Chapter 30 Fawn
CHAPTER THIRTY
fawn
“Other people don’t believe in magic, like we do, Mum. Why?” My voice is small.
The air is so chilly it burns my nostrils, and winter grass pokes through my pyjamas to my skin. I’m curled into my mother’s side, both of us tangled in an old tartan blanket.
The moon tonight is swollen and close. It glows the colour of bone above our little beachside town.
Mum laughs softly. “It’s hard for people to believe in something they can’t see and touch.”
“But we see it,” I say, “don’t we?” I want to see it. I want so badly to see anything she sees.
She pulls me tighter, tucking my head beneath her chin. Her hand rubs circles, first on my scalp, then my goose-bumped arm, then my back. With each pass, her palm anchors me to the earth, like she’s scared I’ll float away. “We do, Fawny. Some things are invisible and true at once.”
Inside the caravan behind us, the crackle of our neighbour’s alarm interrupts the silence. I know without looking that if I checked it, it would be after midnight and before dawn. The time caught between dreams and responsibilities. I don’t enjoy sleeping anyway, not when the moon is up and bright.
“Why do we believe, then?” My teeth chatter, but I don’t care. “Because if you believe, Mum, then I believe.”
Mum releases a little laugh. “Because I think we can see it. It’s all a matter of perspective.
” She lifts her finger and points at the moon.
“The no-magic people, the ones who think they know everything, they say everything can be explained by math and atoms and science. But look at the moon. It’s exactly the right size and exactly the right distance to cover the sun during an eclipse.
It gives us tides, it gives us the months, it gives us something to wish on. Isn’t that magic?”
She always talks about things like this. Like the world is a puzzle built for two—me and her. And if we squint hard enough, we will see the bigger picture.
“But isn’t it just an accident?” I ask, parroting something I once heard, that a no-magic person said.
Mum shakes her head. “Science can explain the what, but not the why. Or the how. How did the moon get there, perfectly balanced? Why does it haunt us, call us, make poets out of eccentric nomads? That’s what the magic is. It’s in the not-knowing, the in-between.”
I thread my fingers through hers, studying the way her nails are bitten down to the quick, while mine are filed and neat. “Will it always be there?” I ask.
She smiles, and it’s the saddest, bravest smile I’ve ever seen. “For as long as you want it to be, Fawny.”
A sudden heaviness settles on my left hand, familiar but out of place. I lift it to examine it, and there, crowding my knuckle, is an enormous ring—with a blue diamond. It’s not my mum’s. It’s mine. It’s the one Clay Butcher gives me, and suddenly I realize I’m dreaming.
I know I’m dreaming because my mother is dead. She shot herself in the head less than a week after this night under the moon. Our last moon together.
Tears fill my eyes.
I don’t miss her, not really.
Yes, I do. Especially now that I am a mum. Especially now that I am learning how to do the thing she couldn’t, the thing she gave up doing.
I look up at her through puddles of sorrow.
At the dimple in her chin. The slope of her cheek.
The way her near-white hair falls in unkempt waves over her shoulders.
She is so alive now, so real, that I’m terrified to breathe in case she disappears.
Disappears and becomes a butterfly. Does she know how beautiful she is? Did anyone ever tell her?
“You’re beautiful, Mum,” I say.
She blinks, startled. The memory I’d forgotten until now shifts, rewriting itself in real time. She looks down at me, brows furrowed in confusion, then touches a trembling hand to my cheek. “Thank you, baby. And you look just like me now. So grown-up.”
I want to say the things I never said when I was little, the questions that have haunted me through the years. Like, why did you do it? Did you really want to leave me?
Wasn’t I enough?
I force the words out. “Why did you do it?”
She closes her eyes, holding them like that, then opens them again. “I was sad.”
“But why?”
“I’m not sure I know. Sometimes it’s just a mood that rolls in like fog, and you can’t see anything but the next five minutes. Sometimes you think everyone else would be better off.”
My lower lip wobbles. “I couldn’t make you happy.”
She hugs me to her side. “You did, baby. You always did. It was the rest of the world I couldn’t bear to be around. All lies. Politicians, the media, doctors, who to trust, what to believe. It was too much for me to handle.”
I want so badly to forgive her. I twist the ring, feeling its weight, and ask what matters now. “Have I changed? Am I different?”
She looks down at me. “Look at you. I’m so proud of you. Of who you’ve become. Of all you have survived. There isn’t anything in this world that can stop you now.”
