I stayed in the car with the doors locked and the key in the ignition while the guys went to make sure the manor was safe. I knew it looked exactly the same from the outside, but it felt empty and cold. It always seemed like that on the surface, because we were four people living in a ginormous building with old heating systems, but the inside was nothing but warmth and coziness.
After about thirty minutes of reading a book on the laws of magic, Embry came out to escort me and the car inside. He had me activate all the alarms while he carried the rest of the books from the bunker into the kitchen.
“Should we go to my mom’s room?” Part of me wanted to stay as long as it took for word to get out that we were here, so Clara and Deanna would come and I could see them for real, but the bigger part needed us to get what we came for and leave as soon as possible. I couldn’t be responsible for any more dreadful things happening to them.
“I’ll start supper,” Gabriel offered.
“I’ll go on the adventure,” Embry whisked me upstairs. I spent my childhood with people bribing me with trips to her room, so calling it an adventure was accurate.
Once inside, all I could see was my father telling her he was basically paid to impregnate her because Henry was worried a teenager dying of cancer would let the Owens line die out otherwise. I shivered at the thought.
“Did you have something in mind?” Embry asked to bring me back to the task at hand.
“Everything I found in here as a kid was magical and meant the world to me, because it belonged to her.”
“I think I remember you carrying around a doily for days until Mrs. Boyd told you what it was.”
“I blame everyone who didn’t give me more to go on,” I meant it in the sense that I wish I knew more about her. I didn’t blame the Boyds.
“I’ll tell you as much as I know about whatever you find,” he gave me free rein, but I didn’t know where to start, or how much he knew about her.
“If you had to pick something in here, what would you choose?” I turned it on him.
“You,” he smiled. “You were what meant the most to her in the entire world.”
“I would rather not use human sacrifices, but I’m open to other suggestions…” I looked around. “None of this is familiar except from my own memories of exploring the room when I was really good, or when bad things happened to me,” I pointed out.
“How do you picture her?” He asked.
“I have the actual memories of a woman with a scarf around her head, who is scared and weak, but also fighting. Who smiles whenever she knows I’m looking. Then I have the ones I make up from pictures of her when she is young and happy and alive. The thing I had that most reminded me of her was the blanket, which I now know was Brian’s.”
“Marilyn didn’t wear fancy jewelry, and I don’t remember many trinkets. She had a lot of stuffed animals when she was in the hospital, but she usually gave them all away before she came home and got new ones for her next stay.”
“Did she wear not-fancy jewelry? A Cracker Jack box ring would do if it meant something to her.” The plastic ring from Clara was the object I was most attached to at the moment. I fished around without going deep, feeling like I was intruding this time, rather than discovering more about my mom.
“She made jewelry,” he got one of those sad smiles from when he remembered something about someone he lost. “The last one she sent me was one of those wish bracelets that you tie around your ankle.”
“And when it breaks the wish comes true.” I made them with Clara once.
“I don’t think that’s how it worked,” he argued.
“Did it have beads?” I could vaguely remember a picture of me eating something from my mom’s ankle.
“She put my initials on mine. Her wish was to keep everyone safe, so she told me it would protect me as long as I wore it.”
“Do you still have yours?” It didn’t belong to her, but she probably put a lot of herself into it.
“I wore it every day for years, while Gabriel left his in a box at Terrence’s. I lost mine, and it was like I committed a terrible offence. I don’t think she ever forgave me.”
“At least he still has his,” I gave him a smile.
“If memory serves, hers was always pink or purple.”
“Let’s find it.”
We looked on all the exposed surfaces, then ventured into drawers and boxes. I was familiar with the lower drawers of her standing bureau, the only ones I could reach as a tiny kid. I was exploring the top ones when Embry exclaimed, “Found it!”
“M.E.O.,” I read. “Elizabeth?”
“Helen and I might have told your Grams a few stories,” he agreed.
“Any thoughts on Suzanne?” I asked of my middle name.
“She liked the name?” He let me know it didn’t ring a bell for him, then dropped the bracelet in my hand so I could add it to the other objects, but the moment it touched me…
“Are you making a wish?” Brian asked as my mom tied the bracelet around her ankle. We were in a hospital, but she didn’t look sick like I remembered her, just a little tired.
