31. A Mother’s Legacy
31
A MOTHER’S LEGACY
Any woman could pique me into love by affecting indifference.
— LADY MORGAN SYDNEY, THE WILD IRISH GIRL
“ I don’t like it,” Reina said for the third time that morning as we stood outside my building, waiting for her car to Logan Airport.
After lunch, Reina and I had spent the rest of the day rambling around Boston’s less populated areas before her flight back to Portland this morning. I’d told her about Jonathan’s visit and the changes afoot—and what I hadn’t divulged, she’d figured out anyway through my constant brooding.
Reina’s duffel bag sat at her feet, and we both squinted in the bright May sunlight.
I peered down at her. “Think of it as a quest. And we’re both going on them, aren’t we? You to Guatemala, me to Ireland.”
She frowned. “It’s not the quest I’m worried about. Honestly, I think it’s great you want to visit Ireland, see where Penny’s from and all that. And I think seeing your mom is overdue. You need to get to the bottom of this weird inheritance anyway. Academia can wait.”
I sighed. I wasn’t so sure about that. The college in Oregon had agreed to defer my hire for a year while I took care of “family issues.” But my advisor, my department, and nearly every academic acquaintance I had thought it was a bit much. I’d be coming into the position with a reputation as high maintenance. It didn’t bode well for my chances of tenure in seven years.
And yet, here I was, still leaving for now.
Or maybe forever , a small voice reminded me.
I shook it away. I wasn’t ready to make that decision quite yet.
“That’s going to be fine,” Reina said, speaking to my uncertain thoughts.
I glowered down at her. “I thought you were going to stop doing that.”
She just shook her head. “It’s a hard habit to break, Secret Keeper. I’ve been reading you like a ticker tape since we met. You never had a problem with it before now.”
I sighed. It was true. Gran’s orders to keep everything secret were harder to fulfill than I had thought. I wondered if she had meant Reina too, who was more like a sister to me than anything else.
“Anyway,” Reina said. “It’s the distance that bothers me. The fact that I won’t be able to See you. Or even call you. The town is so remote.”
“I can’t believe they banned satellite phones in Guatemala last year. I would have gotten you one. Then at least we could talk.” A thought occurred. “You know, maybe Jonathan could get you a special permit. He seems to know people in high places everywhere.”
Reina looked up toward my apartment, where Jonathan was waiting for me. He had arrived that morning with coffee, croissants, and a slew of moving men. Now my room was empty with the exception of Aja’s things and what I was taking with me to Seattle and Ireland.
Reina shook her head. “I don’t know, Cass. I know you trust him, but I’m not sure I want to owe him any favors at this point. He likes taking charge a little too much, I think.”
“How do you know that? I thought you said he was shielding you too much to See anything.”
“Exactly.”
A small gray hatchback pulled up in front of us.
Reina checked her phone. “This is my guy.”
We embraced. Her worry and excitement thrilled through my body.
“You have my coordinates?” she asked.
I nodded against her shoulder. The village where she was going to spend the next year doing research was so remote and small, it didn’t even show up on regular maps.
“And the P.O. address too?”
I nodded again and released her. “All upstairs and in my phone and my computer, Rein. And you have the address for the Connollys too. We’ll be in touch, I promise.”
She emitted a heavy sigh, then waved at the driver to let him know she was getting in. “Send me letters. Someone from the team will go to Flores every week or two, so at least I can look forward to that. I’ll try to get into town to check my email every so often, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
I had no idea how long it would take for letters to travel from a tiny village in Ireland to an equally tiny village in rural Guatemala. We would make it work. We had to.
“Safe travels, Rein,” I said. “I love you.”
“Love you too, sister. Always.”
I entered the apartment to find Jonathan sitting awkwardly on the couch with a cup of tea, cornered by Aja while she peppered him with questions. They both turned eagerly when I entered—Aja with her perennial enthusiasm, Jonathan with something more akin to relief.
“There you are!” she said. “You guys were down there forever. Jonathan’s just been teaching me all about his physics work. I had no idea there were so many kinds of atoms!”
