A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

forgive me.”
    “Good call,” said Ian. “You’re a way better person than me.” He clapped his hand on my back. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
    As we drove, Ian and I fell back into our old banter.
    “So what’s been going on since I’ve been away?” I asked.
    He glanced over at me. “Are you pumping me for gossip?”
    “I feel so out of the loop!”
    “Well, I’m not as good at this as Cassie, so bear with me. You’ll have to get the full scoop from her tomorrow.”
    “Pleeease?”
    “Okay, okay. Well, you know about Cassie and Dan, I guess, right? How they’re . . .”
    “Together?” I asked hopefully.
    “Sickening.” He laughed. “Ever since she left the hospital they’ve been surgically attached.”
    “Yay!” I said, clapping my hands, so excited, suddenly, to be surrounded by all the little normal things that I loved about my life.
    “I think we have different definitions of ‘yay.’ I lost a bro this winter, Skye.” He bowed his head. “A true bro. One of the good ones.”
    I laughed. “Hey, eyes on the road. So what have you been doing with yourself while that’s been happening?”
    Ian glanced in his side-view mirror and switched lanes evasively. A police car passed us in the opposite direction. My stomach tightened involuntarily, as I remembered the sirens on the morning of Cassie’s accident.
    “I’ve been finding ways to have fun.” He focused on the road as we neared my driveway and didn’t elaborate.
    “That’s such a guy thing to say,” I muttered. “You’re no fun.” He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at me. There was a mischievous look in his eyes that he was not going to tell me about. Something had shifted between us, as quickly as a cloud passing across the sun, but I didn’t know what. “Home, sweet home,” he said. “Ready to face the wrath of Aunt Jo?”
    “Ugh,” I said. “No. But I’m going in anyway.”
    “You can do this.” He patted my knee gingerly, like I might slap his hand away at any moment. “She’ll just be so relieved that you’re home. She’s been frantic.”
    “Way to make me feel better,” I joked halfheartedly.
    “Just call me if you need anything,” he said. I got out of the car, and leaned down to stick my head in the window.
    “Thanks, Ian,” I said. “I’m glad I saw you first.”
    “Me too.” He grinned. “Just don’t tell Cassie. She’ll kill me for not bringing you straight to her.”
    I zipped my lips and threw away the key.
    “Our secret.”
    He nodded and peeled out of the driveway.
    The light from the kitchen windows spilled out into the front yard as I stood and stared up at the house. It used to be home. It still was, I guessed.
    I took a deep breath and made my way inside.

Chapter 8
    T he front hallway was dark but for a faint light from the kitchen. It took me a moment to get my bearings before walking toward it.
    What was I going to tell her? Where had I been?
    The kitchen was deserted and still. The sink was clean and empty, the counters were spotless, the cleanest I’d ever seen them. The floor was so shiny that I could see my reflection in the polished wood. Was Aunt Jo out on a trip with Into the Woods? My stomach sank at the idea of coming home only to find myself alone again—like I’d been right before I’d left.
    In all my life, I’d never known my adopted guardian to be such a neat freak.
    Something was wrong. Something didn’t feel right at all.
    But then I began to notice small hints of life here and there. A wet tea bag resting on a spoon on top of the microwave. A book with an envelope holding the reader’s place. Some neat stacks of papers on the kitchen table, with the topmost page pulled slightly askew, as if someone had been looking at it recently and hadn’t put it neatly back in place. I walked over to the table and picked it up.
    My birth certificate.
    Heart pounding, I riffled through the rest of the papers on the table. Xeroxes of my passport, Social Security information, and my adoption papers were sorted and stacked into piles, along with paperwork from the River Springs Police Department for filing a missing persons report.
    I started when I heard a voice, and seconds later Aunt Jo came into the room talking on the phone.
    “. . . about five five, black hair, gray eyes, a champion skier, sort of intense, but once you get to know her—” When she saw me, she stopped. She clicked the phone off and it fell from her hand and clattered to the