The Epidemic (21 page)

Deacon clenches his fists, and I can relate to the fierce protectiveness that comes over us. Marie, despite everything, is still ours. And we protect our own.

“Can’t you talk to my father?” I ask her. “Maybe he can help. Or Arthur—”

“The board of directors doesn’t want any loose ends at this point,” she says. “We’re all in danger now. Every closer, every advisor. If we’re not part of their big picture, we’re part of the problem. They want to move forward with some grand plan that Arthur has begun. He’s going to use handlers, and if he can’t transition you into one, then he will strip you of your identity.”

Deacon looks guilt-stricken, and I have to turn away from him, “handler” still a bit of a stinging burn on my heart.

“Again,” I say to Marie. “You mean he’ll strip away my identity again. But the thing is, I’m starting to remember.” I confide in Marie the way I used to. Perhaps it’s habit or even training, but God, it feels good to tell her. “I’ve been having flashes,” I continue. “Headaches and nosebleeds. My memory is coming back, and not from when I was six. It wasn’t just once, was it, Marie? Exactly how many times did you let Arthur Pritchard erase my memory?”

She’s quiet for a painfully long moment. “Five,” she says. “Five more after the time we made you Quinlan.”

It’s a punch to my chest, and I cover my mouth with my hand. It feels like my greatest fear realized: None of me is real. I am absolutely nobody, rewritten so many times that I’ve never lived at all.

When Marie continues, she employs comforting techniques: calculated pauses in her sentences, a softer but authoritative tone. I don’t reject her manipulation. Just like my former clients, I recognize that I need it. It’s too difficult to have this conversation without it.

“Arthur repeatedly warned us,” she says, “that resurfaced memories could cause a meltdown. He said it would leave you with permanent damage. But the memories kept coming back, and your father and I started to figure out that it was the assignments—emotional stress did the triggering. We tried to ease up on you—I even stopped drugging your tea. But then
your last assignment came up, and Arthur strong-armed us into sending you too soon. I don’t know why. My guess is because of your success rate. And now here you are, on the verge of remembering again.”

“How much did I remember?” I ask her. “Did I remember my real parents?”

“What
exactly
you remembered, we’re not sure. You didn’t trust us enough to tell us.”

“Then how did he make me forget?” I ask, desperation creeping into my voice.

“I don’t know how Arthur did it,” she says. “We took you to him like we were advised, and when you came back, you were better, as if the preceding days had never happened. Tom and I thought we were doing the right thing, keeping you safe. Keeping you our Quinlan.”

“I was never your Quinlan,” I say sharply. “And, as if I needed further proof of Arthur Pritchard’s depravity, it turns out I’m not the only person he’s done this to.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. “Who else?”

“His daughter, Virginia,” I tell her. “Bits and pieces of her memory have been wiped out. It’s driving her insane. What kind of man does that to his child?”

“The same kind of man who makes us sign agreements to have our memories erased if we go against him,” she snaps. She seems alarmed, her composure faltering. “I’m sorry, Quinn,” she continues. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to tell you, and your father has too. It wasn’t until recently that I
realized it wasn’t keeping you safe anymore. And when I knew that . . . I let you go. I gave up my life for you.”

Although she can wield these words as emotional blackmail, it doesn’t lessen the guilt I feel over her predicament.

“What now?” I ask her. “Arthur’s found you. And he might have gotten to my father, too. Have you talked to him?”

Marie is quiet, and I picture her looking around the surely cluttered room of wherever she’s staying, making certain that she’s alone. “No,” she says. “I’m sorry. I haven’t heard from Tom. But if they’ve gotten to him . . .” She doesn’t finish the thought.

I fight back my panic. I can’t even call him, can’t even find out for myself. “If they’re just rounding us up,” I ask her, “what do we do?”

“You can always run,” she says.

Deacon looks over at me, and I know if he could, he would convince me of the same.

“And let Arthur get away with it?” I ask Marie. “Get away with manipulating me and his daughter? Let him keep my life from me? No, I won’t do that. I want the truth. Besides, what about the other closers? Are you just going to leave them behind?”

