The Remedy (36 page)

I squat down, using one hand to cover my face as I start to cry again. I can’t imagine how this must all sound to Deacon, but I manage to get a few words out. “I’m a closer,” I tell him. “I’m a fucking closer.”

“I know you are,” he says soothingly, not understanding the true meaning of my words. “And I’m sorry I asked you to quit. I’ll support you in whatever you want. But right now I’m worried. Are you still at Marie’s? Let me talk to her for a minute.”

“Aaron and Marie are gone,” I say, sucking in my cries. “They’re gone, Deacon. It’s all been a lie. Every damn thing.”

“What do you mean they’re gone?” he demands. I hear him moving, his voice taking on a frantic edge. “Okay, Quinn, listen,” he says. “I’m coming to get you. Don’t move.”

“No,” I tell him, shaking my head and getting to my feet. “You can’t save me from this.” I take the phone away from my face and try to regain my composure. The grief and shock begin to wear off, but now I’m flooded with thoughts. With anger. I have to find my father.

When I bring the phone back to my ear, Deacon is talking quickly and I hear a door closing, the sound of wind as he gets outside. “Don’t come here,” I say, my voice calmed. “I have to take care of something first.”

I have to go home.
Home.
I can never go back. I’m not even Quinlan McKee. My entire life is a lie, and I would be irresponsible to drag Deacon into that. “I love you, Deacon,” I murmur into the phone. “I’ve always loved you.” I hang up. I let the phone fall from my hand to smash on the floor, not wanting to be tracked. Even if I have removed the app, I can’t trust anything. The two people who loved me most in the world have lied to me. I start toward the door, fighting back the emotions, forcing myself clear. I need to deal with my father and figure out what happened to me. How I got here. I need to find out the truth.

*  *  *

The tires on my car squeal as I take a sharp turn into my driveway. My adrenaline is pumping and my mood is frantic. I’m slightly more rational, needing an explanation more than a cry at this point.

I slam my car into park, jutting forward in the seat. I jump out and rush up the front porch, trying the door but finding it locked. My hands shake as I try to use my key, the metal skipping along the hole. It takes a few minutes, but I finally get the door open, pushing it hard enough that it hits the wall, sending several frames crashing to the floor, smashing the glass panes.

“Dad!” I scream, looking wildly around the entryway. I start walking through the hallway of lies that are meant to remind me of who I’m not. “Dad!” I scream again, and even saying that word makes my throat burn. I curse, and toss the keys on the kitchen table and trample up the stairs.

I head directly for his room and flip on the light. He’s not here. The bed is neatly made as always, all of his items arranged on his dresser and desk. I’m so upset, I can barely think. I immediately pull the drawers out of his dresser, letting them fall to the floor with a clatter. I bend down and sort through his things, throwing his clothing aside, and I look for anything he might have hidden. I check underneath the drawers, in his closet and his desk. I look everywhere, but I find nothing.

Nothing. No papers at all. I still, thinking about that. My father’s entire life revolves around keeping files. And yet there isn’t one paper out of place here. Not one piece of information that he’s left unchecked.

“He’s too careful,” I murmur to myself, spinning to exit the room. He’d never leave evidence, not something I could find. There’s nothing here.

I stand there for a moment, my resolve slipping. I step toward his bed and run my hand over his pillow, my eyes filling with tears. It smells like home in here. Like love and safety. He’s my dad.

I sniffle and snatch back my hand as if I’ve been burned. He’s a liar. He’s a stranger who kept me.

“No,” I say out loud, shaking my head. “No, I don’t belong here anymore.” Without a backward glance, I walk out.

I get downstairs and start to pace, knowing I’ll have to confront him. There’s no other option. I grab a kitchen chair and drag it into the living room, letting it scrape the gloss-finished wood floor. I set it in front of the couch, not wanting the comfort of a sofa—
false comfort,
I remind myself.

I’m sure Deacon has contacted my father, so my dad has probably left work and is on his way now. I’ll go upstairs to pack my bag—one that will have to carry everything I need. Because once this is over, I’m never coming back.

