Torment - Lauren Kate [9]
“You lived there before it was a trailer park,” Daniel said, easing the car to a stop by the side of the road. “Before there were mobile homes. Your father in that lifetime brought your family out from Illinois during the gold rush.” He seemed to look inward somewhere, and sadly shook his head. “Used to be a really nice place.”
Luce watched a bald man with a potbelly tug a mangy orange dog on a leash. The man was wearing a white undershirt and flannel boxers. Luce couldn’t picture herself there at all.
Yet it was so clear to Daniel. “You had a two-room cabin and your mother was a terrible cook, so the whole place always smelled like cabbage. You had these blue gingham curtains that I used to part so I could climb through your window at night after your parents were asleep.”
The car idled. Luce closed her eyes and tried to fight back her stupid tears. Hearing their history from Daniel made it feel both possible and impossible. Hearing it also made her feel extremely guilty. He’d stuck with her for so long, over so many lifetimes. She’d forgotten how well he knew her. Better even than she knew herself. Would Daniel know what she was thinking now? Luce wondered whether, in some ways, it was easier to be her and to never have remembered Daniel than it was for him to go through this time and time again.
If he said he had to leave for a few weeks and couldn’t explain why … she would have to trust him.
“What was it like when you first met me?” she asked.
Daniel smiled. “I chopped wood in exchange for meals back then. One night around dinnertime I was walking past your house. Your mother had the cabbage going, and it stank so badly I almost skipped your house. But then I saw you through the window. You were sewing. I couldn’t take my eyes off your hands.”
Luce looked at her hands, her pale, tapered fingers and small, square palms. She wondered if they’d always looked the same. Daniel reached for them across the console. “They’re just as soft now as they were then.”
Luce shook her head. She loved the story, wanted to hear a thousand more just like it, but that wasn’t what she’d meant. “I want to know about the first time you met me,” she said. “The very first time. What was that like?”
After a long pause, he finally said, “It’s getting late. They’re expecting you at Shoreline before midnight.” He stepped on the gas, taking a quick left into downtown Mendocino. In the side mirror, Luce watched the mobile home park grow smaller, darker, until it disappeared completely. But then, a few seconds later, Daniel parked the car in front of an empty all-night diner with yellow walls and floor-to-ceiling front windows.
The block was full of quirky, quaint buildings that reminded Luce of a less stuffy version of the New England coastline near her old New Hampshire prep school, Dover. The street was paved with uneven cobblestones that glowed yellow in the light from the streetlamps overhead. At its end, the road seemed to drop straight into the ocean. A coldness sneaked up on her. She had to ignore her reflexive fear of the dark. Daniel had explained about the shadows—that they were nothing to be afraid of, merely messengers. Which should have been reassuring, except for the hard-to-ignore fact that it meant there were bigger things to be afraid of.
“Why won’t you tell me?” She couldn’t help herself. She didn’t know why it felt so important to ask. If she was going to trust Daniel when he said he had to abandon her after longing all her life for this reunion—well, maybe she just wanted to understand the origins of that trust. To know when and how it had all begun.
“Do you know what my last name means?” he said, surprising her.
Luce bit her lip, trying to think back to the research she and Penn had done. “I remember Miss Sophia saying something about Watchers. But I don’t know what it means, or if I’m even supposed to believe her.” Her fingers went to her neck, to the place where Miss Sophia’s knife had lain.
“She was right. The Grigoris are a clan.