“I never use those rules,” she argued.
“The conventional rules that apply to all wish bracelets?” He came over and took her in his arms, looking at her like she was his entire world, though the setting definitely made him uncomfortable.
“If it needs to break to release your wish, you would just be super rough with it until it did, which is stupid.”
“What are your rules?” He kissed the top of her head and she closed her eyes, her entire body relaxing.
“Well,” she took out another bracelet and tied it around his wrist, “as long as you’re wearing this, it will keep you safe,” she gave him a smile. She knew how unrelated the two were, but this wasn’t her first rodeo, and little kids were quick to believe in magic bracelets. Especially if they got to go home while other kids in the ward never made it out of the operating room.
“Then you are never allowed to take yours off.”
“Why not?” She bit her bottom lip, but he didn’t play along to her fishing. He got serious.
“Because I can’t lose you,” he said with an intensity that had me taking a closer look at his eyes, but they were green. Like mine.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she took him in her arms…
“Bad memory?” Embry asked when I woke up in his arms.
“Happy memory. Evil person,” I brushed it off and stood up with a sigh.
“Care to tell me exactly what you saw?” He asked. All I had told them up to this point was that my dad was not a nice person.
“Not particularly.” I wrapped my arms around myself and walked back to the bureau, more out of habit than anything else. “I’m trying to focus on nurture over nature. And who knows, maybe my mom--” I picked up a picture as I was talking and recognized it from the blurry one I’ve always had of my father, only this one was perfectly clear, of Brian holding me in his arms and smiling so much he was crying…
“How did you get in here?” my mom asked Brian.
“Sam let me in,” he admitted, looking guilty and heartbroken.
“How cunning of you. Manipulating a ten-year-old,” he was upsetting her, but she made no effort to get him out.
“I brought this for you. Well, for the baby. I don’t know if it’s a boy, or a girl, but my grandmother made it for me when I was born, and she insists it was blessed and will keep the baby safe. I figured it can’t hurt,” he tried to hand her my blankie, but she didn’t take it.
“What do you want?” she used her vulnerability as a weapon to get him to leave.
“I need to tell you what happened,” he pleaded like his life depended on it.
“Yes, well, since you told me to have an abortion, I don’t really care what you have to say. Which is why I told you never to come back here.” I could feel how much she loved him, still, but she didn’t know what I knew yet.
“I need you to know why I said that.”
“Because you were young, you had your whole life ahead of you and you didn’t want to waste it being tied down to some girl you slept with a few times.” Her words were like a slap in the face for both of them.
“Even if you don’t believe a word I say to you today, even if you want to continue to believe that I wasn’t ready to be a father, you have to know that you were so much more than that to me. That you meant the world to me. I will love you until the day I die,” he promised.
“How could I know that when you told me to kill our baby? Knowing that it was probably the only chance I would ever get, and that the thing I have wanted more than anything my entire life was to be a mom?”
“I had to try and convince you not to. You should have had an abortion,” he didn’t even try to deny it. “But you were the one who decided that my telling you not to have the baby meant that I wouldn’t want to stick around if you did.”
“I didn’t want you anywhere near her.” She had tears in her eyes, but she looked at him with pure hatred.
“Her?” he asked. I could see his brain working, trying to imagine what I looked like, whose nose I had, what colored hair…
“I would love to tell you you have a daughter, but she’s mine.” I think the hurt in her voice affected him more than her words.
“Can I see her?”
I was forced to watch the part of the memory I heard at the campus library. As if once wasn’t bad enough, I got to listen to my father tell my mother about the man who paid him to hang out with her, who was so happy when she got pregnant, because it meant she would continue the line before her cancer killed her.
“He sent you to sleep with me?” My mom was horrified, and I was more than ready to get back to the present, away from this conversation.
“He only told me after he realized that we were. It’s not like he told me to do it, he was just happy when we did. That’s when he explained it all to me. He told me he was worried because you had cancer, and you didn’t go out much, and he thought you might die without leaving a child to ensure there would be more copies,” each word he said disgusted him more than the last. I think he hated himself as much as we did.
“Then why did you tell me to have an abortion? Was it some mind game to free yourself and make sure I would keep her?” My mom was way more clear-headed than me, actually taking the time to process what he was telling her.