*  *  *

I was eleven years old when my father told me I’d have to sign another contract. I’d completed my first three years, and more than anything I wanted to be a regular kid. Sixth grade was supposed to be my time to do that. He’d promised me that every time I begged to quit.

“The McKees are not quitters, Quinlan,” he said sternly. “We’ve taken an oath to help these people, given them our word. Would you really want them to suffer for your selfishness? I can’t believe I raised you this way.”

I was ashamed, lowering my eyes to my now-cold dinner.
He’s right,
I thought.
I am selfish.

“If your mother was here,” he said, taking a sip of his iced tea, “she’d be very disappointed in you.”

My heart broke, and I covered my face and started to cry. I missed my mother, even though I couldn’t remember her. My father told me that was normal, that I’d been a little girl when she died. But all the other kids, they had a mom to braid their hair and make them lunch. I wanted a mom too, and I promised that if I ever got one, I’d be so good to her. I’d never cause her trouble. So the idea that I had disappointed my mother absolutely broke me down.

“It’s okay,” my father murmured, coming to kneel next to my chair. He pulled my hands away from my face, and his eyes were so sad. I sniffled, and he reached to touch lovingly at my cheek. “You look just like her sometimes,” he said dreamily. “It’s like she never left at all.”

In that moment I hugged him, telling him how sorry I was. That I would sign the contract if he thought I should. That I wouldn’t disappoint anyone again.

I swipe my finger under my eyes now, sitting in my living room. It’s dark outside, but I don’t turn on the light. My anger has bubbled over, and this memory only helps cement the fact that my life is a lie. I realize now, especially after all the time I’ve spent with grieving parents: He wasn’t saying I looked just like my mother that Saturday night. He was saying I looked just like Quinlan McKee. His daughter.

My back aches, and to distract myself I twist my torso a few times to loosen it up. I sit back in the chair and prop my black boots up on the coffee table. It’s been over a half hour since I left Marie’s. I know my father will be here any second.

After packing, I took the time to strip my emotions—to try to lose myself so I could become numb enough to handle this. Brave enough. Strong enough so that he won’t be able to manipulate me. That’s the thing that Deacon doesn’t realize. Looking back now, my father has always been able to bend me to his will. Make me believe that I want to be a closer, that I want to help these people. But really, he studied me. Knew me well enough to push the right buttons to get the reaction he wanted.

It’s probably why he hated Deacon so much when we broke up. He saw that Deacon had the power to affect me too. My father had lost a bit of his hold on me. Could have been why he let Deacon out of his contract early, in the hopes of keeping us apart.

My father didn’t count on the fact that I have power over myself. I’ve been doing this long enough to understand my emotions now, to be fully self-aware. He won’t get inside my head again. I won’t let him.

Headlights illuminate the windows, and I sit up with a start as a car pulls into my driveway. My heart beats frantically, but I take a breath, reminding myself that I have to keep cool. I can’t show him any weakness.

The front door opens, and my father rushes in, stopping when his shoes crunch on shards of broken glass. “Quinlan!” he yells, stricken with worry.

I don’t move. I sit half in the dark, staring straight at him. He sets his briefcase near the door and shrugs out of his coat, examining the mess of frames on the floor. He glances toward the staircase.

“Quinn?” he shouts.

“I’m here, Dad,” I say calmly.

He spins, startled, and clutches his chest. “My God,” he says. “You scared me.” He comes into the room, squinting his eyes in the low light. He stops at the lamp and clicks it on. “Deacon called me and said—” He abruptly stops when he sees me in the light.

I study every tic of his facial expressions. Flashes of worry, fear, realization. He tries to quickly cover it with parental concern, but I’ve already seen behind the curtain. I tilt my head to let him know I’m not here for his bullshit. When he still doesn’t budge, I reach into my pocket and pull out a folded copy of my death certificate. I toss it onto the coffee table between us, and my dad picks it up and opens it.

His throat clicks as he swallows, and then he drops onto the couch, devastated as he stares at the paper in his hands.

“Who am I?” I ask him. “Because obviously that’s not me.”

“You’re Quinlan McKee,” he says, but there’s no force behind the words. He lowers the paper onto his lap and takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm. He slips the spectacles back on and looks at me. “You’re my daughter—”

“Don’t you dare!” I shout, kicking the table and startling him. “I read the file. Saw the video. I remember bits and pieces.” I grit my teeth, anger and hurt bubbling up. “You’re not my father, are you?”

