“No one is home yet, but Diane should be here any minute,” Veronica says, hanging her coat on a rack by the front door. “She had an errand to run after work, but it shouldn’t take long. So it’s just us until she gets here. Oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. Veronica Warren,” she says, sticking her hand out to shake. “And this is Millie.” She indicates the baby, who is toddling precariously around the room, arms outstretched to touch everything in her path.
Millie. That’s right. I’d forgotten that her name would be different here, even though Rose already told me. I wonder if Mom’s grandparents changed the nickname on purpose when they took her in, or if they simply never knew what her own parents called her.
“Nice to meet you.” My hands feel numb, and I don’t think it’s from the cold can of soda.
“So,” Veronica says, sitting across from me in a plaid armchair and folding her hands on her crossed knees. “Tell me about yourself.” She stares at me intently with blue eyes just a shade darker than my mom’s.
“Um,” I say, feeling like I’m being interrogated. My hands are clammy; I wipe them on my jeans. “Well, I’m Justin. I’m eighteen.”
“Have you graduated yet?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you in school?”
Wow. I am not prepared for this. “I’m homeschooled,” I blurt out in a moment of brilliance. “So my breaks are . . . different.”
“Hmm,” Veronica says, and I can practically see her make a mental note. “And you decided to use your break from school to come visit Rose.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
A tiny laugh escapes involuntarily. Is my entire family allergic to subtlety? I always figured that Mom was a drunk, and I had my neurodivergent brain, and Stan was, well, Stan, but Veronica is not any of those things—I think—yet here she is blasting away with her shotgun full of questions. Maybe it’s genetic. “I just . . . wanted to see her,” I say.
“But you knew we all had the debate this weekend, correct?”
I nod, swallowing. My mind was not meant to race this fast. It already has a cramp. “I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“But—”
Just then, the front door swings open. Literally anyone could walk in and I’d be happy to see them. Dave. Stan. The cast of Jersey Shore. Anyone who can provide a temporary reprieve from this barrage of questions from this woman who looks and sounds like my mom but is not my mom and is sending me into full-on existential-crisis mode.
But then I see who it is, and suddenly, it’s worse.
“Look who it is, sweetheart!” Veronica coos to the baby, who lets out a squeal of joy. “It’s your daddy!”
“Sorry I’m late, hon,” the rain-splattered man says breathlessly. “I’ll get her out of your hair in just a sec.” His hair is shorter than mine, his shoulders a little broader, his nose a little wider, but this is undoubtedly him. Bill. My grandfather. He’s not a mirror image of me, but more like what a sketch artist would draw if someone described me. Same sharp chin, same pale eyes, same weirdly small ears.
For a second, I forget to breathe. Can they see it? How can they not?
But apparently they don’t, because Bill looks at me like a stranger, sticking out his hand. “Oh, hello, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Bill Warren. I’m the counselor over at the school.”
“Justin,” I croak, my mouth dry as I shake his hand. I take a swig of Tab and immediately choke, and for a few seconds, the only sound in the room is my gross hacking.
“What brings you here this afternoon, Justin?” Bill asks as Veronica continues to size me up.
“Justin is Rose’s friend,” she supplies, watching me through slightly narrowed eyes.
“Oh, wonderful,” Bill says, completely unfazed. Is he used to his wife being this intense all the time, or is he just oblivious? He tilts his head at me. “Do you go to the high school? I try to make it a point to meet with every student, but I’m so sorry, I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“Homeschooled,” I manage to rasp out.
“Ah.” His expression clears, and he turns to Millie, who is concentrating fiercely on the zipper of her diaper bag, her little brow furrowed as she tries to pinch the tab between her stubby fingers. “Well, Millie girl, what do you say we get out of Mommy’s hair so she can work, hmm?”
Millie shakes her head, sending her wispy curls bouncing, but Bill scoops her up anyway, causing her to emit a howl of protest. “I’ll see you at home,” Bill says, planting a quick kiss on Veronica’s lips before hefting the diaper bag onto his shoulder and turning to me. The only indication that he’s aware of his daughter’s screeching is his slightly raised voice when he says, “Lovely to meet you, Justin.”
Watching the three of them together—a family—I feel like my veins have been filled with battery acid. The way Bill and Veronica look at each other, look at Millie . . . no one has ever looked at me like that. Not even my mom.
Maybe she never learned how. She never knew her parents, never heard her father call her Millie girl or her mother call her sweetheart. Before they could teach her how to love the way they did, they were burned alive, their flesh melting off their bones and fusing with the cheap school carpet.
I didn’t want to meet these people. I was okay with this ludicrous mission to save my grandparents being something theoretical, which could work or not work, when the only one who would bear any of the consequences either way would be me.
Now, faced with two living, breathing people—one of whom looks just like my mom, while the other looks like me—it’s like my entire reality shatters again. I was never convinced that preventing this fire was my ticket back home anyway, but now, failing at this task won’t simply mean that dead people will stay dead.
It will mean this woman right here, who just invited me in from the rain and served me a Tab and shook my hand, will die. And her husband, who makes it a point to know the face of every kid in his school, will die beside her. And their baby, who reached out with a chubby hand to steady herself on my knee as she passed by on her way to the diaper bag, will be an orphan.
And instead of a thing that just is, like it’s been my whole life, it will be my fault.
Chapter Forty-One
ROSE
Voices floated out of the living room when she opened the front door. Rose peered around the entryway to find Justin sitting stiffly on the couch beside Veronica, looking a bit dazed. The blood drained from Rose’s face as she looked from Justin to her mother.
“Oh. Hello.” The last thing Rose had expected after her blowout with her parents the day before was to find Justin in her house after school.
“Oh, hi, honey!” Diane said, rising from the blue velour armchair in the corner, her voice alarmingly chipper. “How was your day?”
“Fine . . . What’s going on?”
“Oh, that’s on me,” Veronica said with a too-broad smile. “I saw your friend outside, and I invited him in until you got home. He’s just been keeping us company while we work.”