Walking along the downstairs corridor, I hear them before I even reach the door. The rumble of Beau’s voice is hard to decipher, but my mother’s pitch is much clearer.
“I’ve already told you, and when Al gets here he’ll verify that I’m telling the truth. There’s not much more I can say.”
Nothing more than a mumble, Beau’s response is impossible to make out. I grab the handle ready to enter, but my mother’s voice sounds again, this time more demanding. “I want to see my family. Where are they?”
My hand shakes a little on the knob and Lilly gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Okay, it’s doable. It’s just her . . . just my mother. I draw in a deep breath. After everything Annie did to help Jax and I get away from Manvyke, this shouldn’t be scary. She must care about me, but not knowing a darn thing about her makes me all kinds of nervous and, truth be told, slightly angry. She’s missed a huge part of my life—our lives—she can’t just waltz back in like everything’s right as sunshine. She owes Dad and me answers and lots of them.
“Go,” Lilly urges.
Right, I can do this. I push through the door and my mother is on her feet, trailing her finger along the books on the wall-length case. She spins around at the sound of the door opening, and her gaze lingers on me for entirely too long before anyone speaks. She looks different than she did when last I saw her at the Collective stronghold. Now her shorn hair has started to grow out, and stands up in a three inch messy halo. The color, I’m surprised to notice, is almost identical to my own—a rich golden-brown—and, without the hooded cloak of a sensor, her fine frame is full of womanly curves in jeans and a fitted sweater. She’s kind of beautiful. Way more beautiful than I remember. But I was only eight when she left us.
My shoulders tense.
Eight.
Who abandons their eight-year-old kid?
She holds out her arms like she wants me to run into them. Not likely. I turn to Beau. “Jax told you what happened?”
Of course I know he already did, but I need to say something, anything.
“He did,” Beau answers.
I keep my eyes trained on him, all the while feeling hers on me, but Beau doesn’t continue. Damn, that was supposed to lead into conversation.
“And what did you do with the Torith?” Annie says, her voice just like I remember: soft in pitch, but almost commanding in delivery.
“The what?” I swing around to face her. “Is that the sword?”
“Yes, it’s the patriarchal key known as the sword.”
“It’s somewhere safe,” Beau drones from his chair.
“I’m not sure safe is good enough,” I say. “We might have two of the three keys, but this is a reprieve. Manvyke will come for them and when he does we need to be ready.”
“And we will be,” she says.
“We will be. You won’t be.” Beau pulls off his colorful hat and scrunches it in his hand. He’s got a good point. How can we trust her to help?
My fists clench by my thighs. “How do we even know you’re not one of them?”
“Anamae . . .” I instantly feel like a disappointment, but I hold my ground, glaring her down. She’s the disappointment, not me.
“Well, are you Collective?”
She straightens as if her whole body is at alert as she turns toward the door, her eyes huge and shining while she totally ignores my question. The most important question I have for her.
“Refugee status.” Beau slides his hat back over his head then he crosses to the door. “Don’t abuse it, Annie.”
“What does that even mean?” I direct my voice to Beau. At least he cares.
A soft knock sounds on the door.
“It means she’s here as a guest, and if she steps out of line or tries to enter forbidden areas, her status will be redefined as prisoner.”
My mother taps her fingers on the wooden cabinet. “It means I can’t do a darn thing, but I don’t care. I just want to see my family. I know he’s on the other side of that door, Beau. Open it already.”
He grips the handle and gently opens the door, revealing Dad standing on the other side. I haven’t seen a lot of him lately. With everything that’s gone on, I’ve been kind of busy, so the recognition in his expression is almost stifling. A wide grin spreads across his face like this is a freaking reunion and he hasn’t spent the past nine months barely remembering his own name.
Beau slips out of the door, closing it behind him, and even though I’m still angry at her, I’m grateful for the privacy he’s granting.
“Drew,” she says and Dad freezes, now a tad confused, as his attention flips to me. I’d forgotten she called him that.
I move to his side, placing a hand on his arm. “You all right, Dad?”
“It . . . for a second I thought . . . she looks like Annie, only not. Is my mind playing tricks again?”
“Richard . . . my Andrew . . .” She moves toward us, her arms pinned to her sides, but her gaze practically devouring him.
“No,” he says, “it’s not her.”
I level a glare at her as I issue a warning. “The Collective robbed him. Take it easy.”
Her eyes grow wide in understanding and she holds a trembling hand out which he takes. The contact must spark something within him, because my father pulls her into his chest, his other arm engulfing her in a hug.
An unwelcome lump springs into my throat, but I will not cry at the vision of my parents reunited, when she was quite possibly the one who tore them apart in the first place. They cling to each other for so long standing here as a bystander becomes uncomfortable. Finally, she pulls back and Dad steps away, his eyes unfocused just like he was back at the farm. Damn it. She must notice too, because she looks at me and with a thick voice asks, “Manvyke?”
I nod. “He didn’t wipe you too. I was scared he was going to . . .”
She huffs out a condescending sound. “He never would.”
“How long?” Eyes shimmering with unshed tears, she gestures toward Dad, who’s pulled a book out of the case and flips through it. “How bad?”
“Almost nine months ago now and pretty bad. Way worse than Jax or I.”
“Well, it’s probably the same, only deeper. He wouldn’t have wanted to wipe your entire identity and general knowledge. I think he had a plan for the two of you, but with Drew it sounds like it was more than just surface memory.”
He looks up at his name, and throws a wide smile at us. “I’m in the room, Anamae. No need to talk about me like I’m not here.”
I grin back at him. He has come such a long way and it feels so darn good when he says my name properly.
Annie continues in a lower voice, which cracks with emotion. “There are ways to bring it back. The human mind is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t want to forget.”
How she knows all this is a mystery. One that reminds me she never answered my question, and screw her, we deserve to know why our lives were ripped out from beneath us. “Are you Collective?” I demand.
Once again, she doesn’t answer.
“Well,” I ask, “are you?”
“Am I what, Anamae?”
“Are you Collective?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night, right, Dad?”
She clenches her jaw, her expression hard as it bores into mine. “This is not a conversation for right now.”
“I think we deserve to know why you left us for nine years, without so much as letting us know you were still alive. Dad knew you weren’t dead, but I couldn’t even say your goddamn name in front of him or he’d lose it. He was so freaking broken and Grammy . . . oh my gosh, Grammy, she died convinced you’d been chopped up into little pieces and buried in the forest by some axe murderer. I don’t think she ever got over your disappearance. You were the daughter she never had, but always wanted. Did you know that?”
I wait for her to answer, but the only response is the fall of tears that have been brimming since she realized Dad isn’t himself. Not that she has any right to cry. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up without a mother? What Dad went through every day, just waiting for you to come home?”
Tears glide down her face, but her rigid body and set jaw resemble a stony statue.
“There were reasons.”
“Why did you leave us?”
She glances at Dad who has now moved away, then crosses the room and raps on the door. Beau pokes his head in and Annie says, “Those few minutes weren’t long enough, but I think we’ll need to take this slowly.”
Beau nods in complete understanding that the slowness is not for her, it’s for Dad. “You ready, Richard?”
Dad crosses the room, never dropping his eyes from her even as he walks through the door. The minute it closes behind them, Annie turns to me.
“I was protecting you and in time, I will tell you the story.”