“Particles,” Jonathan corrected in the tone of someone who had already repeated himself several times. “They are subatomic particles.” He turned with a toothy smile that looked a bit painful. “Are you ready to go?”
I nodded. “Yes. I just need to get my stuff.”
“Let me help you.” Abandoning his tea, he followed me into my bedroom, where he shut the door with abject relief.
“Having fun?” I asked.
“Your roommate is very…talkative.”
I chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Come sit for a moment.”
I sat next to him on the mattress, and he handed me a manila envelope.
“A few last gifts.”
I opened it, pulling out a familiar-looking report and a few other things. “Penny’s autopsy? But you emailed me this months ago. There was nothing there but a natural death, right?”
“It’s just the original. But also some other things I was able to procure. There’s a new passport in there for you. Your birth certificate, which you should know is no longer on record in Tillamook County. Nor are your records at Boston College or Reed any longer.”
I looked up in surprise. “Did you steal them?”
He shrugged. “I made them go away. The registrar at BC is a shifter—she knew I was up to something. I had to go in before they opened.”
“Was that really necessary?”
Jonathan flattened his palms over his knees. “There may come a time when you’ll need to…disappear for a bit. Should you need them, they can be reinstated. But I wanted to be ready. Penny would have wanted it too.”
A shiver traveled down my spine as I considered how many times Penny had done this throughout her life. I was starting to think it was a lot more than once.
I slid the documents back into the envelope but tucked the passport into my purse.
“Jonathan, I—” I bit my lip, unsure of how to ask the question forming. “What time did you get up this morning?”
He twisted his mouth to the side. “You’ll find your visa to stay in Ireland there as well. A bit of money to get you by until you can get to London. And the key to Penny’s house. It’s been cleaned too.”
I stared at the packet. Either he was an early riser who didn’t like boredom, or there was some other explanation for why he continued to demonstrate this kind of generosity. If that was even what you could call all of this. “You didn’t need to do all of this.”
“Yes, I did,” he said firmly. “It’s what Penny hired me to do. All the more reason for it now, wouldn’t you say?”
I sighed. Well, that cleared up that line of thinking. “I suppose so. Thank you.”
He waved away my thanks. “Now, we’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours. Do you have anything else that needs to be put in storage or shipped to Ireland before we leave?”
I shook my head. How about everything I’d lost? How about all of the photographs, the closet full of Gran’s vintage clothes? My surfboards, and the few remaining things that had belonged to my father?
I sniffed back a tear. I was not going to start crying again. Not now.
“Right, then. I’ll go bring round the car.” He stood and started toward the door.
“Wait, Jonathan.” I stood too, clutching the envelope. “I can’t accept all of this without reimbursing you. The plane tickets at least.”
He paused, hand on the knob, then turned. “My father killed your grandmother and tried to kill you. I provoked him into burning your house down, along with all of your belongings and clothes, in a blaze that forced us to flee without even a pair of shoes on your feet.”
I shook my head. “We figured it out. You helped me get back here, and?—”
“Cass, please .” His voice cracked slightly. “Let me help you. If only to settle my conscience just a bit.” He picked up my two suitcases like they weighed little more than shopping bags and turned back toward the door. “I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready. Bid farewell to your roommate and your old life, Cass. It’s about to change forever.”
Fifteen minutes later, I had said goodbye to Aja and was on my way to the airport with Jonathan.
“We should have just gone with Reina,” I said as he drove down Chestnut. “She only left an hour before we did.”
“That would have been wise if we were going to Logan,” Jonathan said as he turned onto Commonwealth Avenue.
I frowned. “Where are we going, then?”
His full mouth twisted into a smirk. “You’re nervous.” It was an observation, not a question.
“What makes you think that?”
“You think I can’t See nervous energy? Everything about you speeds up just a touch.”
I huffed. “You probably would be nervous too if the future was absolutely opaque. Not to mention the fact that my mother and I are as close as you are to your dad.”
