Remember Yesterday

7

The next morning, I’m in the eating area of the Russells’ home, where I eat breakfast every morning. It looks like a baked goods café exploded in here.

Every available surface is covered with cookies. Chocolate chip, almond lace, pinwheel, peanut butter. Sugar cookies and snickerdoodles, macaroons and pecan cookie balls. Angela pops the next tray into the Meal Assembler as soon as the previous one comes out.

I snatch up a still-warm cookie and put it into my mouth. The sweet and bitter chocolate tingles my taste buds, and the gooey center explodes over my tongue. Molten magma cookie. Yum.

This is what I need right now. Something to warm me from the inside out. Something to help me forget that somewhere out there, someone is sending me a message to compel me down a path I’ve never seen, toward a destination I’m not sure I want to find.

Even now, sweat slicks over my skin, and my legs ache with the need to run. My nerves vibrate, faster and faster with each passing hour, getting more and more antsy, because I’m not moving, not acting, not galloping down a purple and green hallway.

My body begs me to listen to this compulsion, but I can’t. I don’t even know where this hallway is.

The Meal Assembler dings. Angela takes out a tray of madeleines and swaps it with a package of coconut snow. Her hair, arranged in a thousand braids, is pulled off her face in a low ponytail, and everything about her is smooth. From her creamy brown skin, to the gentle but capable hands, to the long, stretchy fabric wrapped over her shoulders and midsection, with the tiny face of a six-month-old peeping over the edge.

“You think Remi’s old enough to eat a cookie?” I pick up a bunny-shaped treat and wave it in front of the baby’s face. “Why’d you make so many, anyway?”

“It’s called nesting.” Angela looks at the piles of cookies and laughs wetly, like a saturated sponge about to overflow. “Although I suppose I’ve already had the baby.”

I put down the cookie and whisper a finger over Remi’s face, marveling at the lashes that lay like thistles against her cheek. She turns toward my finger and tries to bite it. “And she’s wonderful.”

“I know it. I’ve never been so happy in my life.” She bursts into tears.

I pull my hand from Remi’s face. “Angela, what’s wrong?”

The air leaves her mouth in quick, breathe-in-a-paper-bag puffs. “What am I doing? I don’t know how to take care of a baby. I have no idea how to keep her safe when she’s learning to crawl.” She presses the plastic wrap from the tray of cookies against her forehead. “I don’t know how to keep her alive.”

With each word, her body gets a little stiffer. The paralysis spreads a little more. Who can blame her? The fear stems not from normal new-mother anxiety but from her future memory, the one that foretold that her baby girl would crawl off a cliff and fall to her death.

It’s taken the better part of a decade for Mikey to convince her the memory doesn’t have to come true.

I wrench her hand from her forehead, plaster wrap and all. “You can change your future. Remember yesterday. If my sister did it, so can you.”

And so can I. I don’t have to fall in line with whatever future is shown to me. I don’t have to become Dresden’s assistant.

“Callie’s the only reason this baby exists.” Angela looks down at Remi, beyond smitten. Ready to sacrifice the world for a six-month-old. “Her courage showed me, showed so many of us, that we don’t have to live in constant fear of tomorrow.”

“You’ll be fine. More than fine. You’re a wonderful mother, Angela. This baby is lucky to be born to you.”

I should know. For the six years I was on the run with Harmony, she was the only person who tucked me into my pine-needle bed and kissed me good night. Since she and Mikey adopted Ryder, and Ryder and I were inseparable, she was like my mother, too. And now that I’m living in the little cottage behind their home, sometimes I can even pretend she is.

She ruffles my hair. “I’m the lucky one. You and Ryder came to me fully formed. Six years old, the two of you, with so much goodness shining from your eyes I was slayed. I was fortunate enough to guide you a bit and love you a lot. That’s all.”

I drop my head, resting it briefly next to Remi’s. She squirms, trying to twist free of the wrap, and holds her arms out to me.

I grin. Other than Ryder and her parents, the only person Remi will let hold her—the only person Angela will let hold her—is me. It’s like a double seal of approval.

