The Dysasters (The Dysasters #1)(25)

A small, choked sound returned his attention to Foster, who had stopped in front of the fireplace. Her hand was lifted toward one of the framed pictures, as if she wanted to touch it, but couldn’t make herself. He knew she was crying, but only because she kept wiping at her face with short, angry swipes, and when he looked at the picture, he understood why.

It was of a younger, smiley-er version of Foster. She was sitting on the stoop of a two-story brownstone town house beside a big black woman Tate had no difficulty recognizing as Cora. Cora had her arm around Foster and was kissing her cheek while Foster cheesed for what was obviously a selfie. Tate scanned the rest of the pictures on the mantel. They were all of Foster and Cora—younger versions of the two of them. The joy that filled their faces reminded Tate of his family, and he felt his own eyes fill with tears.

“She did all of this for me,” Foster’s voice shook as she spoke through her tears. “These pictures—the paintings—even the furniture. They’re all from our house.”

“Foster, did you lose your house last year?”

She turned liquid eyes to him. “No. We left our house last year.”

“What do you mean ‘left’?”

He could see her struggling to hold on to her temper. She wiped her eyes again and squared her shoulders. “Exactly one year ago yesterday, on my seventeenth birthday—Cora packed two bags. Locked our house. We got in our car. And we left—left our life, our credit cards, our everything. Since then we’ve never stayed in one place more than a week.”

“You’ve been homeless for a year? On purpose?”

“We weren’t homeless. We were flying under the radar,” Foster said.

“Why? You gotta explain.”

“The truth? All I know is that Cora said I was in danger, and that we had to leave before they took me, and now I have to keep you safe, too.”

Then Tate processed all of what Foster had told him. “Hey! Our birthdays are on the same day.”

Foster sighed sadly, still staring at the pictures. “Happy birthday to us,” she said unconvincingly.

Tate opened his mouth to ask one more of the zillion questions spilling from his overwhelmed mind, but Foster spoke before he could.

“Look, I have to get cleaned up. And I want some real food—like more than nasty drive-through. Something green and alive. And you look like crap. I mean, worse than me, and that’s bad.”

Tate glanced down at himself. He had on the stained T-shirt Foster had got in Missouri, a pair of baggy gray sweatpants they’d bought at a truck stop somewhere in Utah, and a pair of dad slippers that had IDAHO? NO YOU DA HO written across the top of them. They’d found them outside Boise. Foster was right. He looked like crap.

“A shower sounds good,” he said. “Then food.”

“Agreed. Let’s shower then forage. Then talk.”

“Okay,” he said.

The bathrooms were big and all three of them were stocked with necessities. Tate stood under a fat stream of water as hot as he could stand and tried to wash away his pain—his homesickness—his shock, along with the dirt and blood. But all he actually wanted to do was to bolt for the front door and start driving west. Toward home.

He couldn’t, though. Not yet. Tate had to find out how those tornadoes had been caused—and how to stop them from ever happening again.

He decided that the shower did make him feel a little better, and towel dried his hair then put his pieced-together outfit back on. The cut on his leg was sore, but it didn’t look infected, which was at least a small relief.

Foster wasn’t in the living room, so Tate made his way to the kitchen and scavenged through the empty fridge. The kitchen cabinets were filled with dishes and pots and pans and such, and there were even some canned foods in the pantry, but there was definitely nothing “green” anywhere.

Tate made his way back to the stairway that Foster had taken to the upstairs bathroom she’d claimed. He was trying to decide whether he should go up there and knock on the door—or if he should just call out her name—when he heard it. Somewhere just down the hallway in front of him a girl was sobbing as if her heart was shattered.

Tate followed the sound until he came to a little room that was obviously an office. The door was partially open. Foster’s back was to him. She was holding something in both of her hands, and was bent around it like someone had gut punched her while she sobbed.

His mom hadn’t been a crier, so the times when she did cry it always made Tate’s heart hurt. He heard his mom’s voice as if she were standing beside him, Tate, you’re a smart, educated, white man. Don’t be an entitled jerk. Be unexpectedly kind—you’ll never go wrong if you err on the side of kindness. Oh, and also be a feminist—that’ll really baffle them.

Tate moved on an instinct that had been drilled into him by his kind, woke mother. Foster was a bitchy pain in the ass, but Tate had been raised right. So, he went to her. Later, he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been intending to do. Not only was Foster not the crying kind, but she also didn’t seem like the “give me a hug and make me feel better” kind. He didn’t get the opportunity to find out for sure because the picture she was holding snagged his attention. Over her shoulder he saw that it showed a group of five people. Four looked like they were in their late twenties–early thirties. They surrounded a tall, older man who looked distinguished and serious. They were in front of a medium-sized boat that was docked, but was obviously ready to go out to sea.