One summer I went to a camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was just a week long, but I remember coming back and feeling foreign in my own home—it was too clean, too organized, and too different from what I’d just gotten used to.
Tonight feels a lot like that.
I unhook the gate to the backyard and retrieve the spare key from its hiding place beneath the clay pot that I painted in the second grade. The garage door is rusty, but after rattling the handle a bit, it comes dislodged.
Our alarm is on a timer, and I rush over and punch the code before it starts blaring. I wait, heart thundering, to see if the sound was enough to wake my parents.
What am I going to say to them? I’m not even sure why I’m here. Pacing the kitchen, I stick my opposite thumb on the spot on my wrist where the Young Heron’s scissors tore my skin. I just wanted a moment of peace and solitude, of something I know for sure. The house smells like my house, in the weird way you get to know by virtue of having lived there before. I’d know it blind.
Walking into the living room, I run my hand across the fabric of the couch. Fatigue tugs at my eyes, but it vanishes when I hear a telltale creak on the stairs, followed by the padding of slippered feet.
“Mom?”
“Valerie!” she yells, and a moment later I’m in her arms. Her cheek is warm, arms strong. We dissolve into sobs like waves into sea foam.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Val, oh honey.” She pushes the hair from my face, her thumb pressing into my hairline. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine. Totally fine. Where’s Dad?”
“In LA meeting with a— Oh my god, you’re bleeding,” Mom says, gripping my wrist so that I too can see the new, dark well of blood beading up. “What happened?”
“It’s hard to explain,” I tell her. “All of it is.”
Something clicks in her, and she goes full Mom-mode. She makes me sit, grabs the first-aid kit from the bathroom, and starts diligently unpacking a Band-Aid. She lays it on gently, holding on to my hand as if letting go would make me disappear.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “How are you?”
She closes the kit. “Fine, baby.”
“Mom.”
Tears brim in her eyes. “What do you want me to say? I’m a failure as a mother. You hated me so much that you signed up for … for … well, you know. And Leo—” Her voice cracks. “My baby. My sweet baby boy.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“If your dad and I had been around more … I don’t know. We did our best. But look at our family now. Your father isn’t even here. Again. No wonder you resented us. I would, too.” She dabs her eyes on the sleeve of her robe. “I’m so sorry, Valerie.”
She cries, and I do, too. My emotions well up in my chest, beating so strong against my ribs that I wonder how I don’t explode. Words fail me. So I scoot my chair next to Mom’s and put my arms around her. We huddle together, overwhelmed with the great weight of our collective sorrow. I never knew Mom carried that burden with her, dragging her down like a splintered wheel across a battered beach.
I find my courage. “I was never mad at you, Mom.” She sniffs. “There’s nothing that you need to be sorry for. I promise.”
“Valerie.”
“I promise,” I say again, pushing my face into the perfect softness of her terry cloth robe as new tears slide from the corners of my eyes. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. Every time you call I’m afraid it won’t be you, and that it’ll be someone else telling me you’re dead.”
“I’m sorry. But I had to join. I just had to.”
I don’t know how long we stay there. Tired and trembling, we both go upstairs. My room shudders with stillness—like a museum or time capsule of my own life. My backpack leans against my desk, full of textbooks I’ll never read and homework assignments I’ll never do. On the walls are photos of Lyla and me, postcards, and cutouts from magazines. I tug on some PJs then open the door for Mom. She settles down next to me on the bed, stroking my hair like she did when I was little. She reaches behind her and pulls a floppy stuffed lamb from the pillows behind my head. I half smile, half sob at the sight of it.
“Where did you find him?” I whisper.
“In your closet,” she says. “Remember what you called him?”
“Poppy. Duh,” I say.
“Poppy,” she repeats, voice already fading into gentle sleep.
We bury ourselves into the blankets. I know I should be worried about Jax, but as sleep washes over my mind the only things I can think of are home, Mom, and Leo. For the first time in a long fucking time, I can feel him looking down on me and smiling.
We needed this. All three of us.
Dawn finds us too soon. Mom’s fast asleep beside me—she’s always been a heavy sleeper. Slowly as I dare, I slide out of the bed. She doesn’t stir.
Leaving is harder the second time. I grab my bundle of discarded clothes and shoes, whisper mahal kita one more time, and then leave my room.
I change back into my street clothes, and then grab a granola bar from the pantry to stanch my hunger. I move manically—both wanting to stay and knowing I need to go, absolutely need to go as soon as possible. If I’m lucky, Jax may never know I was gone.
A glint of metal shines from the countertop as I click the light on. Taking the spare key from where I left it, I walk over to the dining room table where I know Mom can easily find it. The table itself is covered in a familiar chaos—a stack of mail, binders bursting with details on different venues around the city, invoices, receipts, and every other kind of paper paraphernalia lie scattered on its surface. We haven’t eaten a proper meal here since I was maybe ten—instead, Mom commandeered it for her workstation. I’d do my homework at the head of the table, both of us working separately but together.
Pushing some mail aside, I place the key down. An open letter catches my eye—rather, the name at the end of it. My blood freezes.
