Page 118 of The Same Backward as Forward

I think about Hannah and that tiny, precious, perfect baby girl, and I know that Jackson was right. I had a choice between loving Hannah and hating myself, and I chose wrong.

But this time—right here, right now—I can make a different choice.

Chapter 42

I watch from the shadows as the EMTs load Hannah and the baby into the ambulance, and I know: I’m going to go to her. This time, I’m going tostay.

I don’t know how I’ll handle my father when he discovers where I am, when he realizes that I am finally done running and comes for me, but I do know that Hannah and I are perfectly capable of playing three-dimensional checkers.

I know that even when I hit rock bottom, I can work any maze.

Hannah hates me and loves me andneedsme, and no matter what I’ve done or what I deserve, I know thatshedeserves the world.

The world, I think, the words vehement in my mind,and the whole damn sky.

I step out of the shadows, but I’ve only taken three steps toward the ambulance when someone moves directly into my path.A woman.Thanks to the flashing lights, I can make out her long, red cloak and a hood that casts her face in shadows.

Lightning flashes overhead, and I recognize my mother’s eyes staring back at me from beneath that hood.

The ambulance doors slam shut, drowning out the thunder. Iwant to call out to them to wait, but I don’t. My father is not my only opponent in this game of highest stakes.

If I’m going to fight for a life with Hannah, if I’m going to stand my ground, it starts now.

“You should not be here,” my mother says. Her voice makes me think of our last meeting, when I was locked in a white room. I think of the maze on the wall and the fact that, as far as I have been able to tell, Alice Hawthorne has stayeddeadall this time.

“You brought me here,” I counter, testing that theory.

“I most assuredly did not.”

“Then he did,” I conclude.

“Your father?” My mother’s eyes are no longer visible to me. Now that the ambulance is gone, the two of us are having this conversation in near total darkness. “I think not.”

I’ll decide whether or not I think she’s lying later. For now, I need to get to Hannah. I know where the ambulance is going. The hospital isn’t far. “Get out of my way,” I order.

“What is it,” my mother replies, her voice as high and clear as a bell, “that you intend to do?”

Make the right choice this time. Make up for the years we lost.“Live,” I say. I let the word hang in the air for a second or two. “With her. Withthem.”

With Hannah and her daughter.

“Let me ask you something, Toby. The baby—does it matter to you that your blood does not run in her veins? That the man who fathered her, one Ricky Grambs, is a pathetic kind of man indeed? A charming drunk and nothing more. He will never be there for your Hannah or their daughter.”

“I don’t care whose genes the baby has,” I say, my voice vehement and low. “She’s part of Hannah, and that makes that little girl mine to love and mine to protect.”

And this time, I willstay. I will not walk away again—not ever again.

My mother lifts a hand to my cheek. “Then you understand,” she says, “that from the moment you were born, you were your father’s and mine. You areours, Toby, in every way that matters. Our son. And that is why I broke a very important rule to save you that day in the alley.”

What kind of rule?I think, but I can’t shake the feeling that asking the question out loud would be playing right into her hand.

“You know that I am alive.” My mother is as steady in her way as Hannah is in hers. “And you are not supposed to, and the fact that you are here right now—the fact that someonebroughtyou here—means that there is another who knows.”

Knows that she saved me. Knows that I know that she is alive.

“Do you still have it?” my mother asks, her voice low. “The message you received? Whatever it is that brought you here—do you have it?”

The intensity in her voice is jarring. I reach into my jacket pocket and withdraw the top postcard from my stack, leaving the rest tucked safely away. My mother reaches forward to claim the one I have withdrawn. I start to explain that the message was written in invisible ink, but she doesn’t seem to care. She removes a flashlight from her cloak and shines it on thefrontof the card: the Gothic castle, the fairy-tale woods, the girl in her white cloak.