“Can I play with her?” I ask Angela.

“Well…” Even now, after I’ve held the baby dozens of times, Angela hesitates. “You have to make sure you don’t put her on the ground. Or let her play with any small trinkets or beads. Or put a blanket too near her mouth. Or jostle her too violently. Or—”

“I’ve read the baby care manual along with you,” I say gently. “Twice. You know how careful I am with her.”

She smiles. “Yes. I do know that.”

She unwraps Remi from the fabric and hands her to me. I hold her straight above me, her dimpled thighs dangling in front of my face. She squeals and coos, clapping her hands as if to say, More! More!

If it were any other baby, I might toss her in the air. I’ve seen Laurel do that with her son, Eli, and I remember his laugh of pure delight. But this is Remi. Maybe Angela’s too protective of her, but I can hardly blame her.

I take the baby on a tour of the eating area, pointing out the various Meal Assemblers and the pantry of plastic-wrapped trays, and then give her back to her mother. Angela carefully places her back in the length of fabric. For a moment, I wish I were a baby again, so I could be as safe and warm as Remi.

“I don’t know how I would’ve made it through those years without you and Logan,” I mumble.

“You would’ve managed. You’re a survivor.” Calmer now, Angela tugs a plastic block out of the wall and begins to transfer the madeleines into it. “So is Logan, although sometimes I think you’ve adjusted better than he has.”

I hesitate, not sure I should betray Logan’s confidence. But if there’s anybody in the world who worries about Logan as much as I do, it’s Angela.

“He still hopes she’s alive, Ange. He thinks…he thinks his memory is going to come true, the one where Callie cheers him on at a swim meet. Last week, he cut his hand in the same way it was in the memory.”

“Was it an accident?” She puts down the spatula, her voice as sharp as the metal corners. “Or did he cut himself on purpose? Is he so desperate to make the memory come true, he would do anything to help it along? Even hurt himself?”

“I…I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

She snaps the lid in place and fits the block back into the wall. A hose sucks out the excess oxygen, and the madeleines join an array of other airtight blocks, designed to maximize freshness. “I’ll talk to him. It’s not healthy for him to dwell so much on the past. We have to focus on today. And prepare ourselves for what tomorrow will bring.”

The words are strong and sure, but her voice wavers. Like the ripples that expand from a single stone, the trembling gets bigger and bigger until her voice cracks. And I know she’s no longer thinking about Logan.

I touch the soft black down on Remi’s head. “Keep her away from those cliffs, okay?”

“Are you kidding?” Angela smiles, quick and ferocious. “She’ll be lucky if she leaves the house these next eighteen years.”

The door opens, and Ryder swaggers into the room. He does a double take at the cookies. Recovering quickly, he sweeps up half a dozen with one hand. “Who aren’t you letting out of the house? Is that why you made so many cookies? Because we’re stuck inside?”

Angela swats him on the shoulder, the way she used to when he was a little kid. Except now, he towers over her by half a foot, and he has to lean down to kiss her on the cheek.

“It’s called nesting,” she says.

“You should nest more often.” He places a soft kiss on Remi’s head, leaving cookie crumbs in her hair. “Except next time, maybe you could nest with red meat? Lamb chops, rib eyes, beef tartare. That would be epic.”

“I don’t think birds eat red meat,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh, because they eat cookies all the time?”

Angela giggles, and whatever else, I’m glad to see her happy again, if only for the moment.

“Get out of here, both of you,” she says. “I need to figure out what to do with these cookies.”

Ryder grabs another handful, and we leave the eating area.

I take a deep breath. “I have a mission for us.”

He groans. “Another one? Jessa, your bite hasn’t even healed, and if we break into another lab, Mikey will ground me for—”

“Not that kind of mission. No more labs. I just need to figure out where a certain purple and green hallway is. Are you game?”

He finishes the snickerdoodle and looks longingly up the stairs, as if wondering if he should’ve gotten out of bed this morning. Then, he turns back to me and sighs.

“For you, Jessa? I’m always game.”