Chapter 7
Dreaming

"Hello, it's me
I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet
To go over everything
They say that time's supposed to heal ya
But I ain't done much healing
Hello, can you hear me?
I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be
When we were younger and free
I've forgotten how it felt before the world fell at our feet."

- Adele, "Hello"

It was interesting that people usually said "life goes on" as a positive appraisal of the future, Hadji found himself thinking as he sat drinking coffee on a surprisingly sunny morning a week later. As far as he could tell, in this situation life moving on was one big frustration after another.

None of them had realized what a blessing it was to have a couple of days to process the enormity of Jessie's homecoming without any outside influence whatsoever. Hindsight proved to be clear as always, and they all soon found themselves missing the moments before anyone else had caught wind of their miracle. Real life didn't take long to catch up with them.

Dr. Quest sent out his video to all major news affiliates the morning after recording it, and it was playing on every station almost instantly. For a few blessed hours, it had seemed to work - and then the phone began to ring. Everyone from reporters to neighbors to complete strangers wanted to get in touch with them, and it took all of fifteen minutes for Dr. Quest to decide he'd had enough and permanently route all calls to voicemail. Last they had checked, the voicemail count was well into the triple digits.

Some calls weren't so easily brushed off; the local police were also eager to get in touch and collect statements. Due to the nature of Jessie's disappearance, they had spent more time working with the FBI and international precincts than anyone local, but her showing up in Augusta changed that. It was a force of habit bred by years of self-reliance that had kept Race from thinking about contacting the police sooner, but luckily Dr. Quest had gotten enough information out of Estella to send them to check the motel room Jessie woke up in for evidence. The detective assigned to the case was the only call they answered eagerly, but the news was not what they had hoped.

"By the time you notified us and we got an officer on scene, over 24 hours had passed," Detective Holstein had explained apologetically. "Evidence dries up quickly . . . we might have been able to get more if we could have gotten in there sooner, but the motel had already rented the room to someone else, so it's not looking promising. Fingerprints will be compromised, if they even existed in the first place. We dusted anyway and we'll see, but at this point I don't have high hopes."

"What about the staff?" Race had pressed tersely. "Does anyone remember anything?"

"We showed every staff member that was on shift within the last week the most updated photo we have of the suspect, and none of them remember seeing him. The room was taken out in Jessie's name and paid for in cash."

Holstein had promised that they were going to keep hunting down every lead they could, but the look Race and Estella had exchanged as they stood over the speakerphone had not been one of confidence. The next step was to get a statement from Jessie, who had refused to say more than a handful of words to anyone in hours following her medical exam. When they had tentatively broached the idea to her, she had surprised them both by agreeing without argument.

Unfortunately, her limited memory seemed to be of as much use to the investigation as it was to her own sense of identity. Holstein had been kind and dogged, gently pushing for every detail he could think of and scratching notes diligently, but all Jessie had been able to give was a description of a motel room that had already been searched and an account of her own feelings, neither of which could have been of much help. The most useful thing she had been able to provide was Sampson's note, which Holstein had taken and placed into an evidence bag with a promise to follow up about anywhere it might lead them.

As he was zipping up his jacket and collecting his things, he had thanked Jessie. "If you remember anything else, no matter how small, please give me a call," he had requested. "Anything helps."

Jessie had taken the business card he handed her silently, looking frustrated.

It was later that same afternoon that they received another tense phone call. As the adults of the family stood around the kitchen discussing the business with the detective and Hadji listened in while making a sandwich, IRIS's soft voice spoke.

"INCOMING CALL FROM ROCKPORT COMMUNITY HOSPITAL."

Race and Estella had glanced at one another darkly before Race finally reached out and grabbed the kitchen phone.

"This is Race Bannon." He listened without expression for a long while, only occasionally offering a confirming word, and finally he swallowed hard. His back was turned to everyone else in the kitchen, all of whom were watching silently. "You're sure? Okay . . . okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we will. Thanks."

He hung up the phone and stared at it like a zombie for several long moments, forgetting that he was not alone.

"What did they say?"

It was Jessie's voice. Presumably having heard IRIS's announcement, she had appeared in the doorway while Race was on the phone, and she now stood looking him directly in the eyes for one of the first times since she had gotten home. Her face was blank and her voice neutral.

Race hesitated. "Honey, you've already had to deal with a lot of information -"

"Dad, just tell me."

