Page 9 of Waysider
And Cass understood. In the slow way anyone understood when they were recognizing the darkest, world-bending truth.
Cass blinked. She blinked again, then again. Cal’s face still blurred.
The words spilled out of her like something had ruptured open. “Don’t ever fucking leave me. Promise me. Please. Promise me, Cal.”
One of her parents made a pained sound. Cass knew she wasn’t making sense, because he was dead, oh, God, Cal was dead—but she didn’t care. Whatever this was, whether she’d lost her mind or Cal was a ghost, it was better than losing the best part of herself. Cass gripped his jacket fiercely, resting her ear against it. Every inch of her was taut, and she didn’t breathe as she waited for her brother’s response. She needed to hear him say it.
“I’ll never leave you,” Cal whispered.
Cass let out a long breath, and the tension seeped from her entire body. She could hear her mother sobbing, and she was vaguely aware that her father had left the room, probably to get a nurse. To them, she was just kneeling on the floor, talking to empty air. But it didn’t matter. Nothing else did.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed closer. There, Cass thought. She’d found Cal’s heartbeat, steady and true, just like always.
Within minutes, or maybe it was seconds, Cass fell asleep to it—her eyes fluttered shut and her breathing deepened. She didn’t dream, or go back to that terrifying darkness at the bottom of the river. She just slept.
All the while, Cal Ryan sat with his back against the wall, staring at the wall opposite them. He listened to his mother’s broken sobs, and the low murmur of his dad’s voice as he tried to comfort her.
Cass slept so deeply that she never saw the expression on her brother’s face or witnessed the silent tears that streaked down his face.
CHAPTER FIVE
December 2nd, 1984
Deadwood, Oregon
Lane County Security Hospital
5:06 p.m.
That was how Cass knew Patrick Doyle wasn’t like her, regardless of whatever information he thought he had—he hadn’t looked at Cal once. There weren’t many people who could see him, and for a while, Cass had wondered if Patrick was one of them. It could explain how he knew about Michael and Ricky.
But Patrick Doyle was just your garden variety psychopath.
Cal had been silent for a long time. He hadn’t made a sound while Cass told Patrick Doyle about what happened in that small, yellow hospital room. They never talked about it, her and Cal. They rarely acknowledged Ricky, or the bridge, or the fact Cal was dead. There was no need to.
Neither of them ever forgot it. Any of it.
As the quiet stretched, one of the other prisoners began to bray like a donkey. The sound echoed through the entire corridor and bounced off the hard walls.
A change came over Patrick.
“Wiley!” he thundered, his head jerking to the side. The braying came to an abrupt halt. Patrick stared at the wall as if he could see through it. His voice lowered, but it was utterly devoid of humanity, and the lines of his body were menacing. “Shut your worthless mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”
Once the silence had returned, draping over the entire cellblock like a shroud, Patrick refocused on Cass with his usual amiability. He brought his leg up and rested his ankle against the top of his knee, the picture of a carefree boy from Minnesota. It wasn’t like a mask, Cass thought.
Patrick changed his personalities like a snake shedding its skin.
“I know that isn’t where your story ends, Cassandra Ryan,” he told her, as if the entire exchange with Wiley hadn’t just happened.
Cass fought the urge to swallow. “Not even close. But we may as well end it here, because you won’t believe the rest.”
“Try me,” Patrick said.
Michael. You’re doing this for Michael, Cass thought. She pried her fingers loose from the edges of the chair. She leaned her elbows on her knees and sent her mind back. Back to a time she barely remembered, because she’d been in a haze of grief… and denial. She took the slightest of breaths, then let it out slowly.
“A month later, I got a visitor.”
CHAPTER SIX
