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

was Gaby and me, walking from house to house. I almost had fun.

“Felix.” I sound just like I always do—at least to myself. But he snaps to attention. “When something bad happens to someone. You don’t think that might . . . set them down a different path?”

“Well . . . of course it might,” he says with a shrug. “I just don’t like to see someone choose a path because they think it’s all they deserve.”

We go quiet after that. Felix draws my notes to him, and I watch him for a while, flipping through page after page of Lotus Valley’s fondest memories. If I look at him, I don’t look at what’s behind him.

And like that, we count the minutes until our appointment.

Seventeen THE MOCKINGBIRD

I RUN A little water onto my hands, then push it through my hair, root to tip. It feels as windblown and coarse as it did a second ago, but now it’s wet. So that did accomplish something.

I lean in to study my face. This past year, no matter how I felt, it helped a little to know that I was pulled-together on the outside. I don’t know that I could say that now. My skin looks pale under the freckles. My face looks bruised from the lack of sleep. When I look at myself, my own brown eyes stare back, dark and unfocused.

Cupping some more water in my hands, I splash it on my face, too. And as I turn, I just barely see that my reflection stays where it is. She’s looking down at her hands. At scrapes and bits of pavement.

“I know,” I mutter. I get it. Break’s over.

Down the hall, I hear the rustle of footsteps, the hiss of whispers. Felix’s is too low to hear. Alex’s is impossible not to.

“You don’t get it,” he’s hissing. “You haven’t tried to get it.”

Felix mumbles something in return, his voice wavering, placating. Alex barely lets him finish. “It’s bad enough that they treat me like glass—”

They drift out of earshot, Alex’s next words tight and inaudible. I wait until they’re well down the hall before I open the door.

I pick up my notes and backpack on the way out front, almost running into Sandy in the hall. She brushes off my apologies, her soft face pursing. “I can come along, honey,” she says. “That old bat doesn’t bother me.”

I try to smile. Of course she can see through me. She’s used to Cassie.

“We’ll be fine,” I say. “But thank you.”

I step out onto the porch, narrowly avoiding Alex as he barrels through the door behind me. I’m not sure he notices me there. Felix trails behind him, defeat in every step.

“What did you do,” I say.

“I just . . .” Felix says. “Offered. Suggested? That he could stay with Sandy while we—”

I blink. “Felix.”

“I know,” he says.

“You don’t!” I hiss. “What did I just say?”

“He’s exhausted!” he says.

“We’re all exhausted.” We both jump—neither of us saw Cassie slide out of the house behind him. “The Mockingbird’s been taking clients for years now without issue. We’ll be fine, as long as we follow the rules.”

“Wonder if that’s what Lotus Valley Community Radio thought,” Felix mutters.

“I’m not saying she’s reformed,” Cassie says with a shrug. “But hunting got old, after so long. This is how she has her fun now.”

Felix doesn’t look convinced. “You don’t like her, either.”

Cassie flushes. But she tilts her chin higher, like that’ll disguise it. “That’s a personal preference,” she says. Then she deposits the paper bag she’s carrying into Felix’s hands and follows Alex to the car.

I nod to the bag as we move to follow. “What’s that?”

Felix wrinkles his nose. “Tribute.” And he leaves it there.

He barely says a word the entire twenty-minute drive. Alex, next to him, is even quieter. For lack of a rock to hide under until the awkwardness blows over, Cassie and I restart the game in the back seat.

“Favorite soda,” I ask.

“Seltzer,” Cassie says.

“Oh, girl,” I mutter. If I ever make it back here, I’m bringing her a Mexican Coke.

Cassie shoots me that crooked smile. “Worst subject in school?”

“English,” I say. “Which is the only language I speak, so you can understand how embarrassing that is for me.”

Felix, in the front seat, snorts. So at least I’ve accomplished something this afternoon.

I turn back to Cassie, still grinning. “Weirdest thing on your five-year plan?”

That was always Gaby’s favorite question. And I thought it’d be particularly good for Cassie. But her face goes oddly frozen.

At length, she blinks, nodding to the street corner up ahead. “We’re here,” she says.

As we pull over, my phone buzzes with an incoming text. I’ve heard it enough in the past few days that the jolt doesn’t hit me quite as hard this time.

How’s it going? asks Christie Jones.

Not great, Christie.

We leave the car in a bank parking lot—“Tow me,” Felix mutters wearily—and duck through a narrow alleyway. I would have missed the little door, if not for the panel next to it, and the neatly handwritten sign.

please enter your confirmation number.

Felix would clearly rather not. But he keys a number into the panel.

There’s a click. When Felix tugs the door, something gives with a pop that I feel down to my bones. And the door jolts open with a rush of cold air.

Alex takes a step forward, and Felix holds up a hand and quickly says, “I’ll go first.”

“You don’t know where you’re going,” Alex says. But as Felix’s stare lingers on him, he sighs, rearranging his tone into something gentler. “It’ll be fine.”

He all but vanishes as he steps into the dark of the stairwell. Cassie moves from my side and follows close behind, with Felix and me to bringing up the rear.

We leave the door open, but it’s hard to tell—the blackness falls in like a curtain.

The ceiling opens up as we step in, and when I breathe, a rush of cool, heavy air fills my lungs. I don’t get a sense until we’re fully enveloped of just how