Chapter 29

After a long shift the next day, I came back and guessed every single number between twenty-seven and three hundred and ten. In my hours away, I hadn’t come up with any better strategy.

As the numbers were filled in on the puzzle, my face took shape on the other napkin. I’d been wrong when I’d inferred that Harry was an excellent artist.

He was a remarkable one.

It wasn’t just that he’d captured my features. It was the way he’d done it. My wide-set eyes looked like they were fixed on something in the distance. There was an almost dreamy look in them that was completely at odds with the hardness he’d captured in my jaw. He’d drawn my lips slightly parted and twin lines between my brows—not quite a furrow. My cheekbones were sharp, but he’d somehow managed to make my cheeks look soft. He’d drawn my neck long, my hair loose and a little wild, like I was standing on a cliff, staring into the wind.

Somehow, the overall effect wasn’t soft or hard or sharp or dreamy or wild or any of the descriptors that fit its individual components. I just looked… alive.

I had no idea how he’d managed to make me look like that without exaggerating a single one of my features or forcing emotion onto them in a way that would have at least told me he’d taken some artistic license. But he hadn’t. There wasn’t a single part of his sketch that I could look at and think, that’s not me, and yet, there was absolutely nothing nondescript about the person he’d drawn.

“Thoughts?” His voice broke into my mind.

I told myself that he wasn’t asking about the drawing and looked at the puzzle instead.

I’d hoped for some repeat numbers—or better yet, repeated combinations of numbers—but every single number in the code was unique.

This was impossible. Literally. There was no way for me to figure out what any of those numbers stood for.

“You could start by writing out the letters of the alphabet.” Harry was beyond smug. “See if anything jumps out to you.”

Was that a hint or just gloating? With him, there was no way to tell, but on the bright side, the more annoyed I became with the puzzle, the closer I came to being able to forget that drawing and the way I looked through his eyes.

Ignoring his suggestion to write down the letters of the alphabet, I focused on looking at the numbers themselves. Four single-digit numbers. Only one three-digit number. I set all four of those aside for a moment. Of the ten two-digit numbers, five started with a three; three started with a four; and there was one each starting with a two and a five.

“I really would recommend writing out the alphabet,” Harry drawled, altogether too pleased with himself.

That was definitely a clue, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me take it.

“Enough playing around,” I said. “I still have one more day, and we have work to do.”

He reached for the other napkin, the one on which he’d drawn me, stroke by stroke and line by line. He looked from the sketch to the expression on my face now. “And there you are,” he murmured, his voice rolling over me like a summer storm rolling in. “There,” he repeated, a rumble in his quiet voice, “you are.”

The next day, I had the kind of shift where breaks were few and far between. I’d heard nurses in labor and delivery say that the maternity ward always got crowded when there was a full moon. It made no sense whatsoever, but oncology was the same way—at least today.

By the time I actually got a moment to myself, I was less concerned with eating than I was with the fact that tonight would mark day three. Losing this bet would mean telling Harry about either my mother or Kaylie.

I am not going to lose. On my way to the cafeteria, I grabbed a piece of paper out of the printer and a pen off the desk in the nurse’s station. Mentally cursing Harry the entire time, I finally took his suggestion and wrote down every letter of the alphabet. I stared at the letters.

A large percentage of the numbers in the code start with three, I reminded myself. And there are more numbers with two digits than with one. I had no idea what to make of the fact that three hundred and ten was the only three-digit number in play.

Why? I stared at the letters that I’d written out. Damn him. Would one repeated number/letter really have been too much to ask?

Harry’s voice answered in my mind: As fond as my people are of wagers, I believe we’re also very fond of skewing the game.

And that was when I realized: not a single repeat letter. I scarfed down a single apple, then made my way back to the nurses’ station on the third floor. Keeping my eye out for my supervisor, I slid around the desk and took a seat at the computer.

Thankfully, the hospital computers had internet, because I had a question, and Ask Jeeves at least purported to have all the answers.

