Page 54 of Memories of the Lost

“Yeah, that could work.”

Tillie was suddenly depleted to her very bones, as if the center of her body had been scooped out and left on the counter, like a squash without seeds. “I think I need to go home and rest right this minute. I’m not sleeping very well.”

“Good idea.”

On the way out of town, she asked Jon to stop at her mom’s farm, just to see if there might be something she’d missed, but a cleaning crew had scoured the place. There wasn’t so much as a button left anywhere inside. Her feet made hollow echoes as she crossed the kitchen floor. It made her feel lonely. In memory, she saw her mother in jeans and a tank top, her feet bare and strong, stirring something on the stove. The stereo played her favorites: Crosby, Stills & Nash; Joni Mitchell; Led Zeppelin. Tillie thought of her, young and pretty, living in California, with a daughter.

Who had died.

The woman at the stove became a paper prop, hiding a truth she desperately needed to unravel. Where was Tillie?

Where was she?

Everything she’d ever known about her sole parent had shifted completely, and she had no idea what to put in its place.

“Why did you lie to me, Mom?” The rooms were silent.

Outside, she paused. She probably wouldn’t be back here again, and she pressed the visuals into her mind carefully—the fenced garden and the barn and the woods. How many hours did she spend in those woods, with a cat or a dog or herself, making things up, drawing the trees and acorns, and imagining little fairy homes beneath the brambles?

Could these woods be the source of her dream?

No. These were deciduous trees. The ones in her dream were pines. She let the image of them rise—tall, thin pines, with undergrowth below. And—she noticed it for the first time—a creek.

For the first time, she felt the deep truth she’d been avoiding. The dreams were memories.

She just had to find a way to unlock them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

After the workshop, Liam met with his team in a borrowed conference room. The day was soft outside the windows, luring his attention toward the budding trees and soft breezes, the promise of greenery just out of sight.

Without preamble, he said, “I called this meeting today because I need some time.”

“Time?” echoed Yolanda, a brown-skinned woman with impressively shiny black hair she wore cut in a line so straight it could slice peaches.

“Time off.”

“What are you on about? We’re booked out.”

He shook his head. “I need some downtime. Cut everything for a couple of months.”

“Two months!” Yolanda slammed her hands down on the mahogany table. Her rings and bracelets added emphasis, banging against the wood. “Nah, no can do.”

Krish glanced between the two of them, raised a hand. “Hold on, hold on. What’s up, bro?” He smoothed his beard with index finger and thumb, his dark eyes piercing. “This about the woman again?”

“A sheila?” Yolanda blustered. “Not again!”

He scowled at her. “Out of line.”

She glared but apologized. “Sorry. But you’ve got an empire here. It doesn’t turn so easily.”

Liam shot a look toward Krish, who was responsible for this attitude. It made him angry. Two years ago, Liam had been sideswiped by a breakup from a woman he really had expected to marry, but it had been a normal kind of breakup between two adults who hadn’t wanted the same things. Only Krish had seen it as the same as his previous breaks. No one else knew his history.

He looked at Krish for a long moment. He looked right back, unapologetic. Liam felt a surge of uncommon anger.

He took a breath. “I never wanted an empire,” he said calmly.

“Well, it’s bigger than you now. It’s all of us.” Yolanda indicated the people around the table. Mike, a muscled man from Adelaide who ran the security team; Penny, a fragile-looking blonde fresh out of uni who was Krish’s assistant, planning and executing logistics; Alan, Yolanda’s second-in-command, a pale Scot with a shock of curly red hair. Their eyes were all fixed on him. Worried.