“It’s impossible,” Scott finally answered. He turned to them. Lucy realized it had been a long time since her father had tried to assuage the tension with a one-liner or ill-timed joke. It was an embarrassing idiosyncrasy, one that prompted trying looks from the teenagers. Now that it was gone, Lucy wanted it back. Just one joke, just one bad pun. Just one big, kind-hearted smile.
Lucy slid down off her chair and started to walk over to her father, but Maxine was there first, putting her hand out behind her back to stop Lucy in her tracks.
Maxine looked at Scott and grabbed his hands. They stood like that for a long time—communicating with their eyes and twenty-two years of understood expressions. Lucy turned to look at Grant; she wondered if they would ever have the closeness and telecommunication abilities her parents had.
Grant was pale and his permanent smile absent from his face.
“We don’t have much time, Scott,” her mother whispered, but her voice carried to the others. “You know that the longer we wait, the chance increases for him to be discovered.”
“If I had a plan...if I had an ally...then maybe I could get Grant off Kymberlin. Which is absurd when you think of how much getting him on Kymberlin just cost me,” Scott said without hiding his disdain. Lucy felt herself go rigid.
“I got myself here, Mr. King,” Grant said, rising. He looked at his friend and mentor, and lowered his head. “Don’t get me wrong...I appreciate that you saved my life before, but...”
“Yeah, let’s not rewrite history,” Lucy interjected, staring at her father. “You left him to die. You created the virus to kill Copia and left Grant underground to die.”
“I tried,” Scott said in a small voice. “You have no idea how hard I tried.”
“Sometimes, Dad, just sometimes, you make it hard for me to see how I can ever forgive you for being so weak,” Lucy said. “You were sad yesterday morning at breakfast because you knew that they were killing hundreds of people in the name of progress for the Islands...and you helped them. Again. You keep helping them.”
“Well, I’m done now, right?”
“Because they pushed you out—”
Scott bit down, his jaw line tightened. Maxine, still holding his hands, let them drop. She leaned in close and whispered something in Scott’s ear, and while his body language didn’t soften, he looked at the ground in defeat.
When he finally turned to face Lucy, it was clear that he was close to tears. “This is our future. This is the reward. Our lives here will be full...rich with possibilities.”
Seeing her father so close to crying might have been enough to unhinge her, but instead she couldn’t help but feel disgust and anger.
“Stop with all the lying,” came a voice from the loft. Scott looked up and saw Ethan leaning with his elbows on the ledge. “You’re right. That’s how the Islands will be for most of the people here. I believe that the men and women who are raised here will live a beautiful life, but those people don’t know the truth, Dad. And sadly, we don’t get to live behind the façade. It’s not how you wanted it...you didn’t get everything you wanted. We’re alive, but that’s it.”
Ethan’s words fell on them and they absorbed his speech. Scott was the first to look away.
“It doesn’t matter what you feel, Ethan. I don’t know how to get Grant off the Island,” Scott said.
“This is not up for debate,” Maxine answered after a minute. “You will find a way to make it happen. Grant is leaving. And he’s leaving with Teddy. And—”
Maxine turned and looked out at her daughter. Lucy held her breath and watched the parade of emotions wander across her mother’s face. In an instant she saw fortitude, worry, and then grief. It was as if she didn’t need to say it out loud: she was wondering if Lucy would join them. And it didn’t have anything to do with Grant, although she was certain that is what her mother thought. Lucy knew in the hospital room, while she listened to Huck try to win her over, her lungs seared and burned in the aftermath of her drowning. She might have known before that, as she watched Salem crumble into a heap in the Pines’ kitchen. But her father’s apathy in the face of Grant’s impending doom, his lack of action against injustice, solidified some of her resolve.
This world was not for Lucy.
And the thought of abandoning it also terrified her.
One minute she knew she would follow Grant to the shore, and the next she couldn’t fathom a life without her siblings, without her mother. And even at her angriest moments, she couldn’t imagine willfully abandoning her father either. Could she choose to never see the young woman Harper would become? Could she look her parents in the eye and choose to say goodbye forever?
Grant looked at Lucy and then to the floor.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t...I don’t know...” Lucy said. “How can I know? I want to go...I can’t stay here.” She said it weakly and without conviction, as if she hoped that no one would hear her. She looked down. She did not want to see her mother’s face register the announcement, or her father’s determination to stifle her success. As quickly as she said it, she retracted it. “But I can’t leave my family...”
“Lucy.” Maxine said her name quickly and quietly. It was an expression of understanding, of empathy. “You don’t have time to waffle, child. I love you and I’ll support you...”
“This is entirely out of the question!” Scott exclaimed, raising his voice. “Entirely, and ridiculously, out of the question. It’s not going to happen. Not Grant. Not the child, and most assuredly not my daughter.”
“Dad—” Lucy started.
“You would follow this boy into the wilderness? Do you have any idea what it’s like out there?” Scott flung his hand wildly toward the window.
“Yes,” Lucy answered in a heartbeat. “I do. Because I’ve been out there!” She blushed and tried to calm the building tide of resentment. How could he not remember that she and Ethan had been left behind? In snippets, he had learned of Spencer’s maniacal reign, and the ever-present fight for food and water. He had heard of her and Grant’s travels across America—encountering the bodies, the flooding, the quiet dissent into a world governed by nature and not man. It was her father who didn’t understand.
“I’ve been out there, too,” Ethan said as he walked down the steps. Step, wait. Step, wait. His careful maneuvering drew their attention upward. His hands slid down the bannister and when he reached the landing, he walked straight to his sister and enveloped her in a hug, holding her tighter and for longer than he had ever hugged her before. When Ethan pulled back, he turned to his parents.
“I’ve been out there for longer...and with others who have survived. And the biggest threat we had collectively were the people in this building.”
“You would have died without us intervening,” Scott said. “It’s simple.”
Ethan scoffed. “Maybe I would have. Or maybe I wouldn’t have. That’s the thing that you don’t seem to understand. It’s really not as simple as you’d like to believe. It’s a complicated mess...and it’s a mess that everyone in this room is responsible for. There’s no one right thing to do.”
“We should all go,” Lucy said. “As a family.”
The offer stood. Maxine looked at Scott, and Lucy thought she saw the eagerness in her eyes, but maybe it was wishful thinking. Her mother had made her views on Kymberlin clear during their date.
“Am I invisible in my own house?” her father shouted. “I can’t listen to this.” And Scott, still in his pajamas, walked past everyone and out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. When the echo of his exit had died away, Maxine went to her children. She didn’t say a word for a long moment and then she took Lucy and Ethan’s hands and held them tightly. Grant stayed off to the side, watching and waiting.