I LEFT THE ROOM SLOWLY, SO AS NOT TO WAKE COLE, AND ASCENDED the stairs to the Flathead Inn's restaurant, which Everett had (civilly) broken into. Its homey interior was familiar to me. From the top of the stairs, I saw a corner of Flathead Lake glistening out beyond a balcony. The space was covered inside and out in rows of tables, but off to one side, there was a living room sort of set up in front of a giant old oak bar from way back when that wrapped around itself, an aging mirror in the back, the sturdy bar counter and brass foot railing in front.
A few feet in front of it were two oversized leather chairs on an oriental rug, poised to look out over the lake. Flathead Lake was as beautiful tonight as any night I'd seen it. Clear and still, it perfectly reflected the moon on the surface, so that it seemed a spotlight trailed down the water, lighting a path to nowhere.
Everett was behind the bar, alone. "Where's Mark?" I asked.
"Beats me," Everett said.
I took a seat in one of the leather chairs. He handed me a glass with an inch of amber-colored liquid over ice cubes before he took a seat in the chair next to me. I put my nose to the top of the glass, but smell was foreign. He spun his a little in his glass before taking a short sip. I looked at him perplexed.
"Scotch," he said. "Figured you could use a drink."
"But I can't—"
"I know," he said. "I can't feel it either. But somehow it helps." I stared into the bottom of the glass for a while, remembering watching Cole do this when I met up with him in New York before my trip to Salem. I was searching for answers in the bottom of this glass, a terrible place, I realized, to look. Cole had been too. "Trust me," Everett said again, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eyes.
I took a sip and sunk back in my chair, my posture mirroring his. Everything still felt surreal. The tragedies had made it so even the most mundane things seemed foreign, impossible: The feel of the leather against my skin. The condensation from the glass in my palm. My hair weighing against my shoulders. The places shoes put pressure on my feet. I still wasn't sure it was really happening.
"What are you thinking about, princess?" he asked quietly after we'd been silent for a while.
"Salem," I said.
"Anything in particular?" he asked.
"Yeah, actually. You know, when Mark and I visited there, I kept thinking about how it all seemed off to me somehow. The way they described Puritans, the day-in and day-out rituals of the culture, the worship, the attitudes. And, really, the way they talked. Lizzie never talked that way, you know. I think if I'd spent my life in a place where people acted and spoke like it was still Massachusetts in 1692, which, theoretically, is how the elders raised us, I would have had even more trouble adjusting than I've already had," I said.
Everett pulled himself forward in the chair. "What are you getting at?"
I swallowed hard, scared to admit aloud what I was slowly realizing. "They weren't as terrible as I thought, were they? They weren't tyrannical. None of them except John, anyway. The rest weren't so rigid at all. We didn't spend all day farming or making clothes. They didn't treat the girls any differently than the boys. They didn't tell us why God wanted us to live in fear and guilt. Instead they talked about His love, about why faith was important to us. We had music, dancing. They let kids be kids, sent them to school, let them fall in love with one another. And, short of just the fourteen of them, we didn't have any kind of hierarchy. We lived together as one. Everyone with the same opportunity. Everyone with the same power. They thought so beyond their time, so beyond what they were taught themselves. They were . . ." I paused, searching for the right word, "progressive."
Everett opened his mouth as if to speak but then, pensively, closed it again. And that's when I knew I was telling the truth. I just wondered how long it took me to notice, or, rather, how long everyone else had known this.
"Everett, what have I done? Why did I want to run so badly? Why did I start all of this? Lizzie is dead. Raven is after us, all of us. Who knows what will become of the rogue Survivors, or what will become of the ones they left behind?" My voice shook as I spoke, speaking a fear I suppose I'd always had but took until now to process. How blinded had I been by what Iwanted? And for how long? "It wasn't the prison I saw it to be, was it?"
Everett finally spoke, "No."
He let the word hang there; so did I. I stared into space, as I felt him search for the right thing to say. He chose his words carefully. "Sadie, something inside of you was pulling you to the outside world. It wasn't fair of them to contain you, or at least it wasn't fair of them to expect that none of you would resist containment. And don't forget the threat John made about impregnating you. I'm pretty sure, no matter the time, place, or circumstance, that would have given anyone sufficient reason to bolt. But even still, I cannot imagine it was your selfishness that brought all this about. These things would have happened, anyway."
I didn't hear his comforting words. I fixated on just one: Selfishness. That's exactly what it was. All my actions. All my choices. Following only what I wanted, only what I felt like. And in my wake? Everett and the rest of the Winters, Cole, Corrina, and my family. All victimized by my impulsive, flighty, and selfish nature.