Marie quiets, and when she talks again, her tone is filled with sorrow. “I’ve spent my life helping families,” she says. “Protecting my closers—or at least trying to. But I let my self-interest ruin everything. The department is now corrupt and my kids are in danger.

“You see, Quinn,” she continues, “it doesn’t matter who you come from, not in this life. It matters who you become. And I think I’ve betrayed you,
all of you
, enough. That’s not the kind of person I want to be. I’m going to set things right—as right as I can.”

“How?” I ask.

“We’ll get your identity, but first we need to warn the other closers about the department. Give them the same choice: to run or to help. But we have to do so without arousing the suspicion of the people who have already been transitioned—we won’t know what side anyone is on. Once we have a group that we can trust, we’ll figure out what to do next. Ultimately . . . we have to stop Arthur Pritchard. And hopefully that will be enough to take down the grief department too.”

Her impassioned speech wakes up my courage. Although I want to know who I am; although I want to give Virginia back her memories, right now my loyalty lies with the other closers first. I have a chance to protect them, to have their backs.

“I’m in,” I say. I turn to Deacon, waiting to see if he’s with me on this. It takes him a moment, but then he lifts one corner of his mouth and shrugs as if saying,
We’ve done stupider things, so why not?

“Now,” Marie says firmly. “I assume you’re with Deacon?”

I smile at how well she knows me. “Yeah.”

“Hello, Marie,” Deacon responds with little warmth.

“Deacon,” she says, “I need you to contact Tabitha for me. Do you still have her information? She’s off the grid.”

“I do,” Deacon replies. “I left her file with . . .” He pauses momentarily. “I left it with my brother.”

My heart stops dead in my chest and I look at him accusingly. Although I’m sure he can feel my stare, he doesn’t meet my eyes.

“Good,” she says. “Get it. Now, Quinlan, I want you to leave Aaron out of this, do you understand?”

“Wait,” I say, turning back to the phone, “why? Shouldn’t he—”

“Aaron isn’t part of this,” she says curtly. “He had his choice, and he chose to run. Don’t use his affection for you to drag him back in. We need to help the ones who are still at their positions. The closers.”

“Fine,” I tell her, although I have no intention of leaving Aaron out. He at least deserves to know what’s going on. I don’t look at Deacon, but I feel him watching me, waiting to explain about his brother.

“Let’s meet tomorrow,” Marie says. “There’s a diner called the Hash House out in Myrtle Creek. I’ll text you the address. Say ten a.m.?”

My mind can’t keep up with our conversation when I’m worried about Deacon and Aaron and just about everything else. “Yeah, that works.”

“Good,” she replies. “I’ll see you both then.”

Marie hangs up, and I set the phone next to me on the seat, my heart thudding loudly in my ears. My problems continue to add up.

I turn slowly to Deacon, heat rushing to my face. I was told he’d been in foster care when my father found him. I thought his parents were dead. In all our time together, Deacon has never once mentioned a family, a brother. And the casual way Marie said it made it sound like a known thing. Deacon’s been keeping this from me too.

“Your
brother
?” I ask.

Deacon studies my expression, and then, without giving away his thoughts, he turns to stare out the windshield.

“It’s complicated,” he answers.

My jaw falls open, and it takes everything I have to not grab him by the shirt and force him to face me. I hate having to jump to conclusions—I want to trust him completely. But he continues to prove that that’s a terrible idea. “Have you ever told me the truth about anything?” I demand, glaring at him.

“Yes,” he says, and turns to me. “I told you the truth about us, and about Arthur. I just didn’t tell you everything about
me
.” His tone startles me. It’s not defensive or hard. It’s not apologetic. It’s just fact.

My skin is electric with betrayal, even if he’s twisting his words so I’m not sure which part he’s lying about anymore. “I can’t keep doing this,” I tell him. “I need to know everything. Every detail. We can’t keep things from each other anymore. We won’t survive that way.”

Deacon doesn’t agree or argue. Instead he turns on the car and shifts into gear, checking his mirror before pulling onto the
road. He’s shutting me down. I can’t believe he’d do this. I’m ready to beg for him to let me in this last door.

“I need to show you something,” he says quietly, not looking over. “You say you want to know me? I’ll give you everything, Quinn. Every single piece.”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel, and I watch him from across the car. He’s deadly serious right now. Suddenly I’m scared of all of his pieces, scared of the picture they’ll create. Scared they’ll scatter in the wind before I can put them together.