He holds my eyes, refusing to answer. In his stubbornness I see a bit of myself. My personality that I’ve adapted because he’s been my father for the past eleven years. I wilt slightly, the enormity of his lie breaking my will to find out the truth. I still love him.

“Please,” I say, my voice a little weaker. “Please tell me.”

My dad looks down at the paper and clears the emotion from his throat. For the first time, I see how tortured he truly is. I don’t know how I haven’t seen it before, or maybe he’s brilliant at hiding it. But that death certificate is his truth tea.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, I’m not your father.”

I begin to shake, not my hands or feet. My insides tremble, my heart broken into a million pieces. There’s a quick flash of our lives, the times we’ve sat together laughing, moments when he held me while I cried. I don’t know when I lost the truth—how I
became
my assignment. But his love is all I’ve ever known. And it’s all been a lie. My whole life is a damn lie.

I feel I might throw up again, but I fight the sickness. I can’t walk away now and give him a chance to regroup. He’s too good. He’ll find a way to cover, make me believe his false truths.

“What happened to your real daughter?” I ask, the words painful to say. “The certificate only lists the cause of death as an accident.”

My father sits quietly for a long moment, and then he leans his head back against the cushion, staring up at the ceiling. “Quinlan died when she was six years old,” he says.

I flinch at the name not being attached to me. I’m betrayed by the sound of it. But I don’t interrupt. I need to know what happened. How I got here. And what this all means.

“Quinn and her mother were on their way to school,” he continues, “when a tractor trailer that had been clearing snowbanks swung out a little too far. My wife died on impact, but Quinn held on. She survived long enough to give me hope that she’d recover. Long enough for me to accept my wife’s death and pin all of my dreams on her broken little body.

“A month,” he says. “My little girl fought for a whole month. She never woke up, but I was there for every minute. I would sing to her and brush her hair and cut her nails. I would bend her legs so they didn’t grow too weak. I wanted her to be able to play again when she woke up. It didn’t matter that the doctors told me her spinal cord had been severed. I didn’t believe them. They also told me she wouldn’t survive the night, and there she was, four weeks later.”

My father looks at me, and I’m completely heartsick.

“I loved her more than I loved anything else in this world,” he says, “including myself. I would have given anything, anything possible, to keep her with me. She was my baby. She was my everything.

“It was late on a Sunday night when she died. Soundlessly, like she just drifted away on the wind. I heard the monitor, and I grabbed her and begged her to stay. I yelled and screamed and told her not to leave her daddy. But she couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it.

“When I finally left the room, Marie was sitting in the hallway in a chair they’d brought for her. She’d been my closest friend for years, longer than I even knew my wife. I told her Quinn was gone, and rather than crying like I knew she wanted to, she jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders, looking me dead in the eyes.

“ ‘You’ll get through this, Tom,’ she said sternly. ‘This will not break you.’ But her fierce expression couldn’t last. Her lips began to quiver, and then we were a huddle of grief in the children’s hospital wing.”

I’m only human. Even through my anger, his grief is palpable. I have to fight back my sympathy, refusing to be weak in front him. “Where do I come into this story?” I ask.

“Marie,” he says. “She went to Arthur Pritchard and asked what could be done. I don’t know the details,” he tells me. “I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be pulled from the illusion. Marie showed up with you seventy-two hours later, the third girl she tried. She never told me your real name.”

“She stole me from my family?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know where she found you. And I don’t know what Arthur Pritchard had to do with it—why you fit so well.” He presses his lips into a watery smile. “Although you won’t believe this,” he says, “I do love you, Quinn. I raised you. You’re my daughter.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say, fiercely. “My name’s not Quinn.”

“You can’t see this now, but there are bigger things happening, things I’ve tried to protect you from. Same with Marie.” He hesitates, but continues. “I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement—a pretty severe one—so I can’t give you more information. But I need you to know that the department doesn’t plan to let you walk away. They never did. They have custody of you until you’re eighteen, but even after that, they plan to transition you.”