Page 106 of The Same Backward as Forward

Just like that, I am back in the garden from my dreams.

“So you haven’t completely forgotten yourself.”

“Hello, Mother.” I can feel my lips moving, and I hear my voice, but it doesn’t feel like I’m the one talking—not really. “The maze washisdoing, I assume?”

His. My father’s. He’s the one who’s fond of little tests. Her name is Alice, and his is—

His is—

I rip myself from the memory, but my mother’s reply follows me back to the here and now, echoing through every cubic inch of my brain:Of course this was your father’s doing. It’s hardly likely to have been mine.

I take a jerky breath. My knuckles have gone white from how hard I’m holding the glass cutter in my right hand. Jackson pries it from my fingers.

“Horrible boy,” he says softly.

I do not mean to lean into him. I do not mean for my head to bow, or for his shoulder to be there.

“I saved your life. You owe me.” Jackson’s tone—less grunt than growl—seems, for him, almost tender. “I’m collecting.”

“What do you want?” I ask, but I don’t raise my head, and he doesn’t shrug me off.

“A promise.”

I know exactly what kind of promise this man is looking for from me. “I already promised you that I won’t hurt her.” I force my head up, force my body straight. “When the time comes, I’ll let her go.”

“When the time comes,” Jackson says, placing the glass cutter back in my hand and curling my fingers around it, “you hold on like hell, son.”

Chapter 34

It takes Hannah longer than it should to come back to me, but that just means that I’m ready for her when she does. I wait in the lighthouse, a blanket spread out on the floor, the room ringed with candles of my making. The epoxy on my marvel of a checkerboard is not yet fully dry, but it will have to do.

We are out of time.

But at least the expression on Hannah’s face, as she takes in the room around her, is magical.Once upon a time…

I cut the thought off. “Three-dimensional checkers,” I explain. I feel oddly exposed, sprawled out on the blanket beside my offering to her.

This is me, holding on.

I mark the passing of one second, then another by the rise and fall of Hannah’s chest and the wonder on her face, and then she swallows. “We have to go.” Hannah clips the words—and shuts her eyes. “Tonight. Now.”

Something is wrong.Dread hits me in an instant. I climb to my feet and move toward her. “We don’t have to do anything,” I say. If she were anyone else, I would demand to know what happened, but she’s notanyone else. She never has been. “I don’t need anything, Hannah, except this.” I’m close enough to touch hernow, close enough that she can probably feel my breath on her face, the way that I can feel hers on mine. “Except you.”

H-A-N-N-A-H.

She opens her eyes, and I flash back to the moment when my life began:rings of color like rings on a tree. I know that there is a reason Jackson was asking about my memories. I know, though I have done my best to pretend that I don’t, that there is a reason he told me to stay away from her.

A good girl. A horrible boy. And I don’t know what I don’t know.

I also don’t care. “If who I am is a problem, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, thento hellwith who I am.”

My mother’s name isAlice. I know, suddenly and in a sickening sort of way, that my father’s isTobias.

I slam up every mental wall I have. “I don’t care about who I was before. I don’t care about that life. I care about this one.”

About the lighthouse and the shack. About games and codes and folded paper marvels that she unfolded, one by one. About steady hands and the way that she is notalwaysgentle. About the way that she kisses my scars, because to her, they’re just a body’s way of sayingI survived.

I care—