He seemed torn, but he could tell she would not waver, and Estella gave him a slight nod as she watched their daughter with worry.

"The results of the uh . . . the kit came back," Race began haltingly. "You're not . . . you don't have . . . there shouldn't be any lasting effects of anything." He felt sick trying to talk around the words he couldn't bring himself to say. Jessie was no longer meeting his eyes. "But it was positive. There was recent DNA."

Estella made a pained noise, but Jessie was silent, staring at a spot on the floor without any change in expression. Finally she nodded, shrugged out of her mother's attempted hug, and walked out of the hallway without a word. Her parents stared after her until they heard the distant sound of a door closing from the upstairs landing.

"Oh, Race," Estella whispered, leaning against the doorframe as though it were the only thing preventing her collapse. "I feel like I should go after her, but I don't even know what to say . . ."

It had been several days since then, and they still didn't.

On this particular morning, Hadji found himself sitting in the same chair, staring out the same window as he had that day, processing his thoughts as best he could. Being a naturally quiet and observant person, he had found himself an unintended audience to enough of the week's events that he had been able to quickly piece together a concept of what was happening, even though the adults had studiously avoided giving he or Jonny many details, and as he thought back to the day of the doctor's phone call, he felt sick to his stomach all over again.

Growing up orphaned on the streets of Bangalore had introduced him to the cruelties of humanity at a far younger age than most, and even though he had been saved from the worst things by Dr. Quest many years ago, his experiences as a young boy still gave him an insight into the world that the rest of his family sometimes lacked. While Jonny understood that Jessie had been tortured and changed, his innocence and hope still prevailed; he didn't think too deeply about the vague things the rest of them were talking around. Hadji, meanwhile, was barely six years old the first time he was confronted with the depravities men committed against women, and he knew without having to be told that the wounds Jessie was trying to heal were far more complicated than those of mere flesh and blood. He saw it in her silence, in the darkening circles under her eyes, in the way she jumped when they spoke too loudly or moved too quickly.

It felt most of the time like someone had pressed a pause button on their lives. No one knew what to do or what to say or how to interact with each other or the outside world, living in a sort of suspended reality, waiting for something to snap. It was maddening, and the breaking point was not far off when two days earlier, Estella had attempted to force them back into action, calling a family meeting in the living room when she was sure Jessie had fallen asleep.

"Okay, we can't keep doing this," she declared, her jaw set. "Sitting around in silence, not living our lives . . . this isn't helping."

"I agree," Dr. Quest offered softly.

"I've been talking to the family therapist the hospital recommended," Estella explained. " She insists that we act as normal as we possibly can. Everything is already a complete mess to Jessie; nothing is what she remembers and she feels like she can't count on anything. Watching us wander around without routine is only going to make it harder. She needs to see us act as we would on any average day and get comfortable with that so that she can start to rebuild her sense of what 'normal' is now."

"Stel, I honestly don't know what normal is anymore," Race said slowly after a long beat of silence.

"Well, you better find a way to remember," Estella had retorted, more curtly that she needed to. "You and I need to be strong for her. That's our job. I'm going to get back in touch with my dig team and do a bit of remote work for them. You should start picking up bits of the usual security and consulting work that you do."

She turned her gaze to the rest of the family. "Benton, you've already been doing a good job of working on your research. Take your work calls, go to meetings, do what you need to. Jonny, Hadji, do the things you normally would on a school break: watch TV, use QuestWorld, go see friends."

Jonny frowned. "That just sounds so wrong. I don't even want to do any of that."

"I know," Estella sighed, looking exhausted. "But even if your heart isn't in it, try to put up the facade. Putting your life on hold and sitting around anxiously isn't helping anyone, least of all Jessie."

"We shall try, Estella," Hadji had gently declared for all of them.

And try they were. The next morning, Estella was wandering around the house on a mobile phone, working through what sounded like a frustrating tangle of problems with her team in South America. Race and Benton had disappeared to the lighthouse to do work, and Hadji and dragged Jonny into studying with him even though he knew his brother was staring blankly at a single page with no intention of working. He was pretty sure Jonny's book was upside down.

Despite how false it felt to them, Jessie seemed intrigued by the change. She had spent most of the last several days hiding in her room, seemingly exhausted after spending even small amounts of time around her family. Estella and Race went to talk with her periodically, but to the rest of them, her presence remained ghost-like.

