Canes of Divergence (6 page)

He held the pendant between his fingers, using the light from the window to study it. There was some kind of design on it – a circular design he’d never seen before.

“The other side, silly,” Annie told him.

“You’re silly.” He flipped it over. There was an inscription on the back:
Love you forever Princess Annie.

“See? I’m a princess.”

“I guess you are. Did your Daddy bring that back from Afghanistan?”

“No. Quinn got it for me in ‘
Renthos. That’s where she lives now. In a castle. And William gave it to me, too.”

“A castle, huh?” Annie had always had a great imagination. Or maybe they’d been reading Owen’s books about Europe and medieval times
, or – who knew – maybe there really was a castle wherever Quinn was living now, and she’d told Annie about it. “Have you been talking to Quinn on the phone?”

“No. They don’t have phones in ‘Renthos. We have to wait until we can go visit. Mommy said maybe this summer when we can go for a long time, and then I can wear my princess dress again.”

They didn’t have phones
? Maybe they weren’t jet-setting around Europe. Maybe Doctor Rose was doing one of those service things in a third world country.

He was relieved when, a second later, his little sister Sophia poked her head out of the hallway.

“Sophie!” Annie shouted. “Do you want to play dogs?”

She jumped off his lap and ran off, the two little girls instantly crazy, pretending to growl at each other and roll all over the carpet.

After everything that had happened today, he was more confused than ever, but also mortified about what kind of impression he’d been leaving on everyone. If he’d missed the fact that Megan and Jeff were getting ready to move – what else had he been missing?

He stared at the pendant in his hand. If Quinn had given this to Annie, it meant she hadn’t just run off without any thought. She’d taken the time to say good-byes to her family, to give them gifts. And they were planning on visiting her.

Nothing was wrong here. He just needed to get over this and move on.

Rosewood Castle, Eirentheos

T
HE UNEXPECTED KNOCK
on the door of the clinic nearly made Nathaniel drop one of the jars he’d been carefully arranging in a cabinet. He turned in time to see the door opening and Stephen standing there.

“Can I come in?”

“You’re always welcome here. It’s not even my clinic anymore.”

“You built it, Nathaniel. It will always be yours.”

“Thank you.” He smiled, walking over to greet his friend. “Is everything all right?”

“I can’t come and talk to you if nothing’s wrong?”

Nathaniel rolled his eyes, and Stephen chuckled, though there was concern hiding in the shadows of his smile.

“You don’t come dig me out of the clinic when you don’t need something.”

“Am I that bad?”

“You’re a king with thirteen children, Stephen. And three grandchildre
n now, too. I’m content when we’re able to share a meal.”

“One of those is at least as much your grandson as he is mine. You raised William more than I did.”

“I could never thank you enough for sharing him with me. I don’t think I can take as much credit as you give me. Watching him as a father now … I admire the example you were for him.”

“You just like that baby.”

“Yes I do.” Nathaniel chuckled. “Can’t believe he’s four days old already.”

Stephen smiled. “Time goes fast. You’ll see. Both with that baby, and now that you’re going to be a father yourself.”

“I think I could find a world where time goes by ten times as slowly as
this
one, and that would still be true of children, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Stephen said, raising an eyebrow. “Just don’t suggest such a thing to Thomas. He’s having a hard enough time waiting to be of age right now, I think.”

“It’s a difficult place for him to be – with both William and Linnea married. It’s a lot of changes for him. And he’s courting a girl who’s of age. It’s hard. The brother I was closest to was much older than I was. If we’d have stayed at the castle, been subjected to all of the rules and traditions I
should
have been, I daresay I’d have struggled at Thomas’ age as well.”

“You had a whole different set of challenges because you
weren’t
inside those traditions, though.”

“I did. There’s not an easy answer to that – but I’m sure you and Charlotte will sort it out. Your children know how loved they are.
I only hope I can be half the father to Cammie’s children…”

“You will be.”

“Thank you … now, are you ever going to stop avoiding telling me the real reason you came to find me? Because, as much as I love talking with you about these things … I know that’s not why you’re here. What’s wrong?”

Stephen sighed. “We’ve just had a bird from Eli in Cloud Valley.”

Nathaniel’s heart jumped into his throat. “It’s not…”

“No. Cammie and the children are fine.”

“I was planning on traveling to Cloud Valley the day after tomorrow
.
”

“I know. But I think you’re going to have to change your plans. Eli said that earlier this morning, a man came into the clinic after a raccoon came into his house
– right into his kitchen – and attacked him.”

“Oh no.”

“I know.” Stephen reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver tube containing the message, and handed it to him. “It’s the third incident in that area in the last two moons.”