Jonathan’s brows lifted.
“Don’t tell me Penny kept that from you, of all things,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly Sybil’s biggest fan either. They hardly ever spoke.”
“Penny loved her daughter very much,” Jonathan remarked just before his phone directed him to turn onto Washington.
“Well, she had a funny way of showing it. And my mother couldn’t even be bothered to identify her own mother’s body. No, she sent a telegram asking me to fly across the country to do it instead.”
I hadn’t yet considered exactly how my mother had learned of Penny’s death. If she had Seen it for herself. And when, exactly, that might have happened.
“Perhaps their estrangement was for your protection,” Jonathan replied. “Have you considered that Penny’s silence meant no one would know about Sybil, and therefore, they wouldn’t know about you?”
I let the roar of the tires answer for me as Jonathan steered onto the freeway. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what to make of that hypothesis. Penny never spoke poorly about my mother, but when she did, it was never poorly, only sorrow. There was love in her voice, but her disappointment was palpable. In my mother or herself, though?
“The real question is, do you?”
I blinked. “Do I what?”
“Do you love your mum?”
I glanced back at him, but Jonathan was watching the road again.
“Why is that the real question?” I asked.
He just waited.
I sighed. “I don’t like talking about our relationship.”
“We’re a bit beyond that, don’t you think? Sybil may have some valuable information, and I’m going to meet her soon. I need to know what’s between you two. Especially if it might prevent her from becoming an ally.”
“You talk like there’s a war about to start.”
Again, no answer. I mulled over his words and tried to ignore the pressure of his gaze on my cheekbones.
“You need to trust me on this, Cass. My intuition is rarely wrong.”
“All right,” I said. “How much, exactly, did Penny tell you?”
“About Sybil? Very little. Last we spoke, it was only long enough for her to explain her bequest.”
Something occurred to me. “Then how did you know she was dead?”
He shifted uneasily in his seat. I removed my glove and hovered my hand above his where it rested on the gearshift. If he wasn’t going to tell me, I wasn’t in the mood to play coy.
“There’s no need for that,” Jonathan remarked.
I kept my hand where it was. “You want all my secrets, but you won’t give up yours? It hardly seems fair.”
He scowled at my fingers. “Cassandra, I have secrets just as you do. It’s unreasonable to expect me to give you all of them?”
My finger fluttered. “When it concerns my family and my future? I don’t think it is.” I lowered them a fraction of an inch.
“Cass, please.”
“Please yourself.”
“Bloody…all right! Listen, there are simply some things I can’t tell you. Whether because I am bound by my oath or by magic, I cannot. But if that is the case, I will inform you. Will you accept that?”
I gazed at my hand, just an inch or so from the truth by touch. It wouldn’t be hard to procure—at least determine if he was being honest right now.
At the same time, I recognized the cost: taking the truth rather than accepting it freely could cost me a lot more than Jonathan’s patience. It might cost me a friend. And I had very few of those to spare.
I withdrew my hand. Jonathan’s chest deflated with obvious relief.
“All right,” I said. “So…how did you know Penny was dead? Or can you tell me that?”
He shook his head, as if he were searching for the right words, but was unable to locate them. “I can’t explain it well, but for whatever reason, people tend to volunteer their most private information to me. I have a gift, although to be quite honest, I don’t understand it very well myself. I’ve just found that if I want to know something from someone, they tell me. Information…comes to me.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” I said dryly. It was clear I wasn’t going to get a solid answer. Either I could discover his source one day or I wouldn’t.
Perhaps it didn’t matter.
“If it’s any consolation, it’s not easy with you. Most people say whatever I want if I just ask. You, though, you’re very…”
I turned. “I’m what?”
“You’re slippery.” Sunlight flashed in his eyes along with something that made my heart speed up. “Like water trickling through the smallest crack.”
He smiled, a bit shyly. Our eyes met, green to sky blue, and for a moment, the interior of his car seemed brighter than the sun outside.
Both of us quickly looked away.
