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

“Hey, big guy.” I manage a queasy smile. “I think I can handle this on my own. But Cassie’s still in town somewhere. Can you help Christie find her?”

For a long moment, he’s still. My back is so rigid, it hurts. But at length, there’s a low, pensive growl. And he recedes back into the heart of the town.

I exhale hard. “Good boy.”

The beats of my heart feel like fists at a door. Weeks’ worth of lost sleep throbs at the backs of my eyelids. But it’s a little easier to think than it was before. At a time like this, I should be thinking of Mom, or Dan, or Sammy. Or Gaby. Always Gaby.

And I’m thinking of Maurice instead. Of a day months and months ago, reading an email from the Astronomy Club advisor. Of the tone I’d affected, reciting it out loud.

Read it again without the voice, he’d laughed.

Someone’s shouting in the distance. I can’t discern the distance in the whipping of the wind, but I can make out the voice. Christie Jones, calling out something to Rudy. Without any idea, I think, that the girl she considers a daughter might be close enough to hear her, too.

It’s impossible to tune her out. But that’s just what I have to do. There’s only one way to help now.

“Can you hear me?” I call.

At first, I think they’re beyond hearing me, until I see a flicker of movement by a dark, shuttered ice-cream shop. The Flood stands against the glass facade, wearing my face again.

I freeze, and in response, they’re nearly as still. Then they nod.

I let out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t understand,” I say, “what you were trying to tell me before. And I’m so sorry for that. I know you must be tired of holding this back. But if you really don’t want to do this, then let’s talk one more time. I want to be sure I give you the right answer.”

It’s quiet long enough that I don’t think they heard me. But, imperceptibly at first, the world begins to spin.

The first scenes I see, in flashbulb-quick bursts, aren’t mine. Some are as sweeping as war or famine or disaster, some as intimate as small, barely attended funerals, or the last devastating blow of an argument. They never linger long enough for me to see the details of anyone’s face beyond the despair written in their features, front and center, but the final image wavers for a long moment. Cassie, tucked into the corner of two buildings. I hear Christie’s voice again—whether that’s in the Flood’s projection or here in reality, it’s hard to tell, but Cassie’s fingers curl into her hair as they clamp over her ears, like she can hear it, too.

The Flood doesn’t think like I do. But I know racing thoughts when I see them.

“Focus.” The word’s punched out of me, shorter and harsher than I meant it. It gets the Flood’s attention. Cassie’s face fades back into mine, implacable and waiting. “If I’m going to understand you, we need to use my memories. Okay?”

The scene begins to waver again. But this time it darkens at the edges, narrows into a point, and solidifies into a single, white-and-glass front door.

All at once, the silence shatters into a low, vibrating beat, and the shadows shift into Marin Levinson’s neighborhood, Marin Levinson’s party. I’m standing on the porch, and toward the end of the cul-de-sac, I see movement. There’s a girl on her hands and knees, her breath coming in shuddering gasps as she rides out the end of her first panic attack.

That first night in Lotus Valley, May 24 Rose Colter looked normal to me, digging through her back seat and wrapping herself into her overshirt. But I’m no longer afraid to look into the car—I step to the driver’s side window, my face just inches from hers. I can see the fine tremor running through her, the blank, dazed stare. I can see shock that’s about to tip into fear.

But when I look for something perceptibly different— something wrong in the way she looks, the way she holds herself—I don’t see that.

“Show me another one,” I say, and the scene whirls.

There’s a quick glimpse of a familiar sight—a road, the long shadow of a tree—before we settle into my own darkened apartment. The windows are open, the sounds of our street drift in like the walls are no barrier at all. I can’t feel the temperature through the Flood’s projection, but I can imagine the lingering summer heat in the air.

I stand opposite another Rose, halfway down the hall, silhouetted in the low light from her room behind her. Visibly, she’s more pulled-together than her May 24 counterpart. But as she lifts a hand to her mouth, I see the same fear at the back of her gaze.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, shit.”

In the next moment, there’s grass under my feet, and in front of me, the bright corona of light through the edges of a door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shadow of branches. I turn my head away as I reach for the door. I’m not there yet. That can wait.

I cross the threshold, and step right into the thrift shop that July afternoon, wedged in that narrow aisle between a baby carriage and a group of women. I look at myself closely this time. But that clawing, desperate panic I felt—that’s not there, not visibly. I look pale, instead. Sick.

“Honey? You okay?” the woman with the carriage asks.

Here in the present, I flinch. I—don’t remember that. I didn’t notice, or I didn’t hear.

Next: Me again, on the floor of the Summers’ master bedroom, holding Flora Summer in my arms. “Shhh, shh, shh,” she breathes, not loud enough to be a whisper, as Flora buries her wail in Rose’s neck. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Something in my chest clenches, tight enough to make me dizzy. She—I—I talk to