Nathaniel nodded, unrolling the message and reading it. “Well, luckily they did trap it. Eli hasn’t finished testing it, but he’s pretty certain…”

“Yes. I’m going to send some soldiers along with you. It’s time, I think.”

“I think you’re right – much as I hate to agree with that.” As he talked, he walked over to the small refrigerator in the back room of the clinic. It had been a major achievement to get it through the gate a few cycles ago. After that, they’d brought another one for Jacob’s clinic in Mistle Village
, which, luckily, had not been destroyed by the fire. None of the other clinics had reliable refrigeration.

As he opened the refrigerator and looked through the vials in the back, his heart sank. “We’re running really low on both the vaccine and the immune globulin.
Only enough for maybe two more cases – counting this one.”

“Can you make more?”

Nathaniel closed the door and turned back to him. “I hope so. At least of the vaccine. We’re out of luck on the immune globulin. William and Jacob and I have been working on the vaccine for a long time. Jacob keeps the cultures going at his clinic now that William and I aren’t here. Our version is not as safe – we’ve been grateful to never have to rely it. But now that we don’t have access to the gate … we’re going to have to start manufacturing it, I guess. It takes a while to make, though.”

“
I don’t know as much about it as you do, Nathaniel. All I know is this is starting to worry me. We haven’t had this many incidents in more than five cycles.”

“
It worries me too, Stephen. Let’s try not to panic, though. We have enough for now, and I will speak to Jacob about going ahead and I need to get this out to Cloud Valley as quickly as I can. The sooner we start treatment, the better. When will you be able to send soldiers?”

“
By the end of the day, hopefully. Luke is in the process of finding some men who are willing to do what needs to be done.”

Nathaniel closed his eyes and nodded solemnly.
“All right. I need to go and talk to William before I go. I’ll stop in Mistle Village myself on the way and speak to Jacob about the medicine.”

“Thank you.”

*          *          *

“Hey, Thomas, Daniel and I were going to go out and work with the colts some more today while it’s nice. Do you want to come?” Josh asked

He did; he’d been enjoying the training of the young horses, but there were other things on his mind right now. “Maybe later?”

“Sure.” Josh shrugged and then ran down the hall – he was always so laid-back about everything, which Thomas appreciated. Most of his other siblings weren’t quite so easy to brush off.

Once Josh was gone, he turned his attention back to the stairs he’d just seen Mia climb, carrying a basket full of laundry.

It took him a minute to find her upstairs, even though she’d only just gone up. She was always so quick with everything. He finally spotted her in
Sarah’s room, standing next to the couch where she was sorting and folding the tiny socks and shirts.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.” She didn’t look up, intent on her task.

He took a deep breath, trying to loosen the little hard lump that had settled in at the bottom of his ribcage. Annoyance wasn’t an emotion he dealt with very often, but today… He’d been trying to talk to Mia for weeks now – and failing miserably.

“Laundry isn’t really your job anymore, is it?” Now that Mia was not only helping with his younger brothers and sisters, but with Simon’s infant son Ryan, as well, most of her housekeeping duties had been given to others. “I thought Nicoletta was responsible for this stuff now.”

“She doesn’t put anything where I can find it. And the way she folds shirts, they don’t even fit into the drawer right.”

Sure. Time to talk to him, she didn’t have, but when it came to the state of a toddler’s shirt drawer, she suddenly had all the time in the world. He squeezed one of his hands inside the other. Deep breaths weren’t cutting it.

And then there was the undertone in her voice – she was annoyed at him, too. He didn’t know why. For asking about the laundry? Either way, this obviously wasn’t a good time to talk to her about their relationship.

“All right. I’ll let you get back to it, then. Maybe we could go for a walk after dinner?”

“It’ll be kind of col…” She paused, checking herself, finally glancing up at him. The distance in her green eyes physically hurt. He wanted to get
out of here almost as much as he wanted to cross the room and rub his thumbs over the soft sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks. “Sure,” she said instead. “We can take a walk if I’m not busy with anything.”

But, of course, she would be. If none of the children needed her, their socks surely would.

“I’ll see you later then.”

Bristlecone, Colorado

Z
ANDER PULLED THE KEYS
out of the ignition and tucked them into his jacket pocket, but he didn’t climb out right away. For most of this week, he’d been thinking of excuses why he couldn’t go to this party.

The last time there had been a party at Jake Price’s house,
he’d taken Quinn. It had sort of been their first date.

He hadn’t been sure he could face c
oming here again without her. Jake’s house just reminded him of too many things. And this week it would be especially hard – everyone here would be gearing up for prom next weekend, and he hadn’t asked anyone.

