Chapter 33
There was a half-packed suitcase lying open on the sofa. Holly smiled, more easily than April had seen before. "I'm going to stay with my mom in North Carolina for a while. I just need to get away for a bit, you know?"
April nodded. "You deserve it. It's been a rough few weeks. You did great, by the way." The media attention on Holly had died down relatively quickly, shifting now to the pending special investigations and the civil suit that the families of the dead Alliant employees had brought against the company. The apartment that had been, for almost two weeks, a base camp for Holly's mutant protectors had been cleared out, the For Rent sign reinstalled in the window, awaiting some future tenant who would surely question why the carpet and counters were so dirty.
April said, "Take care of yourself."
They embraced, warmly, if a little hesitatingly, bound and divided by secrets. "Thank you," Holly whispered.
As they stepped apart, Holly said, "You know, the evening that the fire alarm went off in the subway station..." She pressed her lips together, torn about whether to go to this place that had become a no-man's-land between them. "I thought I saw something. Someone running. It was all so confusing, and my eyes might have been playing tricks on me..."
April was silent, watching her expectantly.
Holly's next words hovered somewhere between a question and statement. "These people, your friends... they don't hide because they want to, but because they have to...am I right?"
The front door opened and a man, tanned and youthful-looking for being middle-aged, with a trim beard and hair the same reddish-brown as Holly's, stepped in, surprised to have caught the two women standing in silence. "Dad," Holly said quickly, "you remember April O'Neil- my journalist friend who's been helping me handle all the press."
"Oh yes, of course," Dr. Chambers said, compensating for his lapse with an especially cheerful smile. He shook April's hand. "Thank you for being here, for all your help."
"Thank you," April said, without thinking. "For-"
For seeing them as I do. For saving them.
"For...handling all this...so well." She blushed at her awkward finish and composed herself by pulling on her jacket and purse with a lively step. "Another time, then." She turned to look behind her shoulder. "Goodbye, Holly."
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Trellises of hanging ivy, dense, immaculately-trimmed high hedges and shadows cast by the drooping willow- there were plenty of ninja-friendly shadows in the garden. Michelangelo knew he would be undetectable to anyone who might glance in his direction. Almost anyone.
He wasn't sure who sensed who first. "You had to come see her too," he said.
Donatello shifted, melted into the darkness next to him. "I'm praying this is the very last time I'll ever have to come here," he said optimistically, but with a note in his voice, of something bittersweet.
In silence, they watched her move in and out of view, packing her suitcase, putting away the dishes, calling someone on the phone. It might have felt awkward, sharing this time as if they were two conspiring peeping toms, but oddly enough, it wasn't, and Mike felt grateful for his brother's company. "What do you think she's like?" he asked. "Do you think she's anything like April?"
After a moment, Don said, "No one's anything like April."
Mike nodded. "Still," he said, and left it at that.
Holly Chambers opened her father's patio door and stood silhouetted in the house light, looking out into the garden. She took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the flowering shrubs and the warm evening air of the city, as if packing a little bit of it away, as she had packed her other traveling essentials in her suitcase. She stepped out of the house and walked to the edge of the patio. Her eyes swept all around the dark garden, the stone wall, even the streetlight-lit sky above. "Are you here?" she called. More loudly, her voice steady, "I'm not afraid."
Though he remained motionless, Michelangelo felt a pang of something unnamed quicken his pulse. There she stood, on that porch, now scarred but not ruined, still a creature of light, of college parties and books, spiral staircases and chandeliers, internships, spring break, friends and work, softness, normalcy and ignorance. He didn't look at Donatello, knowing only from his utter stillness that his brother saw the same thing he did: how easy it would be, to irrevocably change this woman's life.
Go back, he thought. Go back to the world you were born for, one where we don't exist.
Holly called out to the darkness, "If you are out there... thank you."
At first, her words met with silence. Then some surprisingly loud frogs in a neighbor's backyard pond took up a chorus. The young woman sighed, shaking her head and rolling her eyes at her own foolishness as she stepped back into the warmth of the house. The patio door slid closed and her figure appeared in the window for a moment, then vanished as she drew the curtains.
Donatello said, with a wistful but contented sigh, "Let's go home."