"I'm not even responsible for Lizzie?" I whispered, my voice heavy and tight. I was responsible for her. I knew he was trying to say I wasn't, but then it was clear to me then. I started crying. "I killed her, didn't I?"
"You had nothing to do with that! There's no blaming yourself for that!"
"But John . . ."
Everett scoffed, but I could see real anger in his face. "Don't listen to a word the bastard says. All he's ever done, all he's likely ever to do is try to make you feel like that is all your fault, and that's only out of fear that he'll lose his power, fear that he'll have to adapt to a world outside. Fear and stupidity," he spat. "Fear, stupidity, and being an asshole."
"Everett," I chided. He shrugged.
"Lizzie was born in 1670. Did you know that? The oldest of the elders by several years. That made her 342. And she just died, Everett. And for over 300 of those 342 years, nothing major has happened in this family. But then me. Then bringing you and yours. Then the 28 rogues. Then Raven. Now this." I turned up my glass and drank the rest of the scotch in one sip.
He reached for my hand and squeezed it, but he said nothing. He knew better than to speak. There was nothing anyone could say.
We were quiet for a long time then. Everett stood up and refilled our glasses behind the ancient oak bar, my eyes transfixed on the moon's reflection on Flathead Lake.
After a long while, my mind started to slow. It had been moving constantly, continually trying to think while simultaneously processing emotion—something it had never been good at. And now the emotion was giving way, and I was starting to see reason again, if only the faint, feathery edges of it dusting against my mind's eye.
"Where do we go from here?" I asked, but I meant it rhetorically.
"Think like Sadie," he said. I gave him a quizzical look. "Think like you. Methodical. Procedural. What do you need to accomplish next?"
"Too many things at once," I said. "I need to figure out how to use the reading power I got from Valentin. I need to have a plan for going after Raven, or an even more genius plan for protecting ourselves if he comes after us first. I need to figure out what happened to Lizzie, and we need to give her a proper funeral. I need to . . ."
Everett cut me off. "One at a time. Start at the beginning."
I exhaled and thought slowly again. "First I need to figure out what to do with Cole." He was silent, but something about Everett stiffened. If the world were a bubble with only the two of us in it, in that moment he put me out with everyone to fend for myself.
It was no use saying out loud how I thought we should handle Cole's presence. Everett had sealed himself off. So I thought silently as I tinkered with the ice cubes in my glass. I could convince him to go back to New York. I could take him to the city. I could let him stay, like he wanted to. I could . . .
Everett sighed audibly, and now he was the one staring at the water. Or maybe at nothing. From the look on his face, I didn't want to know what he was thinking.
Then, without looking at me, he asked, "Did you sleep with him?"
His question knocked the wind out of me, and it took several slow seconds to get my bearings enough to talk.
"I can't believe you'd ask me that question. I haven't slept with you. You're the full extent of my century-and-a-half's weirdly limited knowledge of physical interaction, and you think I went to New York so I could have sex with Cole?"
"Don't act so surprised," Everett said. He was so calm. How many times had he rehearsed this line of questioning in his mind? "It's a reasonable question because it would be a reasonable thing to do. You're an adult, aren't you?"
I scoffed, but it came out awkwardly, like a half-cough, half-laugh mess. "I don't feel like an adult."
"You're 145 years old, Sadie. When exactly do you think you'll progress past adolescence?" he said.
"I don't know. Divide the number of years I've lived by the number of life experiences I haven't had, and then maybe we'll be closer to how old I feel. When it comes to this stuff anyway."
"You haven't answered my question," he said.
"I thought my outrage was answer enough," I said.
"Yeah, unless . . ." he trailed off, in his mind, I could faintly hear, Unless you're keeping secrets from me.
This upset me considerably. He wanted to talk about secrets? Everett Winter was the King of Secrets.
"I'm sorry I upset you," he said finally. "But it's a fair question. You trust him. You're drawn to him. You wouldn't keep going back to him if you weren't."
"You think you and I aren't sleeping together because I don't trust you? What happened to our 19th century conversation? What happened to a boy who had a brother too prude to dance with a girl he wasn't betrothed to? The one who wouldn't dream of trying anything like that before things between us were a lot more certain?" I argued.
Everett got to his feet angrily and walked to the window. He put his hands on two panes and let his head drop down. "I know," he said, his smooth voice a whisper. "I know," he repeated. "But that was before . . ."
