The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

heard from me in a day, after all. Clearly I must be dead.

My stomach drops. Maybe not the best idea to joke about the d word when it comes to Flora, even in my head.

“Home from somewhere,” I finally manage. “I was visiting a family friend in Vegas.”

“Awfully late to be driving,” she says.

“My AC’s busted. Has been for a year.” Under her stare, I find myself adding, “And I left earlier than I was supposed to.”

She nods approvingly. “Something happen?”

For a second I almost see it, like it’s burned on my retinas: that slouched figure standing in the center of the Summers’ kitchen. There’s a sick, sudden drop when I blink, like I’ve slipped under the floor. The thought of him in that kitchen, looking through their fridge, pouring himself drinks, still prickles like a long, fresh scrape. Gaby’s parents moved after she died, that house wasn’t hers, that kitchen wasn’t hers. But it’s yet another thing Nick would get to see and she wouldn’t.

I shouldn’t have left Flora alone with him. But maybe that’s an irrational thought. It’s not like I left her in a car with him.

I squeeze my eyes tighter, then open them again. I’m in Lotus Valley Elementary School. Not the kitchen. Not Vegas. Not with him.

“Someone else showed up,” I say. “Someone I wasn’t expecting. And I didn’t want to be in the same house with him, so . . . I left.”

“So that was the end of it?” she asks. “This person showed up, and you left?”

I laugh. “I think you’re underestimating how much I dislike this person.”

She suddenly looks very serious, glancing back at me. “Did he hurt you?”

It’s a jolt I feel down to the bones. I’ve known Christie Jones about five minutes. I didn’t expect her to look at me the same way Gaby did once, almost two years ago.

Rose. Tell me what he did.

The echo of it trips me up for a second. Long enough that I’m sure she doesn’t miss it.

“Not . . .” I swallow. “Not me. Specifically.”

She watches me for a moment longer. But eventually, she lets that pass.

“So you left this family friend, drove into the desert,” she says, “and then what?”

I remember that look that May 24 Rose Colter had on her face last night: distracted, maybe, but outwardly calm. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how I look now. But Christie doesn’t trust it. She’s right not to.

“Well,” I finally say, “there was some walking thrown in there.”

“Ah, yes. The broadcast.” She glances into the classroom behind her. “I don’t think you said whose voice it was you heard.”

“I don’t think I mentioned it to you at all,” I say slowly.

She shrugs. “I’d very much like to trust you, Rose. But I don’t think I ever promised that we’d trust you without question, did I?”

I suddenly realize that everything I told Cassie yesterday, Sheriff Jones knows by now. My pulse goes loud and fast in my ears.

“Besides,” she says, “I think the feeling is mutual, isn’t it?”

“Meaning what?” I snap back.

“Meaning you don’t trust me,” she says.

“Would you?” I make myself take a deep, shaky breath. “I get what you’ve been saying. And I can believe that in this town, you’re more used to weird shit than most. But if what’s following me is half as scary as you keep implying, I have to be honest. Mayor Williams says you could stop this if you wanted to. And I don’t understand why you wouldn’t.”

She chews on that for a long moment. Finally, slowly, she sets her parasol against the wall. “Should I explain it to you, then?”

There’s a kind of shift in the air. My foot slides back through the dust.

Her smile softens a little. But the line of her shoulders is still taut. “I suppose this answers two questions at once really,” she muses. “How you can get rid of it, if that’s what you want—and why I’d rather not.”

Her purposeful stride slows as she approaches the windows. As her hand reaches for the blinds, she looks over her shoulder and smiles.

“Try to keep your voice down,” she says. “He startles easy.”

She yanks the cord, and the low angle of the sun fills the room with a burst of light and long shadows. Only, her shadow seems to be a little longer than it should be. A lot longer.

Long enough that it splits in two.

Those two shadows split into twos, on and on until they stretch wall to wall, floor to ceiling, writhing and swarming around the fixed point of her legs. They shiver silently at the base of her feet. She glances down at them, patient but firm. And at length, their movements begin to slow, smooth out. By the time she looks back to me, they’re drifting gently back and forth like kelp on an ocean floor.

Christie Jones, surrounded by a thousand shadows, turns back to me. “You see,” she says. “You’re not the only one being followed.”

Eight THE LONG SHADOW

NOTE TO SELF: As catchy as it is to say, fight or flight are not the only two options available to you. There is, according to Maurice, door number three: freeze. It’s simple enough. You stand there with your mouth open and do nothing.

Well. I don’t do nothing.

“What the hell is that?” I blurt out.

Christie’s brow creases. “You’re one to talk.”

“Oh God, sorry,” I say automatically. At least my hindbrain is still trying to be polite. “It’s—I’m—How are you doing that?”

“Me? I’m not doing anything,” she says. “Aside from my damn impressive 5K and my, frankly, superhuman mac-and-cheese recipe, I’m pretty normal as far as people go. This”—she gestures to the room, packed to the walls with inky black shadows—“is Rudy.”

“Rudy,” I say faintly.

“It started as a joke,” she says with a shrug. “But he’s never had the words to tell me his name, and I’m not sure he has a language to begin with. So it stuck.”

We’ve been calling it a flood, Cassie had said, because it’s the closest