He lowers the plate and stares down at me. “It was because of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wes!” The high-pitched shout is piercing, even from across the lawn. I turn to see a small boy running through the grass toward us. It’s Peter, I realize when he gets closer. My grandfather as a little boy. “You’re here.” He leans over, panting from the run.
Wes drops one hand and ruffles Peter’s neatly cut dark hair. “I said I would be, didn’t I? Where’s your mom?”
Peter points toward the house, but he has noticed me, and his head tilts back to examine my deep-red hair, my green eyes. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Lydia. I was here last year. Maybe you remember me?”
He shakes his head and looks at Wes’s legs, suddenly shy.
Wes kneels down until he’s at Peter’s eye level. “Remember how I told you I was waiting for a pretty girl to come find me? That was Lydia.”
“This lady’s your wife?” He looks up at me and squints his eyes, the same color as mine. They are my grandfather’s eyes, and I clench my fingers together to keep from reaching for him. “I remember you. You looked like Aunt Mary and played airplanes with me. But then you disappeared.”
“I had things to do.”
“My daddy disappeared too. Did you know him?”
I exchange a glance with Wes. “I did. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know where he went? Did you disappear to the same place?”
I shake my head. Wes reaches over to touch him on the shoulder and Peter leans into him, an unconscious gesture he doesn’t even seem aware of.
“I’m sure your father is happy though, wherever he is.”
Peter gives me an assessing look. He must be eight now. He’s grown a few inches since I last saw him, but he still barely comes up to my chest. He’s only a child, but he’s still my grandfather, and the last time I saw him he was trapped in a cold cell under Central Park.
This is why I need to stop the Project. So this little boy will never have to experience the same fate.
Wes sees my strained expression and straightens. He grabs both of Peter’s shoulders and turns his body toward the house. “Why don’t you go find your mother? I’m sure she’d like to say hi to Lydia too.”
“All right. I’ll be back soon, I promise. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Peter runs across the lawn again. From the back he looks like a miniature version of Wes, with his white shirt and dark pants.
Perhaps the reason my grandfather tried so hard to find out what happened to Dean was because he never had a father figure to step into that role. Could Wes already be starting to fill a void that was always there?
Peter’s mother, Elizabeth, steps out of the door at the back of the house, and I almost gasp at the sight of her. She is like a walking ghost, pale and vacant, her eyes dead in a way that reminds me of the newly broken recruits.
“Oh, God. She’s not handling it well.”
“No.” Wes’s voice is grim. “Peter is mostly taking care of himself. He’s over here all the time, with his grandparents and Mary, but it’s not enough.”
“That’s why you’ve been spending so much time with him.”
He nods. “I know what it’s like to feel abandoned. And he’s your grandfather, after all.”
It is getting darker by the minute, and stars are starting to appear, small dots of light that mirror the fireflies blinking in the corners of the lawn. I reach over and touch Wes’s arm. Already, the movement feels easier. “Thank you, for looking out for my family.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that.” He smiles down at me. “I’ve never had a family before. For the first time in my life, I think I’m finally starting to understand what it means.”
Lucas wraps his arms around me, his head close to mine. “It’s swell to see you again, Lydia,” he says in his honey-soaked southern drawl. “We’ve missed you.”
I press my open palms to his back. “I missed you, too.”
He pulls away, but keeps his hands on my shoulders as his gaze travels from my feet to my head. “As pretty as always, I see.”
At that point, Wes has had enough, and he grabs my arm, moving me into his side and forcing Lucas to let go. “Wanna take your hands off my girl, Clarke?”
Lucas laughs, revealing his slightly crooked bottom teeth. “At ease, Private Smith,” he says, using Wes’s fake name from the last time we were here. “I was just sayin’ hello.”
“You can say it from a distance.”
“You know my heart is elsewhere these days.” He tips his head to the right, where Mary is bending down to talk to Peter. She smiles, and even in the dim light of the lawn I see her eyes soften as she straightens Peter’s shirt collar.
“How’s it going?” Wes asks quietly.
Lucas shrugs. “Mostly she seems like herself, but any time I bring up Georgia or Dean, she gets real quiet. Which is a strange thing to see, coming from Mary. I don’t know what to say anymore. I feel like a fathead around her.”
“She’ll come around.”
Lucas runs his hand over his buzzed blond hair. He is in his olive-colored army uniform, the starched khaki stretching across his broad chest when he raises his arm. “I’m getting discharged in a month. It’s time for me to start making plans. I want her to be a part of that, but . . .” He looks over at me. “Think you could work your magic, Lydia?”
“I can try.”
Mary stands up fully and turns to face the house. When she sees us standing there, her smile widens and she bounces across the lawn. Behind her, I watch Peter run to where his mother is sitting silently in a wooden folding chair. Mrs. Bentley is standing over her, holding a
