Epilogue 1.2
Lenora
“Sorry I’m late,” I tell her, moving to the spot Marcus evacuated. “I think I had too much sun today. Made me tired.”
Book in hand, she scoots closer until I have her tucked against my side. Her curls brushing my cheek.
“You’re tired all the time now.” Her small fingers pick at a bent corner of the book. “You don’t do all the things we used to.”
She’s not wrong.
“It won’t be much longer,” I promise. “Once the baby is born, we can do all the things we used to.”
“No, we won’t. Mrs. Pym says you’ll be busy with the baby, and I need to learn to be responsible.”
I consider my words carefully when I answer, “I will never be too busy for you, Ella.” I take a deep breath when she doesn’t respond.
“Do you know the best part about having a sibling? Everything,” I answer when she shakes her head.
“You get a best friend. Someone you can play with all the time. Who will love you and be there for you. And as a big sister, you get to teach them everything you know.”
“What if you and Daddies forget about me?”
“That will never happen.” I kiss her temple and smooth my hand over her curls. “I promise you. We will love you forever. No matter what.”
I know I’m finally easing her worries when she wiggles closer and settles her head on my chest.
“Can you tell me stories of my other daddies tonight?”
Five years and the pain hasn’t lessened. The edges are still raw. Still sharp. But telling Ella about her fathers helps somehow. Talking about them hurts but soothes as well.
Revealing the truth of her existence had been a lengthy conversation. A choice made over time and not all at once. Telling her about Eliah and Ames was non-negotiable. She would know about them, hear about them as often as possible. They would not be hidden from her.
The choice to name Marcus and Veyn as her other fathers was the one we had the biggest debate, especially after Veyn confessed what he did to create her. It would be unfair to Ella and them if we concealed their participation in her creation.
Marcus is her father. So are Veyn, Eliah and Ames. It was just a matter of trying to explain all that without details to a child.
So far, she hasn’t asked any questions. Hasn’t wondered how most children only have one father and she was blessed with four.
I suppose it’s the same as how one of her fathers is a demon. That hasn’t come up either. I suppose having grown up with Veyn, it’s just normal.
Even Mrs. Pym had simply accepted his presence as if a demon walking through mirrors was a perfectly acceptable thing. From the moment she returned one morning without explanation, she asked no questions.
Not how a baby came to be overnight.
Not why I was with Marcus or that it was inappropriate.
Not why there was a demon in the house.
She simply returned one day and went straight to work like nothing ever happened.
I suppose, that is her job. To not ask questions. But I know I would have a few if it were me.
“Are you happy?”
I pause in the story to peer down into the dark, swirling eyes of my little girl. It happens occasionally. It seems to be the only thing she got from Veyn. I’m not sure what causes it, but it comes and goes without her seeming to realize it.
“Of course,” I tell her. “I’m very happy.”
“Would you go back if you could?”
This thread of conversation is new. A little jarring. A five-year-old wouldn’t know about going back to change the past, or maybe she would. I can’t be sure. Ella has always been a little too perceptive. Too smart sometimes.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “Maybe yes before I had you. But we can’t change the past.”
“But if you could, would you bring them back?”
The tendrils are moving too fast around the contours of her eyes. Wiggling entities writhing down her soft cheeks.
“I don’t know,” I say for the third time, meaning it.
Would I go back and ask Ames and Eliah from leaving the house that day?
The answer should be yes, would be yes if I was guaranteed Ella and Veyn.
Two things I know would not be possible if my boys had lived.
Without their loss, I would never have needed Veyn.
The Duval family would still be alive. Life would have gone on as it once was.
But I wouldn’t have Ella and there is nothing in the world I would trade for her. She and the baby still growing inside me are my world.
“It’s a complicated answer,” I explain, hoping she will let it go.
“What if they could come back now?”
I peer down into her face, her eyes. Emotions a cyclone of pain.
“They can’t, baby. They’re gone.”
“They don’t have to be.”
I open my mouth to press her, to demand she explain herself. But she yawns wide and nestles against me. Within seconds, she’s breathing soft and steady.
For several minutes, maybe an hour, I lie with her folded in my arms. Her words ring in my head, disrupting everything I know about everything.