I plugged in my question. Glancing up from the keyboard, I saw my supervisor coming my way. I looked back down at the results and…

Got it. I closed the browser but didn’t make it around to the front of the station before she spotted me.

“Hannah.” Her tone wasn’t sharp, not exactly.

“I was just—” I started to make excuses, but she didn’t let me finish.

“You should go, Hannah. Now.” She glanced back over her shoulder, and I realized suddenly that I wasn’t being sent away because she’d caught me using the computer.

What’s going on? My heart skipped a beat as I looked past her to the hall. It was empty, but it didn’t stay empty for long. Double doors swung inward, and a patient was wheeled in. It was clear she’d come in through emergency, but she was being admitted here.

To oncology.

And the patient in question was my mother.

I didn’t leave. I couldn’t, because that would have been an invitation for her to come after me. If there was one thing that I knew for sure, it was that Eden Rooney didn’t allow anyone in the family to see her weak and walk away.

Why hide when you can run? Right now, I couldn’t afford to do either, so I bided my time, and I donned my poker face, and then I let myself into her room.

She was in the bed. She looked small. But I wasn’t fooled.

My mother stared me down. “You don’t know anything, girl.” Gravelly voice, measured tone.

I refused to feel any of the trepidation I should have felt at that combination. “I don’t want to know anything,” I said.

“Can’t always get what we want, can we?” Eden Rooney wielded pauses like thrusts of a knife. This one was long—tortuously so. “I had plans for your sister,” she said finally. “And you haven’t left Rockaway Watch.”

In other words: She’d had plans that required either a daughter or a young woman, and I was fair game.

“I’m just here until I finish school,” I said—neutral tone, neutral expression.

“I suppose we have that much in common, finishing what we start.”

The muscles in my throat tightened as I remembered pushing the needle through Rory’s skin. I’d known when she left that night that she would be back, but then Kaylie had died, and my father had somehow been able to hold her back.

Until now. “I’m not going to say anything to anyone.” My voice was as quiet as ever.

“About what?” my mother spat.

I couldn’t say that you’re sick. I couldn’t utter the word cancer or so much as mention medical privacy law. I sure as hell wasn’t going to say, I’m not going to tell anyone I saw you weak.

“Exactly.” My mother’s tone was deadly. “I can get to you. Anytime. Anywhere.”

Before I could reply, she started coughing.

Is it lung cancer? I swallowed the question back. When I did speak, my voice came out tight. “Are you going to be okay?” I felt like a child, asking that question. I sounded like one, too. I didn’t want to care about the answer. I should have been looking out for myself—not her. Never her.

Shrewd eyes took me apart, piece by piece. “You loved your sister. Never would have guessed you felt a damn thing for me.”

I don’t want to.

She stared at me for the longest time. “You’re smart, Hannah.” There was no logical reason for that to be the sentence that sent a chill down my spine. “You’re my daughter, truly.”

No. I wasn’t. Not in any way that mattered. “You don’t want me back,” I said.

“Is that a threat?”

I’d seen her here. I knew her secret. There were people in the Rooney family who’d never been happy with a woman running things, people who would absolutely take advantage of any weakness she showed.

It is to your benefit to keep me away from them. I didn’t say that. What I said was: “Am I smart or am I a person who would threaten you?”

She let out a little snort. “You look like me, you know. People have said so since you were a child.”

I thought about Harry’s drawing, about the way he’d made me look—not soft or hard or sharp or dreamy or wild but alive. My mother and I didn’t look a thing alike.

I was nothing like her.

I turned to leave, but as I hit the threshold, I paused. I knew not to hesitate, but I did it anyway, because for better or worse, she was my mother.

“Does Dad know?” I asked without turning around.

“What do you think?”

I shook my head. “I think I should go.”

I made it all the way out the door before she spoke again “Hannah?” I didn’t turn around, but I stopped long enough for her to issue one parting shot. “I miss her, too.”