted to cover my eyes.

I would not let his secrets blind me anymore.

Two warm hands covered my own and a tender kiss graced my forehead.

I knew who it was; I'd felt him approach.

Finn pulled my hands from my face and wiped my tears with the hardened pads of his fingers. "What's the matter, Cora?"