The morning Estella's plan went into effect, Jessie came downstairs to get breakfast. As Hadji watched surreptitiously from the living room, he saw she and Estella pass each other. Estella was still on the phone and offered her daughter a smile, but then walked off, still deep in conversation. Jessie physically paused and watched as her mother walked away, looking startled at the lack of a standard concerned check-in. She walked away and not long after wandered in and sat in the armchair across from the boys.

"Hey, Jess!" Jonny greeted brightly, his face brightening.

Jessie offered a weak smile and took a sip from the mug she was holding. "Good morning."

There was a long beat of uncomfortable silence as they all searched for something to say. This was the first time the three of them had been alone together.

"We are doing some studying," Hadji offered with a smile. "Your interruption is not unwelcome."

"What are you reading?" she asked after a moment, nodding at Jonny's book.

"Uh . . . Great Expectations," Jonny answered after taking a moment to remember. "Lit class."

Jessie nodded silently for a few seconds, staring at the book and looking torn. Jonny was wondering if he had said something wrong when finally she asked slowly, "Do you always read upside down these days?"

Hadji laughed aloud as Jonny glanced down and realized she was right. He gave a sheepish grin and slowly flipped the book around so that it was oriented correctly as Jessie gave him a small smile.

"I just like a challenge," he retorted flippantly.

"Is the homework itself not enough of one for you?" Hadji joined in the banter.

"Ha ha ha, you're both so funny," Jonny tried to scowl, but it quickly faded into a grin.

The moment of near-normalcy faded quickly back to uncertain silence, but the ice had cracked a bit. After a moment, Jessie grabbed herself a book from one of the many shelves lining the room and curled back up in the armchair. Hadji noticed that she would occasionally glance over the book to study he and Jonny when they didn't seem to be paying attention, and when her eyes would flicker back to the page, they would remain still for a while, her mind clearly far away. He realized for the first time that his amazement every time he saw her as she was now would, of course, also work in reverse. Their parents looked more or less the same, but he and Jonny had grown much more noticeably.

She sat with them for most of the morning, and even though they didn't talk much, the silence gradually gave way from awkward to companionable, a welcome shift that brought with it a relief Hadji could feel all the way through his bones. Maybe the simplicity of Estella's plan was exactly what they needed. Maybe the healing process had finally begun.

Later that night, Jessie sat reading in the armchair in her room. She had taken to burying herself in books as much as possible over the last week, trying desperately to get out of her own head. It wasn't always a success, but on those occasions where she managed to get sucked into the fictional world, her mind would finally go quiet for a little while. She lived for those moments.

She had been surprised to successfully enjoy just such a moment that morning with Jonny and Hadji. She had hovered in the kitchen for a long time, debating whether or not she should try to engage with her friends or just continue to hide away. She wanted to spend time with them almost desperately, but every interaction she had with her family these days was warped by awkwardness and the effort she expended trying uselessly to ease the tension exhausted her. She was ready to sucker punch the next person who asked her how she was doing.

And although it had been a bit awkward, it was nowhere near as bad as she had expected. Both of the boys seemed to know better than to ask her about anything; their avoidance made for a standard gap in conversation, but their light banter felt normal. After fighting down her anxiety for a half an hour or so while staring at the same page of the random novel she had grabbed, she actually calmed down enough to read alongside them for most of the morning.

To her shock, neither of her parents disrupted the peace by checking in on her - something they tended to do every hour, at least. Instead, they had continued to work on their own projects throughout the morning, and later that afternoon Estella and Benton had gone into town to buy Christmas gifts. The idea of the holiday was jarring to Jessie, an occasion too cheery and normal to possibly exist in the world as it was now, but a glance at the calendar confirmed the date to be December 23rd. Although Jessie was glad for the sudden space she was being given, she couldn't say she was looking forward to her family's holiday plans, whatever they would end up being.

Overall, it had been the closest thing to a 'good day' Jessie could imagine having, given the circumstances, and she was grateful. She had spent most of the last week processing the idea of what had happened to her, trying to imagine the horrible memories that continued to lie just outside her reach, and she was thoroughly exhausted by the whole thing. To have a day of relative simplicity was a great blessing. Just as she was closing her book and contemplating the idea of trying to sleep (a prospect that typically ended in restlessness and nightmares), the sound of raised voices broke the stillness. She couldn't tell what was being said, but it was being broadcast with heat.