Slowly, I reach forward and tug the letter from beneath the rest of the pile and start reading. It’s on the official letterhead of the San Francisco Police Department. Blood pounds in my ears as I keep reading, glossing over the “I’m sorry” and “wish I could have done more.” It’s the end that gets me—an idea he’s been wanting to pursue for years. A program, a stop to the rising tide of violence borne from the Wars. The letter is an invitation—“I wanted to reach out to your family personally before the program goes public. Enclosed is my business card…”
I find the card and fold it back into the letter. A shivering hope rises in my chest. I even smile.
Pissed as Jax may be about what happened with the Young Herons, and as livid as he’ll be if he catches me gone, this letter might just spare me.
Because I’ve found it. What Matthew was talking about—he said he was working with the police.
Matthew is going to end the Wars. And he’s going to do it with the help of the man who could never bring me the peace of a closed case—the new chief of police, one John Kilmer.
Jax stands in the front yard, arms crossed.
Outside, the gray morning is still, with the clouds overhead hinting of future rain. The silence is only broken by the sound of the morning news coming out of the taxi’s radio.
“Here OK?” the driver asks.
“Uh, yeah. Here’s fine.” But maybe please wait in case this guy murders me.
I take my time paying the fare and making sure I have all my stuff. Finally, there’s nothing left for me to do but get out.
Jax hasn’t moved, just stands there as the car pulls away. My panic rises and I spit out: “I’m sorry.”
“Where did you go?”
“Home.”
“Why?”
“I … I got scared.” I hold the letter out. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone, but I think I found something—here, open this.”
Jax takes the paper, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. “What is it?”
“It’s a letter the chief of police sent my mom. Well, to all of us.”
Jax says nothing, just tucks the paper into his back pocket. The wind blows his unruly golden hair across his face.
“Are you going to leave again, Valentine?”
“No,” I say. “I promise.”
“Your word doesn’t mean a lot to me anymore.”
“I swear,” I say, like that’s any better. “I’m sorry.” I reflect on the night—fleeting and flawed as it was. “I needed to make things right with my mom. And I did.” I think. “I’m here, Jax. I promise. I need you, and I know that. So, I’m here.”
He nods slowly, hazel eyes looking at me but somehow, I feel, through me, too. Like he knows me down to my dreams.
“You won’t disobey me again,” he says.
“I won’t. I swear.”
“That wasn’t a question.” Then he turns, finally taking the damn paper out of his pocket. “Now get inside before anyone else figures out you were gone.”
I practically fly to his side, eyes on the ground. We go into the kitchen. Floorboards creak in Nianna’s room—she’s still doing her morning yoga.
“How did you know I was gone?” I ask. “You’re not usually up this early.”
Jax avoids my gaze. “I checked on you last night. You weren’t there, so I looked at the tracker in your phone.”
“Then why’d you ask where I was?”
“To see if you’d lie.”
“Oh.”
He must read the letter four times, given how long he stares at it. “TRUCE,” he says. “That’s what they’re calling their magic program.”
“Trust, respect, unity,” I reply, reciting the details of the letter. “I forget the others.”
“Community. Engagement. Fucking Herons,” he says. “They’ve finally done it.”
“What?”
“Valentine, this is the ultimate PR move. Think of how highly people will sing the praises of the tech-heads who end the Wars by giving gang members a…” He pauses, rereading the letter. “A second chance at life.”
That doesn’t sound so bad, I think, but I’m not about to say that in front of Jax.
He stuffs the paper in his pocket, eyes clouded with disgust. “This shit’s not new. Rehab programs, mental health services. If this happens, then the Herons win it all. The Boars and the Stags will be locked away, while the Young Herons are quietly shipped back to Orange County or Marin or whatever rich fucking place they came from. The Old Herons will continue to make the city a tech playground and push everyone else out. Here. Take it back.”
I do, silently hoping for more. No “Thanks for the info” or “Good to get ahead of this”?
He yawns, stretching his arms high. He swoops them back down again and shakes his head. “Fucking Herons.” Jax looks back at me, as if remembering I’m there. “Go … go do something, Valentine. I need to be alone.”
I leave Jax to his storm, uncertainty welling up in my stomach. Stepping down the stairs, each one seems to creak louder than I remember, as if echoing the mess of thoughts in my head.
It’s scary to have been spared any punishment. I don’t know what I was expecting—some brutal hazing, another tattoo that said LIAR on my forehead … or any of the myriad other thoughts I’ve had about Jax and me. It’s not like Jax to be alone. What is going through his mind? Would anyone know, maybe Micah? He said they’re pacifists. I thought maybe the TRUCE program would be welcome news, a stepping stone to getting me to the Boar that killed Leo.
But Jax is Jax, and he wants to do this his way, and no other. He wants to be remembered for what he does with his life, I think, recalling what he told me that night we made the truce with the Boars. That must mean doing things his way.
I’m standing on the shore with forward as my only option, no ships to bring me home. I can’t run again—Jax would find me—and I have to stay, really stay and be in this. That’s the only choice. One step at a time.
Forward, into a black fate.