Altered by Jennifer Rush

sheet of dust and dirt. The only car in the driveway was ours. The place looked empty, but despite that, it felt empty, the loneliness hanging in the air like old tobacco smoke, waiting for someone to blow it away.
    “What now?” I said. Rain continued to plink against the windshield, the drops becoming fatter and more frequent.
    “Nick and Cas around back,” Sam said. “I’ll take the front door. Trev, stay here with Anna.”
    I didn’t want to sit idly in the vehicle, but I didn’t want to search the house, either. I was afraid of what I’d do if I found more evidence of my mother.
    The boys exited the vehicle with the sort of silent agility that contradicted their size. Nick and Cas ran around back, guns at their sides. Sam went right, to the tiny garage that sat detached from the house. He checked the lone window there before leaping onto the house’s front porch and sliding along the wall.
    At the front door, he pulled out the key he’d found in the cemetery and tried the lock. The key worked, the door opened, and he disappeared inside.
    “What do you think?” I whispered.
    Trev propped an elbow on his knee. “It seems safe.”
    “More so than the one in Pennsylvania.”
    “Agreed.” I felt him watching me. “There’s nothing wrong with hoping.”
    I turned around. “For what?”
    “Your mother.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. Hearing someone else talk about my mother made it more real, like it was possible she was inside that cabin, waiting for me.
    “What if she isn’t alive?” I slumped against the seat. “What if all this wishing is for nothing?”
    “ ‘In all things it is better to hope than to despair.’ ”
    “Whose quote is that?”
    Trev smirked, folding his hands together. He loved it when I asked him for more information, when I gave him the opportunity to show off. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
    “What’s the Aristotle one? The one about hope?”
    His eyes lost focus as he dug for the quote I wanted. I could see the moment when he remembered it, the glimmer returning to his amber eyes. I’d never met anyone with a real lightbulb expression like Trev’s.
    “ ‘Hope is a waking dream.’ ”
    I let the words echo in my head. The quote reminded me of that feeling you get when you start to wake from a dream you don’t want to leave. That crushing sensation in the center of your chest, like you are losing an important piece of yourself you won’t ever get back.
    That’s what hope was. Clinging to something you weren’t sure would ever be yours. But you had to hold on anyway, because without it, what was the point?
    That fit my life perfectly, in so many ways. Even more so now.
    Sam reappeared on the front porch and waved for us, which I thought revealed enough of what he’d found. If my mother had been inside, he would have come out to warn me himself. So she wasn’t waiting. And even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t believe she’d be there, I had. The eagerness burned out and crackled.
    We entered into a living room, where a few armchairs faced a brick fireplace. A couch rested against the far wall. Cobwebs hung like Spanish moss from a brass lamp.
    A large kitchen took up the back corner of the other side of the house. A long, rectangular table filled the space to the right of the front door. Directly in front of me, stairs led up to the second floor.
    Thunder followed a flash of lightning, the low rumble reverberating through the bare wood floors. Rain continued to patter against the windows, washing away the dirt. I pulled my jacket closed as the wind kicked up and crept through the cabin’s cracks.
    “Is it safe?” I asked as Sam walked by.
    “As far as I can tell.”
    My shoulders relaxed. We’d just left the lab the day before, but it felt like we’d been on the run forever. Being in an actual house, tucked in the middle of nowhere, drained some of the pent-up anxiety from my bones.
    I dropped onto the couch and was greeted with a cloud of