“So, do you want to tell me what’s between you and your mum? It’s important that we see her, I can feel it.”
I heaved a sigh like I was thirteen again, not a few years from thirty. “All right.” I put my glove back on, watched as the car dropped into one of the tunnels burrowing under Boston, and started to tell the story of my birth.
“Sybil met my dad when they were really young. I don’t know if it’s the same with other fae but with seers, all those hormones mixed with magic coming on at the same time means trouble. And the witches in our family are…powerful…in their appeal.”
“And you know this because?”
I just raised a brow. He had the decency to grunt in acknowledgment of the fact that, yes, there had been some sexual tension between us at various moments.
I didn’t mention it was one of the reasons his own reactions to me were so confusing. There were times when I had thought I’d sensed something similar in him to what I’d picked up from plain or even the occasional fae man who passed through town and caught a look at my mother, Gran, or, yes, even myself. Not the lecherous thoughts or idle fantasies that crossed the mind of men simply admiring a beautiful woman, though those happened too.
But there was a quality far beyond the skin that drew people together.
Obsession had its own particular feeling.
So did passion.
I’d Seen many shades of both of them.
I was taken back to that night by the fire, before Gran’s house burned down, or even the afternoon we spent on the mountain. Jonathan was more skilled than almost anyone I’d met at shielding his thoughts but hadn’t quite been able to hide his feelings. His instincts.
It was why I’d kissed him by the fire.
But we both knew how that turned out.
“Anyway,” I said purposefully. “It was why Gran tried her damnedest to keep Sybil away from people. My mother’s not powerful, but she’s still a seer. She had half the town chasing her by the time she turned fifteen. Except she only wanted one of them just as badly: Jimmy Whelan.”
“Your father.”
I nodded. “He, of course, didn’t stand a chance.”
Jonathan snorted again. “I’m sure he didn’t.”
“As far as I know, their affair started at school. They used to sneak out to the shallows on the beach when Gran was asleep. Sybil’s not known for her self-control, and Daddy was plain, so, of course, he was no use. It wasn’t long before she was pregnant with me.
“Gran wanted to get rid of me. Sibyl was sixteen, just a girl, with no real way to take care of a baby, and Jimmy was just a year older, about to graduate high school, and the fishing and logging industries that had sustained his family for generations were dying. So, he enlisted. We lived on base at Pendleton until he was deployed to Iraq. Then he brought us back to Oregon. And Sibyl let him.”
I stopped there. My hands were gripping my knees so hard that there might be bruises through my jeans and the leather gloves.
Jonathan rubbed a cheek and settled his hand around the back of his neck as he responded. “Surely you don’t blame Sybil for your father’s death, though.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t at first. But you don’t understand Sybil…she loved the strength of that uniform, she loved living on base. I think she just loved not being fae anymore. My dad, he didn’t know a thing about what we were, but she couldn’t do that with him around all the time. I think she knew the only way to make it work with him was to keep him at arm’s length, and his deployments were a good tool for that. It was selfish, and she should have known better.”
“Cass, I didn’t know your father, but it was his decision too,” Jonathan pointed out. “No one stays in the military for more than a decade without a choice.”
“I saw him die,” I whispered.
Jonathan glanced at me. “What?”
“I said…I saw him die. Like I was there.”
“What do you mean, you saw him die? I thought you couldn’t See anyone from afar like that.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. We were arguing about laundry or something like that. And then all of a sudden, she started shrieking. Gran ran in and clutched us together, and I could See the real truth.”
“And what was that?” Jonathan asked curiously.
“First, I Saw my father’s death. I Saw the IED explode, his clothes burn away, and his skin erupt into blisters. I felt his body turn to hamburger, and I knew the moment he died. You don’t know pain until you’ve not only watched someone you love die but lived it with them. It split me into pieces.”
I pulled my hair back from my face and held it tight between my hands, wishing for a rubber band to keep the black mess out of my eyes. I released it, and it tumbled back around my shoulders. Jonathan had the good sense to remain quiet, giving me the space to gather myself before I could continue.
