Page 22 of Into the Dark, We Go

"Just my mom."

"No siblings?" he pressed, his tone neutral, making it hard to gauge whether he was genuinely interested or just filling the silence.

"It’s just my mom and I."

"What about your dad? He around?"

"Jeez, what’s up with the third degree?" I shot him a wry grin, amused by his serious tone.

"Just making small talk."

"Choose a lighter topic. My dad passed away."

"Sorry," he said, finally peeling himself away from the door and moving closer.

"You mind giving me a hand?" I pointed at the three boxes, a suitcase, and another Ikea bag full of stuff. Lucas’s gym bag was there, too.

He slung the blue bag over his shoulder and grabbed one of the boxes. I took the gym bag and the other box and then fishedout a baseball bat from the corner. We’d have to make one last return.

"What’s up with that?" he asked as we headed down to the car.

The bat seemed out of place among the boxes and bags, sitting there without explanation. I’d never been a fan of baseball, but my father was. When I was a kid, he took me to practices and games, which I agonised through, too bored and uninterested to commit. After he died, my mom got rid of most of his belongings—she hated clutter—but I managed to snatch his baseball bat and kept it ever since.

"It was my dad’s," I said simply, sparing him the pitying details.

"Are you looking forward to going home?" Nick asked on our way back up to collect the last of my things.

"Not really," I confessed, scanning the room one last time to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.

Nick hadn’t mentioned his father, and since we were already getting personal, I had the green light to ask. "Where’syourdad?"

"Don’t know, never met him." He was nonchalant.

Lucas would have made a terrible joke about Nick’s dad being a ghost, given that his mom was a psychic. I smiled to myself but didn’t say anything. The joke was stupid anyway.

We removed the last of my belongings from the apartment and loaded them into the car. And then, with deliberate slowness, I placed the key on the kitchen counter and gave the apartment a last withering look.

All ties to Minneapolis were officially cut.

Mitchell set strict rules:everyone took turns driving, and drivers switched every four hours, following a clockwiserotation. The driver had complete control of the music, while the passenger was responsible for navigation. No one dared argue with the former military man.

I drove first. Next to me, Mitchell was recounting a story about the goat to our extended audience. In the rearview mirror, Nick was reading something on his phone while June cast sidelong glances at him, which he ignored.

As we approached Chicago, traffic thickened. Local drivers weaved recklessly through lanes, disrupting the flow. Tired of both the dull scenery and my eclectic playlist, which mostly featured Skrillex, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift, the group perked up at the first glimpse of the city. But the skyline soon vanished, swallowed by the industrial outskirts.

June’s tense silence lingered, taut and ready, like a bowstring pulled too far, ever since Nick settled into the back seat near her. She’d managed to keep it in check for a while, but now, four hours later, that restraint cracked. She turned to Nick with an almost confrontational directness.

"So you just… moved back into your mom’s house after she died?" she asked bluntly, without attempting to smooth out the conversation.

"Around then, yeah, why?"

"It’s just weird that you’re only telling us now. Did you, like, go through your mom’s things?"

"I did." Nick ignored the first part of her sentence.

"And was there anything?"

"Like what?"