Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
But I’m already in too deep to care.
CHAPTER 25
VANGUARD
Home, sweet fucking home.
Danny sets the Meridian down in the field where we used to let the horses graze, and I sit there for a moment, watching the dust settle around us. The house is maybe a hundred yards away, with its weathered grey siding and sagging porch, the windows like empty eyes. The barn behind it has collapsed on one side, the roof caved in from years of neglect that makes my heart twinge with guilt.
Big Sky Country. That’s what they call Montana. And it’s true—the sky here is enormous, stretching from horizon to horizon in a blue so deep, it makes your chest ache. When I was a kid, I used to lie in that field and stare up at it for hours, pretending I could fall into it somehow, pretending I could vanish. If only I’d known that one day, I could fall into it by flying up, that I could literally disappear. I would have thought it would have solved all my problems.
I would have been very wrong.
“Nate?” Mia’s hand touches my arm. “Are you okay?”
I realize I haven’t moved or said a word. I’m just sitting here, staring out of the car at a house I haven’t seen in years.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s go.”
Danny stays with the car. He knows better than to ask questions about why we’re here. He just gives me a nod and settles back in his seat. I help Mia down on the dry grass, her hand small and warm in mine, and we start walking toward the house.
The wind smells like sage and dust and hay. Underneath that is something older, maybe manure from the neighbor’s cattle or the mineral tang of the creek that runs along the property line, smells I’d forgotten. They hit somewhere behind my sternum, a pressure that almost brings tears to my eyes.
Fucking nostalgia. It has a way of sweetening the past and hiding all the bitterness.
“It’s beautiful,” Mia says softly, looking at the mountains in the distance, the golden grass rippling in the wind. “I can see why you wanted to come back.”
It is beautiful, more so than I even remember, but that has nothing to do with it. I’ve spent fifteen years not wanting to come back, not wanting to remember, not wanting to feel whatever it is I’m feeling right now.
“There’s a lot to love about this place,” I tell her. “The wide-open spaces, the mountains, the wilderness. The people here? Not so much, especially when they’re the ones who helped usher in the Dark Decade. All they wanted was more land and freedom, for their cattle and their underground bunkers. But out here, we’re more isolated from their ignorance.”
The porch steps creak under my weight. The same creak, the same spot—third step from the bottom, right side. I used to skip it when I came home late, back when coming home late meant punishment. My feet remember before my brain does, stepping over that spot automatically.
Mia notices. She never misses a thing.
The front door is unlocked. It shouldn’t be—the property management company I pay is supposed to keep it secured—but the lock was always temperamental. You had to lift and push at the same time, jiggle the handle just right. I do it without thinking, muscle memory from a thousand entries.
Inside, the house smells like dust and old wood and something faintly sweet that might be rot. Hopefully, there isn’t a dead animal in the walls, though I think my senses would pick up on it. The furniture is covered in white sheets, ghostly shapes in the dim light filtering through grimy windows. Someone has cleaned recently—no cobwebs, no animal droppings—but the emptiness is absolute, the kind that has weight to it.
Mia stands in the doorway, giving me space. She seems to understand I need to do this part alone.
I walk through the living room without stopping. Past the couch where my father used to sit after dinner, staring at nothing. Past the corner where Emma used to do her homework, tongue poking out when she concentrated. Past the spot by the fireplace where I stood the night I pushed my mother down, shaking with adrenaline and terror and something that felt horribly like satisfaction. It was in self-defense, and I never meant to push her so hard, but looking back, it was my first introduction to the darkness. I just didn’t know it at the time.
The kitchen is smaller than I remember. Everything is smaller. The counter where my mother used to lean, glass in hand, watching us with those unpredictable eyes, always cloudy with a mix of hatred—for us, but mainly for herself—and fear. The table where we ate in silence, forks scraping plates, the tension thick enough to taste. The floor where I found her body.