Page 29 of The Outsider
“Do you believe what she said?” he asked gently. “About him leading some rebellion?”
Of this, I had little doubt. “Yes.”
“Why would he have done that?”
“Because what my mother said was true,” I replied with a sigh. “He never agreed with the idea that the people of the compound were special, chosen. Despite being a soldier half his life, he took no pleasure in war. He saw himself as a protector of peace, not as a warrior. Brave, but not innately a fighter.”
John nodded. “Like you.”
I gave a bitter chuckle. “I wish. That said, maybe if he’d been a bit less brave, he’d still be alive.”
There was a pregnant pause where John’s probing gaze penetrated all my defences, and I had to look at the floor.
“I don’t know,” he finally said with a shrug, “but going down fighting for a better future…seems like there are worse things to die for.”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right.”
There was a brief pause where John kept stroking my hand in his.
“Do you think that Jim J’s stabbing was an illusion?” I asked.
In truth, I had no idea what I believed about that bizarre bit of theatre. It’d seemed so real…yet I knew it couldn’t be. Something was off.
“I don’t know,” John replied with a sigh. “I keep thinking it must’ve been, but…I’ve also seen enough real stabbings. And that looked real.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wecando,” he said. “We just put as much distance between us and them as possible.”
I nodded, staring into the fire. How could so much about my world have changed in just 48 hours?
“What was the painting they showed?”
Immediately, the image of my father’s painting that I hadn’t seen in years came into my mind. It had once hung in his office; after his death, my mother removed it and I’d never seen it again.
“‘Doorway of Night,’” I replied, my voice sounding hollow. “He painted it when I was about eight years old. I’d been having vivid dreams about books we read together, where I faced dragons or became a princess. I’d wake him in the middle of the night sometimes, to tell him about them.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “He could’ve been forgiven for being irritated, but he never was. He loved my imagination. The door represents the entrance to dreamland.”
The memory sprung into my mind, unbidden: I pointed at the dark silhouette peeking through the door, and my father smiled affectionately at me.That’s you, Claire-bear.My eyes misted with tears that I didn’t allow to fall.
“Come here, sweetheart,” John said softly. “Let me hold you.”
When I didn’t move, he pulled me into his lap, holding me tightly against his chest, tucking my head under his chin. I shook from the effort of everything I was holding back, my body tight as a bowstring. John rubbed my shoulders, easing them down from around my ears as he murmured endearments.
The dam inside me briefly broke, and I turned and hid my face in his chest.
“It’s alright,” he whispered, tightening his hold on me. “I’ve got you.”
“I’ve lost all of them,” I said, my chest aching. “My whole family.”
“I know, baby. But you have me and Kimmy now. I know it’s not the same…but it’s something, right?”
I stilled, swallowing hard. “Yes. It’s everything.”
I took deep, calming breaths as John stroked my hair, and summoned a mental picture of what I imagined Summerhurst to be like. The image soothed me; already, before I’d ever seen the place, it’d become a sanctuary for me. A place where the people I loved most lived and belonged—a place where one day, I might belong too.
“Better?” he asked a moment later.