The unmistakable anger of the voices made her shiver. The relative peace she had felt moments before melted away into the much more familiar anxiety, her breath quickening and her heart hammering. Her every instinct was to hide away from the source of the voices, even though consciously she didn't know why. There was no reason to be afraid.

Ghost fear, she told herself firmly. Get it together, Bannon! This was supposed to be the one upside to having no memory - no reaction to the memories, a benefit that had so far not managed to live up to its potential. Even though her shakiness did not subside, she stubbornly moved across the room and out to the second floor railing to listen more closely to whatever was going on.

What had been muffled before was now clear as could be: Race and Estella's furious voices.

"Race Bannon, you are the most selfish, pig-headed—"

"Oh, here we go—"

"—self-obsessed, unfeeling—"

"Estella, I swear to god—"

"—bastard that I have ever had the misfortune of coming across! AND I MARRIED YOU!"

Jessie found that her jumpiness was displaced by the shock of what she was hearing. It had been years since her parents had fought in front of her, and after days of them tiptoeing around like she a bomb that might go off at the slightest touch, this loss of control was entirely unexpected.

"You know, maybe if you'd try to control your temper a little bit, you could look at things rationally once in a while!"

"Control my temper?! How's this for controlling - my - temper!"

"Go ahead and throw it, Estella! Prove to me again that you have anger issues!"

A loud clatter echoed up the stairs, the sound of something hard tumbling across the tile floor.

"Jesus, it nearly hit my head!"

"And if I had better aim, it would have!"

Absorbed in the sounds of her parents' skirmish, Jessie didn't notice that she was no longer alone in the second floor corridor until Jonny's voice made her jump.

"They throwing things again?"

Startled, Jessie frowned at Jonny as he moved to stand beside her, leaning against the railing and looking downward into the foyer as though he could see the fight taking place in the kitchen.

"Mom hasn't done that since before the divorce," Jessie mumbled, almost to herself.

Jonny sort of shrugged, still staring downward without expression. "People just lose control sometimes, I guess."

"You aren't surprised," Jessie observed slowly, her eyes studying Jonny sharply. "This isn't the first time you've seen them do this. It should be, according to my memory. But it's not."

Jonny gave her a sad, guilty glance as he stammered, "No, I mean . . . they don't . . . it's not common."

"But it's also not unheard of."

He stared into the foyer for a long silent moment. "No."

"I can't believe how immature you're being right now-"

"Do you really want to go there?"

"You know, I do! Throw it at me, Stel, all the reasons I'm a horrible husband and father and human fucking being! Remind me that this is all my fault!"

"Hey, you said it."

The realization hit Jessie quickly and horribly. "They're fighting about me, aren't they?"

"No," Jonny denied quickly. He grimaced at the look she gave him and acknowledged, "I mean, I just got here, I've only heard what you have, but . . . I doubt it. They love you, Jess. You have no idea how much."

Race and Estella seemed to be moving toward the back of the house, their voices growing more distant and muffled.

Jessie said nothing more, but the look on her face spoke volumes as she stared down toward the first floor landing.

"Let's get outta here," Jonny declared.

Jessie kept her eyes locked on the hallway below, but after a moment asked, "How?"

"We'll take one of the vans. I can drive now, you know."

"That's ... terrifying," Jessie shot back.

"Yes, but entirely legal!" Jonny flashed her a sideways grin.

Jessie looked torn. "They'll freak out. A lot."

"They probably won't even notice, not when they're like this. We can sneak out and then sneak back in later. And if they do notice, I'll take the blame; it's my idea anyway."

The wavering hesitation on Jessie's face was broken by a fresh wave of yelling coming from downstairs. She couldn't listen to it anymore; curtly, she nodded at Jonny. "Get the keys."

The Rockport town square could have been mistaken for a ghost town. It was the kind of sleepy small town that didn't have much in the way of hustle and bustle even at peak hours, but as the clock chimed midnight on the eve of Christmas Eve, it was easy for Jessie and Jonny to feel as though they were the only living beings for miles.

Jonny parked the car along the street that separated the quaint downtown village from a beachfront park. They sat in not-quite-comfortable silence for a few moments, neither entirely sure what to do now that they had achieved their escape. It was a maddening feeling: the desperate need to flee being hampered by the short leash of not-yet-adulthood.