“When he told me why I was doing it… I couldn’t. I mean, yes, he paid for my school and dorm and asked me to hang out with you, but you weren’t some stranger… I didn’t mind because I liked you. And then I really liked you. And then I loved you. And that’s when he told me the truth. As soon as I knew why he was so interested in you, I came here to tell you, but then you told me you were pregnant and I know I should have handled it better, or explained why, but… The point is, I told you to have an abortion not because I don’t love you or wasn’t already in love with that baby, but because some day, that little girl, or her little girl, will be used in his messed up game, and I wanted to protect you from that.”
“This is crazy. You’re not making sense,” my mom argued, not wanting it to be true.
“I know, it sounds crazy. It’s ridiculous, and maybe it isn’t true, but he believes it. And some day, he will come after you and our daughter,” he emphasized the ‘our’ to let her know he hadn’t given up on it.
They went to find Grams, who not only believed it, but looked destroyed by it. She told Brian to leave her house, then went to make phone calls.
“Her name is Lucy,” my mom said once they were in her bedroom to get his coat. “Lucine Suzanne Owens.”
I thought he might be upset about the Owens, but his face lit up. “Suzanne?” he asked.
“Your grandmother was sweet and strong and wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is.”
“The last thing I have ever wanted to do is hurt you, Marilyn. You are my heart.”
“I want to believe you, but I don’t know if I can trust you,” she looked torn.
“I’ll just have to spend the rest of my life proving it to you.”
“Your blanket,” she said when he left it on her bureau.
“It’s Lucy’s now,” he argued. They shared a look that broke my heart.
“Do you want to hold her? Just once,” my mom offered.
“More than anything,” he followed her to the bassinet, beaming when she put me in his arms. He held me close, like he wanted to protect me from everything.
A camera flash made him turn to my mother, who was shaking a Polaroid. “Smile in this one,” she requested, so he obliged.
“What was that for?”
“One day she’ll ask about you, and I want to have something to show her.”
“Hopefully she won’t have to ask.” There was a moment where they looked to each other, both of them wanting that, but my mom couldn’t admit to it, and he could see he had a long way to go to get there…
“Have you considered hanging out around beds and chairs rather than open spaces?” Embry must have caught me, because I was on the bed rather than on the ground, but the memories never came so close together before.
“He wasn’t evil,” I ignored his suggestion.
“Your father?” he asked, going off the picture in my hands.
“I mean, he was very flawed and made some awful decisions, but he loved her.”
“Everyone did,” he gave me a sad smile.
“Back at the library, the memory I saw made it seem like Henry paid a boy to woo my mom and sleep with her so she could continue the line.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I know.”
“What really happened?”
“Henry saw that my mom liked him, so he offered him a job, and to pay his tuition and stuff. It was all just a ploy for him to be close to her. He tried to tell my mom as soon as he found out, but she was pregnant and didn’t take it well when he told her to have an abortion.”
“I’m sorry,” Embry was horrified.
“You’re upset at how close he was to us, how involved he was when you had no clue Henry was behind it… I’m relieved that he didn’t orchestrate my birth, he just facilitated it.”
“Is that why you were so convinced you were evil and didn’t deserve to be saved?” he asked.
“One of many reasons,” I agreed. I put the picture back in the bureau and found a faded newspaper clipping about a young man drowning when his car drove off a bridge. They were unable to identify the body, but given the fact that my mom kept it, I had a pretty good idea who it was.
Embry followed me closely on the staircase, ready to catch me if I slipped away again, but I remained in the present. We had a surprisingly okay supper, but it was an emotionally exhausting day for me, and I was ready to go to bed.
“Now we have all the things…”
“Let’s stay a couple of days, make a game plan, then go off on your suicide mission?” Embry suggested.
“It’s not really suicide if it’s inevitable. And the purpose of the mission is to prevent it from happening.”
I could tell he was about to argue, but we all froze as the kitchen door opened behind me. I brought my hands up as I turned, terrified but ready to go down fighting. Thank God my instinct was to freeze rather than explode, because not only did I recognize the man frozen in front of us, I loved him with my whole heart.
“Sam?!?”