“Then I Saw that Sybil knew it was going to happen. She had known how it would go since they were just kids.” I clenched my teeth. The pain of that particular memory never seemed to ebb. “But it was the last truth that got me, you know? She was relieved when she knew it had finally happened. Relieved that he was gone for good. Relieved that she’d never have to See it again.”
I looked over to Jonathan, who was regarding me sympathetically. “So you don’t speak because she did nothing to stop it, and she was glad it was over?” he asked. “Is that unreasonable? There are plenty who believe death is fated.”
“Are you one of them? You’re a scientist, for Pete’s sake.”
He ignored me. “If your mother had to watch her husband die repeatedly while she knew him, I can’t say I blame her for feeling relief when she didn’t have to See it anymore. You say the one vision split you into pieces. If she loved him, she lived that, what, daily? Weekly? However often she Saw it?”
I didn’t know how often Sybil had Seen my father’s death. I’d never asked.
“She didn’t even try to stop it.” My voice was suddenly small. “And once he was gone, she stopped trying with me too. Left me in Manzanita to become a hack fortuneteller. Screw my daughter, screw my mother, screw my husband. Well, I don’t speak to Sybil because screw her too. She doesn’t deserve any more sympathy than that.”
When I was finished, I was gripping my knees so tightly that my fingernails were cutting through my gloves. I released them and focused on taking deep breaths.
Jonathan’s hand floated into my frame of vision, hovering over my knee while he steered with his other hand. He started to draw back, but upon looking into my eyes directly, he exhaled through his nose and set his palm on my knuckles.
Twin swells of sympathy and horror flowed up my arm, followed by surprisingly deep fondness. His thoughts, uncharacteristically jumbled and spontaneous, began to rattle off with the abandon of someone who hadn’t yet taken the time to figure them all out. For once, his mind sounded real. Unpracticed. Human.
I understand .
You’ve endured real trauma.
You’re not alone.
At the center of his thoughts, a memory of a kiss flashed, a vision of my face leaning toward his and the pressure of my lips as they made contact, paired with a longing that seemed to travel past my head and down through his torso.
I started at the depth I sensed there.
A depth I’d felt myself.
A depth I’d Seen before in the way my father looked at my mother.
Jonathan took his hand back while I stared at him. “Cassandra…”
“I don’t understand.” My voice was hoarse like I’d been shouting. “You don’t even like me that much.”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” he said calmly. “As I said when I arrived.”
“Not like that. You made that extremely clear when I—” I couldn’t quite finish the sentence. My cheeks flushed hot.
“You didn’t See everything that night, as I’ve just demonstrated.” He looked uneasy now, though his gaze was pinned to the drivers ahead of us. “I am attracted to you, yes. In spite of your maddening character flaws, you have a great deal of spirit, and physically, you are a very striking woman.” He peered sidewise at my astonished expression. “Come now, I can’t be the first person who’s said you’re pretty.”
“But—but—but—” I sputtered. “I tried to kiss you, and all I felt was your paralyzing fear. You were terrified that night. Of me.”
Another shrug. How could he act like this was nothing?
“You surprised me,” he replied, like I’d just popped unexpectedly around a corner. “You can be assured, Cass…I like you well enough. Much more than I expected I would.”
I was quiet, watching him watching me like I was a cat poised to scamper away. He was so good-looking, and I had never been with a fae. His lips looked quite soft, and the strong shape of his jawline had not escaped my attention either…
“Cassandra.”
I looked up from contemplating the shape of his mouth to find him looking at me with mild impatience and…was that pity? I furrowed my brow. In just one word—my name—his tone was pregnant with warning.
“I can’t pretend that I don’t think you’re beautiful. Honestly, it’s exhausting trying to shield that from you. But this can’t happen.”
I frowned more. “It can’t?”
“No, it can’t.” One side of his mouth hooked into a smirk. “You’re interested?”
Once more, my skin heated. “ No . I just don’t like being told I can’t have something. What’s so bad about me, anyway?”