"You ever wish you didn't have to stop and stay? That you could just keep driving?" Jonny mused aloud, wincing a moment later as he realized the foolishness of his words. "Sorry," he finished lamely.

"No," Jessie said slowly. "I feel like that all the time."

"I feel like that right now."

"Me too."

"If we could keep driving right now, where would you want to go?" Jonny asked, staring wishfully through the windshield.

Jessie thought for a long moment. "New York. Millions of people who have no idea who I am or what's happened in my life. Eight million chances at a fresh start."

Heartened by her willingness to share with him, Jonny grinned. "New York sounds good. Lights, culture, pizza! The city that never sleeps . . . it would be a lot more hoppin' than this place right now. Where after that?"

Jessie raised an eyebrow. "How far are you wanting to drive?"

"It's called dreaming, Jess. You can't dream small! You go big or go home."

This got a small smile out of her. "Well, where do you want to go? We already went where I wanted."

"Hmmm . . . New Orleans, maybe. Dad always said it has an amazing vibe. And it would be much warmer right now! Your turn."

"Okay," she was getting visibly into it now, "we're going to go west now. To Colorado, the Rocky Mountains. We can climb peaks and snowboard and get our adrenaline rush."

"I like it! Then after that, we're going to hit up the Grand Canyon. Do a little whitewater rafting!"

"Then San Diego to lay on a warm beach in the middle of winter."

"And at that point, we should probably just keep going down through all of South America."

There was a sharp pause as they both remembered the last time they had been together in South America. Jonny kicked himself mentally, but Jessie seemed to shake it off and offered him a sad smile.

"No, let's mix it up a little," she said softly. "Go north. See the aurora borealis or something."

"Yeah. I like that better."

Although Jonny hadn't managed to mess up the moment as much as he feared, the joy of their dream escape had worn away at the painful memory, and they were once again grounded in reality as they sat in a parked car in northern Maine. After a moment it became clear that Jessie was getting lost in her own head again, and Jonny cleared his throat and gave her a shy grin. "Well, want to take a walk?"

The chill in the air was shockingly sharp, the air biting at any skin that dared to be exposed. Pulling their hats low and their zippers to their chins, Jessie began to walk toward the deserted town square, studying the darkened shops and snow-lined cobblestone walkways with unusual intensity. Jonny followed in her wake, warring internally between breaking the silence and leaving it be.

The town square was quaint but ordinary, a small cluster of shops and buildings offering the usual variety of boutiques, restaurants, and hobby stores. It was built as part of an attempt to reform Rockport's appeal as a tourist attraction - an effort that had consistently failed since its creation a few years before the Quests had taken up residence there. Nevertheless, it remained a popular hangout spot for the locals, as evidenced by the many weaving paths of footprints frozen into the fallen snow.

Jessie stopped in front of a shuttered cafe. "This is new."

Jonny frowned for a moment, wanting to disagree, but then his expression softened. "Uh, kinda. It's been here for a couple of years now."

Nodding slowly, Jessie didn't say anything else, continuing along the street with her same studious expression, which suddenly made a great deal of sense to Jonny. Not too much had changed, but she paused again in front of a taffy shop that had opened a year ago and a sea fishing outfitter that was new as of October. This time she didn't ask.

After circling the square and adding a fresh set of footprints to the ground, they came to stand in front of the Rockport Village fountain: a stone effigy of a mermaid smiling into the sky, surrounded in the warmer months by small geysers of water. Tonight she seemed to be smiling at nothing, the water in the basin around her frozen solid.

"So what did I miss?" Jessie said finally.

"What do you mean?"

"Three years is a long time. Everyone probably wasn't just sitting around staring at walls the whole time. What did I miss?" Her face was carefully blank and she was trying very hard to sound casual. "You know, other than a new coffee place."

Jonny tried to be lighthearted. "Britney Spears has gotten pretty popular," he said seriously.

"No, really."

"I know, I don't get it either."

"Jonny-"

"Oh no, there's more! People freaked out about computers not knowing how to handle a new millenium, even though they totally did and everyone just wasted a lot of money on bottled water for nothing. Oh, I started learning some Korean! I've forgotten most of it already, but -"

"Jonny, you know that's not what I meant," Jessie cut in. "I mean . . . I should know those things too, I guess. But that's not what I want to know right now."

Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair. "I know. It's just a lot." And most of it wasn't very pretty, and he hated adding to the burdens she already had.

Reading his mind, she brushed some snow off the ledge of the mermaid's pool and sat on the frozen concrete. "And I'm sure it's probably not the happiest. But I think you're the only one who will tell me any of it."

Jonny nodded, half to himself, as he continued to stand in front of her and watch his feet kick at the ground. "What do you want to know?"

Jessie had to think hard about that. "Everything, I guess," she said slowly. "If I can't know my own past, I'd at least like to know my family's. Just start at the beginning?"

"The beginning." Jonny had spent the last three years thinking of it more as an ending. "That night in South America. We were running on the beach."

"That's the last thing I remember." Jessie smiled to herself. "It was a happy memory, at least."

"They shot at us out of the forest and before I knew it, I was unconscious. I remember you yelling something, and then blackness. I came to on the beach and you were gone," Jonny said gravely, unable to meet her eyes, still too fidgety to sit down. The memory still made him sick. "I didn't know how much time had passed . . . later we figured out it was probably over an hour. Not long, but long enough apparently."

Jessie hesitated, and when the question came at last it was halting and cautious. "What, uh . . . what was it like? After I disappeared?"

Fidgeting, Jonny thought for a long moment. "The first few months were what you'd expect: searching for you. We used everything - every lead, every bribe, every prototype. We found ourselves in the strangest places, following leads that always dried up. We became those people you see on TV, crying and offering rewards to get their kid back even though chances are no one watching has the slightest clue. The whole time, we were zombies, you know? No one slept, no one laughed, no one really talked about anything other than finding you. There was this intensity in the air, this focus . . . but it slowly started to change."

Jonny began full-out pacing. "I think there's only so many times you can be given hope and then have it smashed before you start giving up. The police had been saying for months by then that we were way past the window where you find abducted kids, that they should start thinking about talking to someone, admitting that you might be gone for good. I remember being so angry when they said it - they were the cops, damn it! They were supposed to be solving it, not giving up! We were the Quests and the Bannons, we didn't give up like that, not when it was that important. But when I looked at them - at Estella and Race and Dad - I saw this look of brokenness. Like all the fight had gone out of them. Like they were done. I'll never forget the way they looked."

"How long had it been at that point?" Jessie whispered.

"A little over a year."

For a long time, neither of them spoke, Jonny continuing to pace slowly, Jessie watching the clouds of her breath rise like smoke.

"What happened after?" Jessie asked at last.

"Grieving," Jonny said simply after a moment of thought. "While we were searching, it was all suspended. No one would acknowledge how they felt because you weren't really gone, it was only temporary. But then temporary became permanent, and everyone kinda fell apart." Tucking his hands into his pockets, Jonny finally met her eyes. "Look, it wasn't pretty, Jess. Can we just leave it at that?"

"My parents," Jessie pressed, "have they been like this the whole time? Fighting the way they did tonight?"

"Off and on," Jonny acknowledged cautiously. "Losing you broke them. I think maybe it's the only way they know how to deal. Sometimes they just need someone to yell at."

"And you and Hadji? How has it been for you?"

"Hadji is Hadji. He's spent a lot of time processing things inside himself and trying to help everyone else. And me . . . I don't know really know what to say. I just remember that day with the police and the look on the faces of all the adults in my life as they gave up. Not that they shouldn't have, not that they had any reason not to, just . . . I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to give up on my best friend."

He walked over and sat next to her on the concrete ledge, and he was quiet for long enough that Jessie thought he had finished. But then he spoke again.

"About a year ago, they found a body off the coast of South America. A few miles from where we were that night." Jessie felt a chill run up her spine. "The police called us . . . they thought it was you. Estella was down there, so she went to identify it."

Jessie pictured her traumatized mother going to the morgue alone to identify her body and shuddered. "Well . . . we know how that turned out."

"Everyone was relieved, but also not . . . we still didn't know where you were. It sent Race and Estella back into some pretty dark places, but for me it felt like a wake up call. I felt like you were still alive, you were waiting for us, and I'd just been sitting around doing nothing. So . . . I kinda stole my dad's emergency credit cards, took out a few huge cash advances, and hopped on a place to look for you."