Sighing, I stare at the moon, then at her, then at the ring, as if the three connect—pieces of past, present, and future.
“You don’t know the people here,” I whisper. “They are elite. They’re in the Mafia. The kind you wanted to keep me away from. Dangerous men. Men and women, smart, elegant, with sharp tongues and impossible expectations. Sometimes I think I’m just a stray cat in a palace of wolves.”
She laughs. "Oh, baby. Those wolves were born with their power. You? You clawed your way up from nothing. While they were learning which fork to use, you were learning how to survive without one. They inherited their teeth—you sharpened yours on concrete.”
The dream fades at the edges.
I wake up with a slow, burning ache, as if some vital part of me has been torn.
I want her to help me learn this—mummy thing.
Though she herself had no idea how to do it.
I get that not everyone takes being a mum to this level of obsession, but…
they should. And if they grew up without one, they’d realise how important that presence is.
‘They inherited their teeth—you sharpened yours on concrete.’ My mum never said this to me. I guess it came from my own imagination. These are my words.
Lying on my back, I blink up at the ceiling tiles, at grid-like patterns on the hospital ceiling. I don’t need to look around to know Clay isn’t here. I feel that hollow space, a part of me sucked out by the missing gravity of Clay Butcher.
There are two cots opposite me, encasing my sleeping babies.
They were drugged, but their vitals are fine now, and they’re sleeping it all off.
Luca is etched with a scowl even in slumber, and Ash has his mouth open, perhaps singing in a dream choir.
Their tiny chests rise and fall easily. With every breath, it occurs to me they are real, alive, and present in a way my mother will never be again. She did that to herself.
She transferred her trauma to me; I will not be doing that to them.
Nurses have been coming and going all night, performing their ‘checks’—studying the monitors and the charts—and then leaving silently. I wonder if they know who we are, if the name “Butcher” means anything in this ward.
I suspect it does.
After everything that happened yesterday, I imagine the entire hospital knows.
The one time I left the room last night, to walk up and down the corridor and stretch my stiff legs, there were henchmen in the halls.
I can always spot Cosa Nostra soldiers because their suits are all-black, luxurious, and tailored.
A direct representation of the man they work for.
I stretch out on the small hospital bed. My body aches everywhere, all my muscles bruised, my skin tender. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, I can feel the car crash. With a groan, I try to sit up, but the effort brings a wave of nausea.
My head pounds with the memory of the crash. Of the glass shattering in slow motion, of the bite of the seat belt across my chest, of the world spinning until it suddenly stopped.
I swallow hard, trying to ground myself in the present.
I focus on the twins. They're sleeping as if nothing has happened. As if danger and violence aren’t written into their veins.
I don’t want that for them. I want to believe it’s possible to inherit only the good parts of your parents, but I’m not naive enough to think that’s how the world works—not anymore.
Luca stirs, grunting, then immediately falls back into a deeper, more petulant sleep.
“Hey, girlie, you’re awake.”
My eyes widen. “Xander!”
Pushing up to my elbows with a wince, I scan the room, my eyes landing on the handsome young man to my left. He’s sitting on a chair, wearing dark jeans, a blue t-shirt, and a grey hoodie. His dark hair is a little too long, covering his top lashes, and his jawline is shadowed with stubble.
Before I can say ‘you’re here’ or ‘I missed you,’ my vision blurs behind the bite of tears. “Welcome home,” I manage to say, but my throat is thick.
Xander quickly crosses the room, sits on the edge of the bed, and opens his arms. “Get in here.”
I melt into him, taking fistfuls of his shirt. I hum. Warmer and smaller than Max, and I feel as though I can hold on, gripping him, as long as I wish. Forever, even. If Max is a wall of muscles, Xander is a trampoline, taut and fun and always returning what you throw at him.
He rocks me gently.
I try not to cry.
“I came straight away,” he sighs, voice muffled by my hair. “Left Kaya in London. I’m so fucking sorry that you had to go through all of this.”
I nod against him and just— just hold him.
Be brave, Fawn.
Don’t lose control yet.
Then, I sit back to take him in. He is wearing that boy-next-door charm, with his floppy hair and bright blue eyes. He grins, saying, “You’re fucking amazing, you know that?”
“I don’t feel amazing.”
He grimaces, eyes lingering on a spot by my hairline, reminding me of my head wound. “You stealing my style?”