All of his moping around, though, was making h
im a little angry with himself.

He knew i
t was time to stop thinking about her. He had a month left of high school, and he couldn’t spend it dwelling on a girl who had dumped him and gone away.

He was going to go to this party – this was going to be the beginning of his
enjoying the last little bit of carefree time he had with his friends. At least, that was the pep talk he’d been giving himself.

All of those intentions flew out the window, though, when the first person he saw when he got inside Jake’s house
was Abigail.

He had managed to successfully avoid her for the last couple of days at school, having decided there was no reason he needed to continue sitting at the lunch table he’d shared with her and
Quinn.

But now, here she was, right near the front door when he walked in.
She spotted him immediately, and headed right for him. There was nowhere else for him to go.

“What do you want, Abigail?” he asked.

“I’m not even allowed to talk to you anymore?”

He shrugged.
“What is there to talk about? You already told me how you feel and what your opinion of me is.”

To his surprise, her face fell a little. “Can I talk to you privately for a moment? I’ll make it quick.”

Sighing, he held up his hand and took a step back through the door, leading her outside onto the front walk.

“What is it, Abigail?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You really don’t like me, do you?”

“Why do you care if I do or I don’t?”

Her eyes widened, just a little, giving him silent satisfaction. “Look, I wanted to apologize for how I acted the other day, at lunch.”

“Did you say something you didn’t mean?”

She looked down at the ground and fidgeted with the shoulder strap on her bag. “I shouldn’t have attacked you the way I did. I didn’t need to be that harsh.”

“Abigail, I’m really not trying to be a jerk here, but … what difference does it make?
”

“
She was my friend too, you know.”

“Really?” Irritation bubbled up inside him – and it wasn’t just
because of the incident the other day in the cafeteria. “Because, I’m going to be honest here, I don’t see that. I haven’t seen it for a long time. The whole time Quinn and I were together, you treated her like some kind of pet dog that should be wagging its tail over seeing you whenever you got bored of whatever party you were at or whatever boy you were chasing after.”

Her cheeks were cherry red now. “It’s not like Quinn wasn’t invited to the same parties. And, if you’ll remember,
she
had a boyfriend, too.”

“You
know what I mean.”

She stared down at the sidewalk for a long moment, her shoulders rising and falling as if she were taking several deep breaths. Finally, she looked back up at him.
“She hurt me, too, Zander. I know you’re right. I know I wasn’t the kind of friend to her she usually was to me. Maybe I just always expected she would be there when things changed again – when I needed her.”

“What about when she needed you?”

Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes, and his stomach flipped. Maybe he had taken it too far. He took a step closer to her, but she backed away. He could see her biting her lip, trying to get herself back together. After a minute or two, she managed it.

“Do you think it’s my fault?” she asked, once she was calm.

“That she left?”

“Yeah. Do you think I was such a horrible friend to her that she just couldn’t stand to be here anymore?”

Wow.
“No, Abigail I don’t. I actually don’t think it had anything to do with you. I think she had her own stuff going on and, for whatever reason, she just needed to go with Doctor Rose.”

“Then why wouldn’t she tell me, Zander? Why won’t she call me or answer my e-mails?”

“
That
part might be your fault.”

She chuckled, though he was pretty sure she didn’t find it any funnier than he did.
“Would you be able to take off like that – just go away like none of this meant anything to you?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t that what I’m going to do in August? Or June, if I take a summer program somewhere.”

“You’ll tell people where you’re going.”

“Blake Gunderson was at every party we went to last year. Where did he go to college?”

She paused for a second, but then smiled triumphantly. “CSU.”

“Have you seen him since he left?”

“No. I heard he only came home for a few days at Christmas, and then he went back to Fort Collins and stayed with friends or something.”

“And what about Carina Nguyen? Where did she go to college?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ve made your point Zander. I won’t expect you to be sitting in your dorm room in a few months crying over me, okay? And I guess, after the way things were going between me and Quinn for the last year … I should have realized at some point she would get her own life. I just didn’t know it would happen like this.”

“Yeah, well, it did.”

“Yeah. I also kind of expected you to be the one person who was really on my side with this, after she cheated on you.”

“She didn’t, Abigail. He’s her cousin.”

“I don’t know, Zander. Something about that is … not …
right
.”

He held up his hand. “I don’t want to talk about that part anymore, okay?”

She nodded. They both stood there in silence for a minute.

“Do you think she’s okay?”
Abigail’s voice was smaller now. The defensiveness had disappeared.

He looked at her.
“I hope so.”

“Me, too.
”