The dead cannot be brought back.
Not only can’t but shouldn’t. Even I am sane enough to firmly believe that. The dead stay dead and no one should play God. And they wouldn’t want me to.
But … what if?
What if I could bring them back? What if it could be done?
I wouldn’t, of course.
Even if I could.
I would be too ashamed to face them after what I’ve done. The blood I’ve shed. Perhaps they might forgive me my grief, but I murdered an entire family — with the exception of Adela Duval and her two children.
I meant to.
Adela married a monster and stood by his side through it all.
After Ella was born, Veyn took me to see Adela. I stood unseen in her extravagant bedroom with the iron-framed bed and gold accent. The house had been dark, still as she sat alone on her bed and stared out at nothing.
I understood that stare. That endless stream of thought that pinned your eyes to a spot as if glued there while your brain ran a million miles away. The suitcases she was packing sat abandoned behind her, half filled with clothes.
She had jolted when the phone rang. I caught the flesh of dread before she reached for the device with trembling fingers.
“Hello?”
There was a pause where I could tell she was holding her breath, but it wasn’t the rigid tension of a woman desperate for news of her missing husband. Even before she shut her eyes and exhaled, I knew she was relieved.
“Hey, Ma, yeah, I was just packing.” She pushed to her feet like she needed to prove it. “No, haven’t heard anything. I don’t think we will. I know, Ma.”
Carefully, she pulled the phone away from her ear and put it on speaker. It was dropped on the mattress as she resumed her folding and tucking.
“Bad news,” an older voice rasped from the other end. “From the start.”
“I know,” Adela sighed and stuffed a pair of socks into the case. “But he was still the father of my children. I couldn’t just leave.”
“So, you’re still coming here?”
Adela paused in her task and stared at her life pressed and tucked into luggage.
“I think it’s for the best. Noah’s just a baby still.
I know he’s eighteen, but…” she broke off and rubbed four fingers into the crease forming across her brow.
“He’s still just a kid. Julen keeps pushing to have him join the family business and I just …
I can’t do it. He’s not like August and Berny.
He’s a good kid. He wants to be an entomologist for crying out loud.
He’s not a … a … what Julen wants him to be. ”
“Well, I have the spare room made. It’ll be a change, but the kids will be better for it.”
A tear struck down Adela’s cheek. She swiped at it.
“What if he comes back?”
“Then we deal with it. Listen, I don’t care if he’s the second coming of Christ, he sets one foot on my property, he won’t have a damn foot, understand? I won’t let him near you or those kids. You just get your things together, get here, and we’ll sort out the rest, okay?”
Adela’s chin trembled followed by a steady flow of tears that she didn’t bother wiping.
“Thanks, Ma.”
In that moment, I considered asking Veyn to let her see me.
It would scare the hell out of her, but I wanted to assure her that Julen Duval would not be bothering her or her kids anymore.
That she was free. That I had a fishbowl in the basement filled with five floating eyeballs suspended in resin to prove it.
I wanted to assure her that she didn’t have to worry or hide or be scared.
Instead, I turned to the demon standing quietly next to me and asked him to take me home.
Five years later, I am still okay with that decision.
Adela Duval and her kids are safe somewhere, away from that monster and I have my trophies.
I draw in a slow, steady breath and gingerly free myself of the tiny creature sleeping soundly against my side. I tuck her in and kiss her cheek lightly.
On my way out the door, I remind myself that Ella is a child with naturally curious tendency.
She’s supposed to ask questions, especially about bringing her fathers back.
Her intelligence is remarkable. Even if I’ve never known another five-year-old, she sometimes has this stare, this too adult focus in her eyes that makes me think she understands far more than we realize.
But then it’s gone and she’s just a little girl.
Still, the question hangs in my thoughts as I leave her room and find the lit candle in the iron holder. I’ve told Mrs. Pym not to leave them out. Ella might hurt herself. The housekeeper assures me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m looking right at it.
Exhaling, I pluck it up and start down the hall. My feet move along the carpet to the stairs. I make my nightly journey from the solarium to the war room. Just to check. I’m less convinced that they will be there, but maybe this time…