“Well, for one, you’re a client. It would be unprofessional.”
“Because stalking me all over Boston and Oregon is professional.”
He smiled. “ Touché . But did you ever think that perhaps I’m simply not interested in starting anything at the moment?”
All that came out of my surprised mouth was laughter, big, gulping guffaws that started to make me hiccup viciously. “You”— hiccup —“don’t”— hiccup —“have to do”— hiccup —“that.” I grabbed my water bottle from my backpack and downed about half of it.
“Do what?” Jonathan asked.
I replaced the lid. “The whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bit. If you have a girlfriend or something, you can just say it, or if there’s something that puts you off, you can say that too.”
He exhaled through frustrated, clenched teeth. “All right, Cass, have it your way.”
“And what way is that?”
“You’re right. I don’t want to start anything because it would be a mess.”
“Ex cuse me?”
He shrugged yet again, that extremely European gesture that was quickly becoming his most infuriating quirk. “Your grandmother recently died, my father tried to kill you, you’re leaving for Ireland shortly. You’re all over the place emotionally, and I just don’t want to get involved like…that.”
It felt like his words were physically smacking me in the face, one by one. And yet, I knew that starting something with anyone was a bad idea. Not that I was going to let him get the satisfaction of knowing he was right.
I turned toward the window and stared at the suburbs beyond the guardrail. Jonathan turned on the blinker as we reached the exit toward Hanscom.
He didn’t want to get involved. Well, that was fine with me. I had my own things to worry about.
I hadn’t realized just how much I had been dreading the flight to Seattle until we had pulled up at the civilian airstrip next to Hanscom Air Force Base.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “I tell you that story about my dad, and we’re hitching a ride with the military?”
Damp, hand-shaped impressions on the padded leather seats, themselves lending a slightly asylum-esque feel to the confined space, betrayed perspiring palms. I wiped them on my jeans, unable to keep still. My rocking hips caused a distinct, rhythmic squeak against the leather that earned me more than one irritable glance from Jonathan as he drove toward the terminal.
“I thought I was the one without control,” he remarked.
“I’m fairly certain your syndrome is characterized by an obsession with complete control,” I responded through my teeth.“My phobia is based on the fact that on an airplane, I have next to none. Jonathan?”
He looked up, eyes bright as ever despite the atrociously early hour. “Hmm?”
“What are we doing?” I pointed at the main building we had just passed.
He just shook his head. “We’re not flying with the military. I don’t know who you think I am, but my powers don’t extend that far.”
“You chartered a jet?”
Jonathan calmly pulled into a spot in front of a much smaller building where a porter was waiting curbside. He turned off the engine, then reached behind us to get his briefcase and picked some invisible speck of dust from the handle before answering. “That’s correct.”
“Is…is it yours?”
He snorted. “Gods, no. I don’t have that kind of money. You do, though, and Penny made sure I was well compensated for my services, so I took the liberty of securing two seats.”
My mouth suddenly felt drier than normal. Focused purely on finishing my dissertation through the spring, I hadn’t done anything more with my inheritance or even checked the balance of the bank account Penny had left me. Jonathan obviously remembered what it contained, along with every other detail of her will.
I had enough to fly charter? Despite the disbelief that Penny actually had that kind of money and the grief that she had to give it to me, somewhere inside, I was doing a victory dance at the possibility of never having to be squished between shoulders and unwanted thoughts again.
“Um, no,” I said. “No, I don’t mind.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We stepped onto the curb while the porter unloaded our bags—all recently upgraded to combination-locked, titanium suitcases and cast with multiple binding and repelling spells. In less than an hour we were escorted to the tarmac just as the sun was directly above us, lighting Boston and the harbor along with the rest of Massachusetts.
With the wind whipping my hair across my face and the plane engines roaring in my ears, I took one last look at the state I had called home for the last six years.
Goodbye , I thought, so unsure about whether it was directed at the city or my past.
And then I turned and stepped into my future.