Once We Were by Kat Zhang Page B

settle.
    Still, Hally had whispered an apology one afternoon.
For not telling you,
she said.
I just—I still wasn’t sure if you would do it. And I thought, if Eva just got one chance to know what it could be like to be free, she . . .
    Addie had just looked away, and nodded. They hadn’t been friends then. They hadn’t had reason to be.
    Funny, how things changed.
    Addie absentmindedly touched Kitty’s hair. A key rattled in the lock, and our fingers stilled.
    “Hey,” Sophie said cheerfully, throwing open the front door. “Have you girls eaten yet?”
    “Not yet.” Kitty smiled and seemed to lose all interest in the movie. “Can you bring us something from that last place?”
    “Which place is that?” Sophie hung up her purse and slid out of her heels, laying them neatly on the shoe rack. “There’s a meeting in a few minutes, so I can’t go too far.”
    “There’s a meeting with Peter?” Addie jumped up and followed Sophie into the kitchen. It was Saturday, so Sophie couldn’t mean anything for work. “Why now?”
    Sophie shrugged and pulled a box of crackers from the cabinet. “Rebecca had something to do later, and—”
    “Dr. Lyanne’s coming?” Addie said. “Is she bringing Jaime?”
    “I don’t think so.” Sophie’s eyes scrutinized us. Again that look like she was afraid we might break. Emalia wore it more often, but Sophie wasn’t immune to over-worrying about us. “I wouldn’t think she’d want to bring him into the city, now that—well, you know.”
    “Is she at Peter’s apartment already?”
    “Actually, we’re meeting at Henri’s.”
    Addie didn’t bother hiding our relief. If the meeting had been at Peter’s, we’d have to fight Sophie about leaving the building, and I was almost positive she wouldn’t have yielded. “When’s it start?”
    “In about ten minutes,” Sophie said, but rushed to add, “Addie, it’s not a general meeting. You’re—”
    “I just want to talk to her.” We were already halfway to the hall.
    “Wait and go up with me,” Sophie called after us. “She might not even be there yet.”
    “She’ll be there,” Addie said. “She likes to be early.”
    Sophie smiled weakly. For a moment, the worry faded from her face, replaced by some emotion I couldn’t name. “You talk like you know her well.”
    I thought about Dr. Lyanne watching Jaime pass in the gurney. Her soothing him in the darkness. Telling us the code to the basement doors. Showing up in the Ward holding Kitty’s hand. Out with us on the fire escape at Peter’s apartment, watching the cars below.
    “Well enough,” Addie said.
     
    Addie was almost right. Dr. Lyanne wasn’t at Henri’s apartment yet, but we’d only gone up a flight of stairs when we heard the rapid click of heels echoing below us. It was ridiculous to say we recognized Dr. Lyanne by the sound of her footsteps, but instinct made us pause in the stairwell.
    Little by little, she came into view. Her ash-brown hair was longer now than it had been at Nornand. It might have been the humidity in Anchoit, but her hair seemed a little less straight, as well. She wore it coiled over her shoulder, strands floating around her face.
    She’d grown thinner. The delicate planes of her face were sharper, her limbs birdlike. We’d learned that she was a couple years younger than Peter, so she could have only been twenty-eight or twenty-nine at most, but she looked so much older as she came up those stairs.
    Dr. Lyanne had played a hand in helping us escape from Nornand—had tried, in fact, to rescue all the kids there. For that, she’d given up nearly everything. Emalia managed to rustle up enough falsified documents to get her a job at a clinic, but I got the impression that it was basic work, something Dr. Lyanne was immensely overqualified for.
    Maybe she enjoyed it, though.
    Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she regretted everything.
    “Hi,” Addie murmured.
    Dr. Lyanne’s head whipped up. For a moment, she