But this is Deacon. And for him I’ll take the chance.

Deacon gets on the freeway and heads south, the opposite direction of our motel. After twenty minutes of quiet, my initial anger tempers. The betrayal eases. He said this was about him. Not us.

“Where are you driving?” I ask. “I thought we were going to talk?”

“No, I said I had to show you something. It’s easier that way.”

“I hope you’re not planning to show me a shallow grave,” I respond, and then laugh when he looks over. Of course I don’t think that, but I want to shock him into responding. He bites hard on his jaw, but I see a flicker of a smile there for just a moment. Sure, I can hate him every second until he gives me a reason not to, but that’s just not us.

If we were normal people, a regular couple, this alone could be enough to destroy our trust. But we impersonate dead
people for a living. We live our lies every day. We keep secrets, and we hide our pasts. Sometimes our pasts are hidden from us.

But it’s in rare moments when we get to live in the present that the real us comes through. So I shouldn’t have expected Deacon to tell me everything about himself. It just hurts a little that he didn’t want to.

“Joking aside,” I say, “we can go back to the motel and talk. We have to meet Marie.”

“Not until the morning, and this can’t wait,” he says. “We need to trust each other, and I need to prove to you that I’m trustworthy.” He pauses, and I hear the hitch in his voice. “I need to give you a reason to stay.”

“I won’t leave you,” I say truthfully. I’m not sure what the breaking point is for us. I’m not sure we have one.

“You’ve left me twice in the past week. I don’t think I’m being dramatic here.”

I don’t tell him that I do trust him—deep down I do. Despite everything I always will. Instead I relax back against the seat, and Deacon turns on the radio. And when he takes his hand off the wheel and rests it on his thigh, I reach over and thread my fingers through his, destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over. But willfully deciding to do so.

DEACON TAKES US ABOUT AN
hour away to an old neighborhood just north of Grants Pass. The houses have chain-link fences in the yards and there are stray dogs loitering along the curbs. Deacon parks in front of a small bungalow with missing slats of siding, crooked black shutters on the window, and a porch pitched heavily to the right.

Uneasy, I get out of the car and wait on the sidewalk. Deacon walks around the front of the car and comes to stand next to me. I look sideways at him as he surveys the house.

“So . . . ,” I say. “Whose house is this?”

Deacon smiles to himself, something sad and lonely. And then he shrugs one shoulder as if he’s resigned to tell me. “This is where my mom lives,” he says, and starts up the walkway toward the porch.

Speechless, I jog to catch up with him. He knows his mother. I have no idea how he could have kept that fact from me—that’s a heavy secret to carry. Once on the porch, we stand together underneath the bald hanging lightbulb.

“So you know your mom?” I ask quietly, not looking at him. “Your family?”

He leans forward to knock on the door, staring straight ahead, his body stiff. “Yeah,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter. I chose another life.”

“ ‘Chose’?” I turn to him. “You were a ward of the state. My father said he found you in foster care. Have you been lying about that this entire time?”

“Your
father
lied,” he says. “You never asked me.”

“You—”

The inside door opens. Deacon rocks back on his heels before plastering a pleasant smile on his face, staring at someone I can’t see through the mesh of the screen door.

“Hi,” Deacon says simply. There is a tug on my heart, because despite his comment about it not mattering, the vulnerability in Deacon’s tone hurts me to my soul. I turn to the screen, waiting for it to open so I can get a look at whoever would have given him up—or whatever it was that happened here. And with that want comes a fierce need to protect Deacon. Where he’s leaving himself defenseless, I’m solidifying my courage and wrapping us up to keep us from harm.

“Well, isn’t this a big fucking surprise,” a gruff male voice says. Deacon wilts slightly, and it’s all I need to spring into
action. I step forward and open the screen door, unable to talk to a faceless entity.

I startle the guy standing there, and he takes a step back into the shadow of the house. He’s wearing a white undershirt and khaki pants, and I guess he’s in his twenties. His hair and beard are blond, but his brown eyes—they’re the exact shade and shape as Deacon’s. This must be his brother.