His face looked pained. "Forget it. If I have to explain it, then we weren't on the same page in the first place."
He looked so hurt that I felt a terrible guilt and a great need to comfort him. Only I was mad at him. Only I wasn't. Was it a reasonable question? To wonder if sleeping in the same apartment with a 25-yearold guy maybe meant more than it had in actuality?
I wanted to go to Everett. I wanted to say, "I do trust you. Completely. I just have these values, and I don't want to break them," but I knew how much of a lie that was. It had become clear in Selcuk when I wasn't wearing any clothes. It had become clear in my head a thousand times when I should have thought of more important things — like wars and powers and death — but instead I'd thought of my stupid boyfriend, the pull I felt toward him, and the fact that I didn't have anywhere near the loyalty to 19th century Sadie that I thought I did.
But what could I have said that would have been true? "You're probably right. I half don't trust you and half think you'll turn me into whatever monster it is you are. So no, I'd like to keep at least this one boundary between us"? Because that would make him feel better.
Whatever the case, I'd thought too long. Everett had been waiting for me to tell him I was wrong. To tell him, no, I did feel what he did. (I did.) To tell him that of course I trusted him, especially more than I trusted Cole. (I maybe didn't.) To kiss him, to tell him I loved him, to tell him he was the only one for me. (Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't.)
I finally went to him, but he shrugged me off. "Never mind. Forget I said it."
I wasn't used to this. I didn't know how to handle him pushing me away. Is this what he felt when I did it? Or did the pain that came from its unexpectedness factor in here too?
So I took a step back. And then another. And then another. I was almost certain leaving was the best thing I could do. Running was usually my only line of defense.
But Everett turned and sped to me, held me tightly at the waist so that our bodies were completely pressed together. "You can't do that," he breathed.
"Can't do what?" I asked.
"You can't leave every time it gets scary or hard. We're going to have tough conversations. We're going to have to work through things. If you leave every time we hurt each other or there is something unpleasant to talk about, we will never have a real relationship," he said, his eyes swimming with emotion.
"What will we have?" I asked in earnest.
He looked directly into my eyes for what could have been hours. "This," he said. "And you don't want this forever. I don't want this forever." I hadn't realized he'd lifted me off the ground until he sat me back down.
"What exactly is "this'?"
"You know what it is," he said. "This thing where we're in love with each other and talk about a certain future but then somehow I have to wonder if you're sleeping with a human in Manhattan."
"You don't have to wonder that," I said.
"Don't I? Sadie, you tell me nothing. Things happen between us, and we don't talk about them. Things happen that scare you, and instead of talking to me about them, you bolt. I upset you, you leave. You worry you've upset me, you leave. We have this certainty that we're going to be together because of my father's vision, and rather than taking that as insurance or an incentive to work on us, you resent it. You seem like you want to break it, just to see if you can. Sometimes I can see what you're doing to break it, and so at least I know. But others times, you're out of my sight for a month, spending all your time with a human I'm pretty sure is actually in love with you, and then I have to wonder. I have to wonder what you wouldn't do to break the beach vision . . . to break us."
Since Everett Winter had an uncanny way of realizing things about me that I hadn't yet realized about myself, I actually stopped to determine if this might be true. Was I trying to break anything? No. Of course not. But was I trying to disprove the validity of Anthony's vision, as if to say to all involved that I wasn't any kind of a sure thing?
Maybe.
Not that I could admit that. "It's not like that, Everett," I said, but I knew it wasn't enough when I saw the disappointment on his face. I had to take some responsibility. "Look, I know I am making moves that are brash and that are pushing us apart at times. I don't know why I'm doing it. Somehow after this many years of living, most of my actions feel like mistakes. My mistakes hurt you, and for that I'm sorry."
"Then ask for help, Sadie. Admit when you know you're doing wrong, let me help you find a way that's right. Communicate with me. I love you, and I'll do anything for you. Anything. But there has to be a little give to this take," he said.
"I can try to be better," I said, "but you have to see it my way. You're asking me to answer more questions, to speak to you more openly and more freely, and to keep fewer secrets from you. Am I right?"
"That would be nice, yes."
"Okay then. But you keep so many secrets from me. And sometimes your secrets are much worse than mine. I don't know what I don't know about you. You at least know when I'm hiding something," I argued.
He thought about this, tightly knitting his brow together. Then he said, "What do you want to know?"
"Are you serious?"
"You're right. We do keep too many secrets. So let's fix it right now. You get a question, and I get a question. Go."