Chapter Fifty-Six
EZEKIEL
It looks the same. Worse, but it was never much to begin with.
I stand inside the one-room shack feeling the cold draft spilling through the massive hole in the roof.
It wasn’t always that big. I used to stare up at the ceiling from my mattress on the floor and count the cracks spidering from the hole that was a fraction of the size it is now and wonder when it would finally cave.
I walk the house like it’s a museum housing the worst of my childhood memories.
The small square kitchen table where I’d sit and wait for a meal that most nights wouldn’t come.
The iron still plugged into the wall from the last time she made me hold out my wrist until I told her the name she wanted me to have and not the one my mother gave me.
The dented walls inside each of the rooms that she’d throw herself against whenever she was caught in one of her rages and I managed to trap her inside.
And then there were the warm hugs and smiles. The assurances that she didn’t regret having me. The home-cooked meals. The songs she’d sing to me when I was sick. Those are the memories I cling to.
My mother had DID too—Bianca and Mara.
Bianca was my mother’s name. Mara was her alter who tortured me, screaming about me taking her baby away. The first time my father met Bianca’s alternate identity, he fled and ran straight back to the family he’d abandoned for her. Isaac’s family.
A sound behind me, the crunch of glass under a shoe, has me looking over my shoulder and seeing a very pregnant Aurelia walking in while looking around with an unreadable expression. “Princess?”
Slowly, Aurelia’s eyes turn to me, and she gives me a warm smile that I don’t return because the shame of her seeing this place has my skin crawling.
I turn to fully face her as she walks deeper inside, carefully stepping over the debris littering the floor.
I rush over to meet her and take her arm to hold her steady.
“What are you doing here? And what the fuck?” I say as I touch her hard, round stomach.
“You’re pregnant? When did this happen? How did this happen? ”
“Well, you see, Zeke. When two people love each other, they sometimes express that love by—ow,” she says when I bite her cheek.
“Smartass.” I rub her belly and try not to freak the fuck out at the news that I’m about to be a father.
The last time I saw Aurelia, she was getting into the back of a car and I was screaming at her not to leave.
Did she know then? Is that why she left?
“How are you feeling? Thorin must be insufferably happy,” I ramble when I can’t find the right words.
“Well, there’s the mood swings, heartburn, and swelling in weird places, but yeah, Thorin’s thrilled.
Look, we don’t have long,” Aurelia warns, skating right past the fact that she’s pregnant in only the way she can.
“I convinced Khalil and Thorin to wait outside, but they’re very nervous and worried about you.
I figure we have about two minutes before they come rushing in here to make sure you’re in one piece. ”
We have so much to talk about—her leaving at the top of the list—but I guess that will have to wait.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in one piece,” I say. “Not for as long as I can remember.”
“What do you mean?”
I take a deep breath and fight past the urge to bury the truth I came here to find. But one look in Aurelia’s warm eyes and I know I can trust her with it.
“I want to show you something.”
She nods. “Okay.”
Walking over to the filthy, mold-ridden mattress, I crouch and peel the corner back. A mouse scurries out from underneath where it chewed a warm home into the underside, but I pay it no mind as I stare at the name written on the floor in crayon.
“Seth,” she breathes out when she sees it. “How? How is that possible? I don’t understand.”
“I think Seth manifested long before Isaac ever got me on that table. I think after my mother died and she couldn’t hurt me anymore, he stopped waking up and I forgot about him until—” I try to swallow past the knot in my throat.
“Until Isaac.”
Letting the mattress go, I stand, towering over Aurelia, who tilts her head to look up at me.
“I don’t think he even remembers existing.
I was so young when she died. My memories barely stretch back that far, which means Seth can’t remember either.
He thinks his life began in that cult, and the alternative isn’t much better. ”
“Why?”
I tell her about my mother having DID. I tell her about Bianca and Mara. Two sides of the same coin, one who had the warm embrace of a mother and the other who wore her face but never wanted anything to do with me.
“Why do you think she hated you?” Aurelia asks softly, referring to Mara.
“I don’t think she hated me. I think she knew I didn’t belong to her. I think she was jealous of Bianca having a child and wanted one of her own. I think everything she did to me was to create Seth. A child of her own.”
There were gaps in my memory from childhood, but I always chalked it up to my young age, never once considering those gaps were coming from Seth’s presence.
At the time, whenever I’d wake up to find I’d lost a few hours or even days, all I could remember was feeling afraid and not knowing the reason why.
Aurelia’s lips part, and her eyes shimmer with tears. “So Seth has a mother?”
“Seth had a mother,” I softly correct.
Because when mine died, it meant Seth’s did too.
And one day, when I go, it means Seth and Bane will too.
And even though Seth having a mother in Mara meant I had to be in pain, I don’t begrudge him that.
The real question is how do I tell Seth he had a mother he doesn’t remember?
He might get curious. He might go digging in places where neither of us belong, searching for memories closed off by time to both of us forever.
I already owe him a lot more than I thought. I owe him a life without pain.
“What are you talking about, Zeke?” Aurelia questions, sounding nervous when I tell her that.
“I’m talking about giving Seth that chance,” I say as I take her hands in mine, trapping them between our bodies. “I’m talking about going to sleep one last time…and never waking up again.”
“What?” Aurelia snatches her hands from mine and backs away with disbelieving eyes.
“I can let Seth have it all,” I say. “My body, the baby, and you. He deserves it. You deserve someone who can always be present for you, not just sometimes.”
“And what about what you deserve? It was your pain too. It’s your life too. You can’t just give it up because you think it will be easier. And don’t tell me you’re doing this for me without even asking me what I want.”
“Aurelia, what if the cycle repeats itself? What if one of us hurts our kid? I know Seth won’t, but Bane is dangerous. I can keep him away like Seth did, but for good this time. Seth obviously figured out how, which means there’s a way. I can keep you and the baby safe.”
“You can’t assume that because you and your mom had the same disorder that it makes you the same.
That’s bullshit. You are not a danger to our child.
Bane isn’t going to hurt me. He isn’t going to hurt the baby.
You have to stop being afraid of him. Bane isn’t the monster you think he is.
You just have to trust me and give this a chance.
We can have it all. You just have to believe it. ”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure that I love you and don’t want you to leave me? Of course I’m sure.”
“I love you too.”
The front door creaks open, and I look over Aurelia’s head to see Thorin and Khalil sneaking inside. They don’t bother to look around. Their focus is on Aurelia before shifting to me and seeing that I’m okay too.
“Everything okay?” Khalil asks.
I don’t expect Aurelia to spin around and tattle on me, but that’s what happens. At first, they’re distracted by her puffy face soaked with tears, and then their worried faces turn into deep scowls and vicious curses when her words finally penetrate.
“Don’t worry, songbird. Seth would never have allowed it. At first, he would have been ecstatic at never having to leave you, but the moment he knew how sad the loss of Zeke made you, he would have done anything to make it better.”
Khalil, who had been quiet until now, hauls off and punches me out of nowhere. Pain explodes in my shoulder, and I glare at him as he lifts a brow. “Next time you start talking that crazy shit, it’ll be your face. We are a family, and the family isn’t complete without you.”
I glance at Thorin who’s staring at my other shoulder.
Aurelia must notice too because she suddenly throws herself in front of me.
“No more hitting Zeke. Use your words. We want him to want to stay.” And then she waddles for the front door, grumbling under her breath, “I’ve attached myself to idiots. ”
“Foreeeever,” the three of us chorus as we follow her out of the house.