Page 44 of The Rook’s Obsession

The look she gives me tells me she’s not thrilled with the mystery, but she doesn’t push it. Instead, she stands, pulls on her jacket, and heads for the door. I grab the bag I never bothered unpacking, then follow her.

It’s another twenty minutes until we’re back on the highway. This time, we’re heading northeast. She notices the change in direction but doesn’t comment right away, only giving me a pointed look after furrowing her brow. Instead of peppering me with questions, she leans her seat back a little and watches the road with a quiet sort of attention that’s different from yesterday’s thousand-yard stare.

Something is different now. I saw it when she walked in with the coffee, but it’s becoming clearer. Her sharp edges are still there—they always will be, they’re part of who she is—but she’s dialed down the combativeness. She isn’t fighting me on every point. She’s not challenging every statement or looking for exits.

Instead, she’s present. Engaged. Sitting in the passenger seat of a car she chose not to steal, heading toward a destination she chose not to refuse.

For the first time since I found her in Prague, it feels like she’s with me because she wants to be.

“Tell me about the neighborhood,” she requests after about an hour on the road.

“What neighborhood?”

“The one where Laura grew up. Where you grew up.”

Her voice is carefully neutral. Like she’s asking about the weather rather than the most loaded topic between us.

“A few blocks made a hell of a lot of difference,” I explain. “I met Liam when we were twelve. He punched a kid who was giving me trouble. After that, we were inseparable. I came from a… less than stable situation.” That’s putting it mildly.

“How so?”

“I was in a revolving door of foster placements until I aged out.” I keep my voice even because this isn’t about me. “My part of the neighborhood was rough. The kind of place where you learned to watch your back before you learned to ride a bike. I was always placed in homes like that, but when I was twelve, it was the worst it had ever been. But then… I met him, and it got better.”

“How?”

“I started spending more time at your house than my own. Your mom fed me. Your dad gave me a little money to run errands. It was…”

I have to clear my throat over the lump that suddenly forms there. “It was the first really good time in my life.”

She’s quiet for a long time, and the miles roll past before she asks, “What about Laura?”

I hate the way she still refers to herself in third person, but she’s asking questions. That’s still a positive step. “You were Liam’s little sister,” I recall, chuckling. “I never really noticed you until I was around sixteen. Then I couldn’t stop noticing you.”

I think she might be wearing a tiny smile, but she turns her face to the passenger window before I can confirm it. “You’re taking me there, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because the doctor said familiar environments can trigger memory recovery. Smelling the air, seeing the streets. It’s sensory. It bypasses the conscious mind.”

“So you think walking down a street I haven’t been on in more than a decade is going to suddenly bring everything back?”

“I think it might bring something back. A fragment, a feeling. But maybe nothing at all.” I have to accept that as a possibility. “You want to know everything there is? You want to know what happened to you, who you were before the explosion? This is the best shot we’ve got.”

She absorbs this without arguing. A week ago, she would’ve torn my reasoning apart with both hands. Now, she only nods and looks out the window.

I glance her way from the corner of my eye. For just a second, the afternoon light catches her face at an angle that takes me back in time. To a girl sitting on a porch railing with her hair blowing across her face, laughing at something I said, looking at me like I held the world in my hands.

When she looked at me that way, it was exactly how I felt.

As we draw closer to the city, the skyline getting larger every minute, she sits up straighter. Her gaze narrows with an intensity that has nothing to do with surveillance and everything to do with searching.

She might not know it yet, but she’s looking for something she lost.

IVY

The row house has a blue door.