I see Wes’s shadow spread out across the pavement in front of us. The way he’s sitting makes the dark pattern on the ground look like some kind of beast with long arms and no head. Mine just looks like a girl with her head tilted down. I move a little, scooting closer to Wes. We’re not touching, but our shadows merge together in a distorted blob until we’re one giant monster.
“It would make sense for them to experiment with erasing memories,” I say, thinking out loud. “If people can’t remember something, then they can’t talk about it.”
Wes frowns. “I doubt he got amnesia from the machine. They wouldn’t have let him reenter society if that was the case. They would have just killed him.”
“Couldn’t he be lying to us about his memories? Maybe he escaped and now he’s working here, trying to hide from the Project. He could have been worried that we’d blow his cover.” I can’t keep the hope out of my voice even though I know it’s a long shot—I saw Dean standing in that lobby. He was like a marionette or something. Dead-eyed but still putting on a show. And it’s not hard to imagine who’s holding the strings.
“I don’t think so,” Wes answers. “I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing if someone’s lying. He wasn’t. Somehow he’s forgotten his entire life in nineteen forty-four.”
I grit my teeth together at the thought of what Dean probably endured. “I bet he’s their guinea pig. Erase his mind, reenter him into society, and see what happens. Do you think he’s even really married? Does his ‘wife’ know he really loves Eliza? And his son?”
Wes is silent.
“I have to get him out of there.” I push my bangs away from my forehead impatiently. “I have to rescue him from this.”
Wes still doesn’t speak, but I feel the tension coming off him. “What?” I turn on my hip until I’m facing him on the bench. “You don’t agree?”
He hesitates.
“Just spit it out, Wes.”
“I think . . . that you should be cautious. He might not want to be rescued.”
“He doesn’t know he wants to be rescued.”
“Lydia.” Wes sits back and studies me. “If we’re right, then he doesn’t remember anything. And he never will again. Those memories have been wiped clean. It’s not like they’re saved in some container or something.” He doesn’t touch my knee again, but his hand hovers over it, and I can feel the heat from his skin even through the fabric of my dress. “We can’t go barreling in there to save a man who doesn’t care if he’s saved or not. We’d be destroying whatever life he has left.”
I want to scream at him, to beat the metal bench with my fists, but I force myself to consider his words. Dean is not the person I remember. Maybe he’s even happy now, with this Theresa woman. Do I have the right to take that away from him? To uproot his new life, put him into a dangerous situation he might not survive in order to send him back to a world he doesn’t even remember? What’s the point?
I think of the last time I tried to save Dean, and what the consequences were. I changed time, and destroyed three—or more—lives in the process. I have to stop trying to play God in these situations, thinking I know more than everyone else. Thinking that my own pursuit of the truth is just as important to other people as it is to me. Dean doesn’t care about the truth. At least not anymore.
“I can’t believe this is how it ends for him. A doorman in a hotel in nineteen eighty-nine. His family never knowing what happened to him.”
Wes touches my knee lightly, just for a second. “You’ll know the truth. That’s important to you—solving the mystery, even if you don’t like what you find.”
I smile, even though I’m struggling not to cry again. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”
He gives me a sort of smirking smile. “I think I know you a little bit.”
I close my eyes and feel the afternoon sun burn against the delicate skin of my eyelids.
For the second time in six weeks, I am forced to leave Dean to his fate.
CHAPTER 14
The sky is turning twilight gray. We’ve been sitting on this bench for hours, just listening to the cars below and watching the Hudson River, which spreads out beyond the highway—the slow-moving boats, the bridges that spark silver in the sunlight, and the green cliffs that make up the shoreline of New Jersey.
I haven’t wanted to move, because I know that the minute I do everything becomes real again and I have to accept the choice that I’ve made. Wes seems to sense this, and he sits quietly next to me. Not talking, but just . . . there.
“We should go back to the squat,” I finally say. From somewhere in the park I hear the sound of a child shrieking. I can’t tell if it’s laughter or fear. “I need to open that disk. It’s the only lead I have left for discovering why my grandfather disappears. Dean is certainly a dead end.”
Wes doesn’t say anything. He appears to be thinking about something hard, though I’m not sure what it is.
“Are you ready to go?” I ask.
“I have a better idea.” He abruptly takes my hand and pulls me up from the bench. He moves quickly down the concrete path of the park, and I struggle to keep up with him.
“Wes, what—”
Up ahead, I see a playground tucked into the trees. It has a large jungle gym, a set of rusted swings, and a fountain in the middle. Even though it’s late and the park is empty, the sprinklers are still on. The water sprays everywhere, shooting high up into the air and bouncing off of the concrete ground.
Wes tugs me forward, leading us into the gated area. “The disk!” I shout, and I have
