“What’s happened?”
“Is Derrick with you?”
Agony exploded in my chest. I had failed. Nothing had changed here – nothing had been resolved. They were still trapped in the offshoot timeline.
“Take me back,” I begged, face upturned to the fading blue sky as I knelt in cold, wet slush. “Take me back there. Take me back…”
Tish had almost reached me, scurrying through the slush in stocking feet.
“Did you find them?!”
I couldn’t bear their desperate cries. If I couldn’t save us from this timeline I didn’t want to continue existing in it; cowardly or not, I couldn’t bear the pain. I covered my ears and repeated, “Take me back…”
“Don’t go!” Ruthie cried, sharp, escalating terror in her voice. “Don’t leave!”
The violence increased with each passage. My body was hollow, raw, utterly defenseless. Removed from my physical self I watched from a short but impenetrable distance as I hurtled through an endless, narrow corridor of time, racing toward my anchor point – the only security I possessed. I cried out his name and was at once surrounded by a profound and fleeting awareness, perceiving my soul as an entity separate from flesh and blood.
Gentle undulations of pure, transparent energy. No sorrow, no fear. Stars rotated on tiny axis points, flaring across my line of sight in orbits of vibrant color, so impossibly bright I squinted at the glittering brilliance. I saw my children’s faces and heard their voices, a thousand and more scenes from their individual existences, flashing with all the radiance of lives fully lived. Of lives brimming with love.
Mathias whispered, I can’t imagine being apart from you for a few days, let alone a lifetime.
Malcolm spoke next, his voice indistinguishable from Mathias’s. I’ll wait right there for you. No matter how long it takes.
I told them, Then I will find you there. Nothing will stop me.
And with those words I was delivered.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“DON’T LET HIM GO!” I SHOUTED, ALREADY KNOWING WE could not stop it. We didn’t possess enough power to combat his basic defense mechanism.
Fallon’s struggling ceased as he sensed his body losing form and matter.
“NO!” I screamed, clenching his throat all the harder.
Seconds later Derrick and I faced each other with nothing between us, alone together in the bright, vacant space.
“Oh my God,” he gasped, shrugging immediately from a hooded sweatshirt and wrapping it around me, appalled at my nudity. “You’re naked. Jesus Christ. Are you hurt? Oh, my God. There’s blood on your mouth. You’re Ruthann, aren’t you? Did he hurt you?”
He helped me into the sweatshirt with the kindness of a father, tugging it as far down my thighs as it would go, both of us struggling to reconcile what had just happened. Fallon had escaped again – we couldn’t prevent it. Tears gushed, fury choking out my voice before I could ask any questions, namely how Derrick had come to be here. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking, much to my aggravation.
Derrick, however, couldn’t stop babbling. “Come here, you must be freezing. Oh Jesus.” He gathered me into a loose, awkward hug, cupping my head. “It’s all right, I won’t leave you here. Where did…how did… you’re not the Ruthann I met a few days ago in Landon, are you?”
The taste of bitter defeat filled my mouth. Derrick smelled like horses and sweat, comforting, familiar scents, and I clung to the temporary security of his physical form, even as a wailing cry resounded across my mind.
Fallon got away…
“Where are we?” Derrick wondered aloud. “Do you know? Have you been trapped here? God, I don’t know what the hell just happened. Fallon showed up at the foot of my bed and I tried to shoot him. If I’d have moved faster, I might have gotten him. I tried to jump on him but he vanished and I got…I guess I got pulled with him. I don’t know how else to explain it. I ended up here, wherever the fuck here is, and then I heard him threatening you. God, he’s so fucking insane. I’m sorry I didn’t kill him. Did he hurt you?”
“How…” I whispered.
“Are you hurt?” he insisted. “Did he attack you?”
“No, not here. But he…he…” I broke down at the thought of Marshall.
“Shit. Oh God. Shit. Here, let’s sit down,” Derrick invited, helping me to the floor. “I’m so sorry, this is so fucked up. Where were you before you arrived here? Who did Fallon hurt? Did he burn down the Rawleys’ house? That’s what Camille and I tried to prevent.”
I enfolded my legs in the baggy sweatshirt, facing Derrick as he sat cross-legged a few feet away. I hadn’t set eyes on this man since the night of Marshall’s twenty-ninth birthday, when Derrick had approached Tish and me in the parking lot at The Spoke. He’d tried to warn us about Fallon that very night, but we hadn’t understood. His words penetrated my pinwheeling thoughts and I scrubbed tears from my cheeks, whispering, “Burn their house?”
Derrick’s lips compressed. “Let me back up a bit.”
I returned to the exact moment I’d been ripped from, landing on hands and knees at Patricia’s feet. Malcolm almost fell over me, dodging to the side at the last second. He, Cole, and Patricia clustered close, Monty crying, everyone talking at once. Malcolm set aside his rifle so both his arms were free to enfold me; I clung, seeking stability in the flow of time. My head throbbed; I felt trampled, aching all the way down to my bones.
“It hasn’t…changed,” I gasped, gulping huge breaths. “Nothing… changed.”
“You were returned to your home?” Malcolm held me secure, his blood pulsing at a pace to rival mine.
“It’s not my home, not like that…” I thought of what I’d been allowed to glimpse on my journey here – stars and lives and souls and brilliant colors – but was unable to articulate the awe, still reeling from my passage through time.
“Camille, you are hurt.” Patricia knelt to examine my face. “Come, Malcolm, bring her to the bed.”
Malcolm trailed gentle