Jessie turned to stare at him. "Seriously?"

Jonny grinned sheepishly. "Yeah . . . I retraced old leads, new guesses, anything I could cling to. Ended up in like four different countries over the course of a month, somehow managing not to get found by my dad." His grin faded quickly. "But it didn't get me anywhere. I found the same dead ends everyone else had. And just like they did, I gave up. Went back to Maine with my tail between my legs." Swallowing hard, he said, "I am so sorry, Jess."

"For what?"

"For giving up. For letting you stay with that bastard for so long. The whole time you were out there, and we just kept giving up on you."

Jessie reached out and laid her hand on top of Jonny's, which had curled into a fist at his side, and squeezed it gently. "You were fifteen, Jonny," she said softly.

"I was sixteen by that point."

"Oh, well that changes everything," she said sarcastically, giving him a look that made him grin sadly.

"Yeah . . . I guess."

There were so many thoughts and emotions and missing pieces floating around in her brain that Jessie couldn't hope to figure out how she felt about all of this information. She still wasn't ready to acknowledge that distant shard of anger she felt rise up when she thought about how her family hadn't found her in all that time, even though it didn't seem to be going away. One thing she realized she was sure of though, as she sat holding Jonny's hand and feeling the weight of his words hanging in the air between them, was that she didn't blame him. And she didn't want him blaming himself.

"We were kids, Jonny," she said slowly, realizing the root of how she felt. "We weren't supposed to know what to do because we were just kids."

Jessie didn't realize how sad she sounded until she felt Jonny squeeze her hand back. She looked over at him and he met her eyes for the first time since he had begun talking about the past. The look they shared seemed to say all the things they didn't know how to express.

"For me, it feels like being a kid ended pretty much overnight, but that's just a metaphor. For you, it actually did," Jonny said slowly. "How are you doing with that? Waking up one day and just being three years older?"

Jessie realized it was the first time anyone had really asked her about that part of it. "It's kind of like . . ." she hesitated, staring through the world in front of them. "It's like when you fall asleep. When you wake up again, it seems kind of instantaneous, like maybe only a moment has passed. It was dark and now it's light. You have no memories between falling asleep and waking up. But at the same time, on some level, you can feel that time has passed." Jessie sighed. "It's like that. And every time I start to forget, I look in a mirror, or see myself in a glass window, and for a split second, I'm convinced it's a stranger. That hasn't stopped being startling yet."

"Do you really remember nothing at all?"

"Not really. There are moments where something feels familiar, or I feel like I'm on the verge of knowing something, but then it slips away. I don't really know how to describe it. But no actual memories." Jessie shook her head. "Maybe I don't want to remember anyway."

"Except you do," Jonny observed simply. "Even if it's gonna hurt like hell, you want to remember."

His effortless understanding felt like a breath of fresh air. "Yeah," she whispered longingly. "I really, really do."

"It's a part of you, even if it's awful," Jonny acknowledged. "And if you remember, you control it - it doesn't control you."

"You grew up kinda smart, Quest," Jessie said, offering him a smile that she hoped conveyed the depth of her gratitude to him for his simple acceptance of her feelings.

"You grew up pretty tough, Bannon," Jonny threw back. "This hasn't broken you. And it's not going to."

Jessie stared upward at the sharp crystal stars. "I hope you're right."

By the time their borrowed getaway car pulled to a stop in front of the darkened compound, it was already a few hours into Christmas Eve proper. It appeared that the luck of the holiday was with them as they crept into the darkened house, its occupants seemingly sound asleep and entirely unaware of their kids' unannounced adventure.

The moon was bright enough that they needed no light to make their way stealthily from the car to the compound. When they made it safely to the second floor landing, they hesitated. Exhausted though they were, neither was eager to leave the other's company.

"Thank you for tonight, Jonny," Jessie whispered finally. "Seriously."

After a moment's hesitation, Jonny stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. "It's so good to have my best friend back," he whispered.

Jessie hugged him back, fighting against the tears she thought she had avoided for the night, comforted by his embrace. "You know those almost-memories I mentioned earlier?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't have a memory to attach it to, and I'm not sure where the feeling comes from, but even without that . . . I know I really, really missed you."

Jonny felt a lump form in his throat and nodded roughly, smiling tightly. "Merry Christmas Eve, Jess."

"Merry Christmas Eve."