Page 30 of The Same Backward as Forward

It took some time for Harry to make it to the threshold of the shack, but his movements were smooth. I stepped out ontorocky ground. He did the same—or tried to. If I hadn’t moved in to brace his body against mine, he would have fallen. It wasn’t until his fingers dug into my arm—hard—that I realized: He was blinded by the sun.

No windows, I thought suddenly. It had been easy for me to forget that Jackson’s shack didn’t have windows.Iwasn’t living there, and unless it was one of my days off, I arrived and left under cover of night.

For a month and a half, Toby Hawthorne had lived with only artificial light.I should have taken him outside sooner.I dismissed that thought because what Ishouldhave done, right from the beginning, was stay as far away from him as I could.

“What a scenic view.” Harry—he had to stayHarryin my mind—said, still blinking. “I, for one, have always been partial to crumbling lighthouses.”

I was on the verge of meeting his sarcasm with sarcasm of my own when he continued. “Call me sentimental, but there’s something beautiful about anything built for one purpose that refuses to die, even once that purpose is gone.”

I didn’t know what it was that possessed me in that moment, but suddenly, Ihadto ask, the same way I had to breathe. “Have you remembered anything about your life before?”

Harry took a step forward, rock to rock, his jaw clenched with the effort. The sun reflected off his dark brown hair, deep red highlights shimmering in the light. “The first thing I remember, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, isyou.”

Chapter 25

That night, I refused to sleep until I’d solved the puzzle. I’d tried reading clockwise and counterclockwise, but this time, even thinking the wordclockwisehad me looking at the circle differently.

I tried placing numbers above the letters, but the spacing was off.WandHwere at twelve o’clock and six o’clock.NandYwere at three and nine, but there were too many letters for the rest to fall directly on the numbers of a clock.

W, I thought, going back to the top of the circle. I traced my finger down to the bottom.H.That particular letter combination—WH—was the start of so many questions.

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

Why?

My gaze darted back to the top of the circle. Next to the W, there was aY.Grabbing a pen, I drew two lines on the back of my hand—one from theWstraight down to theH, and then another from theHup to theY.

Why.I paused just for an instant.What next?My heart rate started beating a fraction faster, and then I trailed my finger across the circle to the letter opposite theY.

“AnotherH,” I noted. Unsure if I was headed down the wrong path or not, I went back up to the next letter in the upper-right quadrant, then back down to the lower left, and then I grabbed the pen, retracing those moves.

H,I,D… Up once more got me anE—and another complete word.

WHY HIDE…

I kept going, letter after letter, until the back of my hand looked like a spiderweb—or a starburst. The pattern was complicated enough that I couldn’t help thinking about how effortlessly Harry had written out the entire sequence. He’d never evenpaused, like his brain was operating on another plane, like he could see the whole of the puzzle—the trap he’d laid from me, the question I’d just decoded—all at once.

WHY HIDE WHEN YOU CAN RUN

Chapter 26

I showed up to Jackson’s the next night with the back of my hand washed clean and the solution to the puzzle, both diagram and words, copied onto a sticky note. I stuck it to Harry’s forehead, dead center.

“And here I’d made a bet with myself that you wouldn’t solve it until tomorrow.” He reached up, pulled the note off his forehead, and folded it in half, not even checking my work.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him, nodding to the note.“Why hide when you can run.”

“I would think it was obvious.” He got up from the mattress. “You are an expert at hiding.” He cocked his head wolfishly to one side. “Behind your hair. Behind that expression that you keep oh-so-carefully blank. Behind the lies.”

I could feel his gaze trying to capture mine, so I looked away, and it only belatedly occurred to me that I might be proving his point.

“I haven’t lied to you since I told you I was a nurse,” I said.