The Daughter They Sacrificed Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Call

Saskia calls her father herself and hears who is really in the room, then meets Flynn at the print shop, and her brother announces he is flying out to bring her home.

I called Dad's phone at seven the next morning, which was ten in Boston.

It rang four times.

"Saskia?" His voice was hoarse and very quiet. "Where are you? Are you safe?"

"I'm fine. Are you in the hospital?"

"No. I'm home. They sent me home at three."

"Mom's photo said you were sick."

"It was nothing, a pressure scare. The doctor said I was tired." He stopped. "Where did you sleep last night?"

"In a bed. With a window."

I heard him breathe out.

Then I heard Mom's heels crossing a wood floor, and the phone changed hands.

"Now you call," Mom said. "Do you know what you put your father through?"

"He said it was nothing."

"He said that to protect you. Come home today. Chloe is not eating."

"I'm not coming home, Mom."

"Then don't expect to be welcome back."

The line rustled again, and a softer voice came on.

"Saskia, it's me." Chloe's voice was thick and shaky. "I told Dad I don't want the Cape house. I only want my sister. Please come home and I'll fix it."

It was so gentle that for one second I almost believed her.

Then I remembered that nobody in that house had ever needed me to come home, only to be sorry.

"Goodbye, Chloe," I said.

I ended the call, and my hands were steady.

My professor put toast in front of me without a word.

At nine she drove me to campus.

CalArts sat in a dry valley of low buildings and parking lots, with brown mountains behind them.

She walked me to a long hallway of studios and told me to find the print shop for my student card.

"Ask for Flynn," she said. "He's the only one in this building who answers email."

The print shop had a glass counter, three humming machines and the only working air conditioning on campus.

A guy sat on a stool behind the counter, feeding paper into a jammed copier with a ruler.

He was around twenty, with dark curls pushed under a paper cap and ink on both hands up to the wrist.

"Hold on," he said, without looking up. "She's about to give up. I can feel it."

The copier coughed and spat out a page.

"There." He turned. "Hi. You're lost or you're hers."

"Whose?"

"Hers." He nodded toward the hall. "She sends us one every summer. Last year's stray is in the sculpture annex and hasn't left it since."

"I'm not a stray."

"Sure." He pulled a form across the counter. "Name?"

"Saskia Hartwell."

"Hartwell." He wrote it down in block letters. "Boston?"

"How did you know?"

"You flinched when you said it. Everyone from Boston says their name like they're expecting a bill."

I laughed before I could stop it.

It startled me, how it came out, loud and short, in a room I had known for three minutes.

His mouth turned up at one corner. "Flynn Brennan. Card's eight dollars, but the program waives it. Poster tubes are four."

"I'll take one."

"I'll give you one." He slid the tube over. "The copier jammed on someone else's job, so this one's a mistake, and mistakes are free."

"That's not how mistakes work."

"It's how mine work. It's my shop."

He took my photo against a gray wall and printed my card.

In the picture my eyes were red and my hair was sticking up.

"Perfect," he said, and handed it over. "Now you look like everyone else here."

I turned the card over in my hand.

It had my name on it and a barcode and the words STUDENT.

Nobody had ever handed me something that was only mine and didn't need to be earned.

"Thank you," I said.

"Come back when you need a place to be cold," Flynn said. "The air conditioning is the only thing I'm ever proud of."

I was halfway down the hall when my phone buzzed.

It was Clayton.

I'm landing at LAX at 4. Mom booked my ticket this morning. You're coming home with me, so don't make it ugly.

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