12. Liath #2
A baby sweater. A photograph. A footprint in ink. A single sign that the woman who had lived in this room had kept a part of us near.
But there was nothing.
By the time I was done, the room felt smaller. The walls closer.
And I had never felt so unwanted.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m done.”
I turned to leave, heart gearing up to slam the door on this room and everything in it, and froze.
Unlike the curved stone walls, this wall was flat and dressed with peeling wallpaper. Wallpaper that was covered in gray moths. Faded, delicate shapes tucked between vines and flowers, their wings outstretched. Small red moons nestled in the borders between the curling stems, half-hidden.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I muttered, the denial automatic. “Nothing.” My voice shook, betraying me.
A dusty painting caught my eye, something red and round glinting faintly beneath the grime like a buried ember.
I snatched a scarf from the back of a rickety chair and wiped it across the canvas in short, impatient strokes, pushing the dust away.
My breath caught halfway up my throat and stuck there.
A young Kathleen, looking like she could be my sister, stared out from the canvas, a self-portrait, her eyes soft and glowing, a smile of pure contentment on her face. She held a gray moth and a red moon against her chest, cradled like precious things, painted with more care than her own face.
Another memory crashed through me, her cooing at us both. “My gray moth. My red moon.” Two little bodies pressed against her, safe beneath that sound.
Red. Gray.
Rua. Liath.
Our names had been hidden in paint.
I tried to speak, to explain, but instead, a choking noise scraped out of my throat.
Lorcan rushed to my side, his footsteps quick on the boards. “Gray, what is it?” His hand closed around my trembling arm, steadying me, pulling me back from the edge.
I pointed at the painting uselessly, my fingers shaking so hard I could barely focus on the image, my throat too tight to force words through.
He frowned, leaning in to study the canvas, but he didn’t understand, not the way I did. To him it was just a woman and two strange symbols.
I tore my gaze away and went to the next painting, wiping it clean with the same scarf. Then the next. And the next. I only stopped when they were all revealed.
The scarf fell from my hands and my knees trembled, the room tipping for a moment like a boat. My body struggled to process what my eyes were seeing.
Lorcan caught me before I collapsed, his arms wrapping around my waist and hauling me back against him.
“Liath,” he said, voice low and rough in my ear, “talk to me.”
“S-she called me her gray moth,” I managed, my voice shaking. “She called Rua her red moon. Look.” I lifted a hand with effort, pointing at the paintings lining the walls, each one in Kathleen’s dark, dreamy style.
There were gray moths and red moons in every one. Tucked into backgrounds. Moths perched on sleeves and windowsills. Red moons hanging low in the sky or peeking through tree branches. They were everywhere once I knew to look for them.
“She was painting us,” I whispered. “The moth and moon. She was hiding us. But… why?” The question scraped my insides raw.
A pulse of unease rippled through me.
Anyone else walking into this room would just see pretty patterns. Moths. Moons. Nothing incriminating. No evidence of two little girls who’d ever existed.
It felt deliberate. Intentional.
I scanned the room again, slower this time, my nerves humming. Everything felt charged, like every object had a second meaning I hadn’t unlocked yet.
My gaze snagged on a painting mostly hidden behind the open door. It sat lower than the others, not quite at eye level, as if someone had tried to tuck it out of sight. An odd place for a picture.
I broke free of Lorcan’s arms with a sudden jerk and swung the door shut so I could see it properly, the hinges creaking in protest.
It was as dusty as the others, the image beneath reduced to vague blobs of dark and light.
This time, I used my nightgown sleeve to wipe it down, not caring that the dust smeared across the thin fabric. I just needed to see.
The painting almost brought me to my knees.
A young Kathleen stared back at me, her face looking so much like mine.
She was drowning, her face just underneath the surface of the lake.
Her hair floated around her in dark, drifting ribbons, tangling into the roots of blue lotus flowers.
Her mouth hung open as if the last breath had just left her body.
Her eyes were empty, pupils blown, staring at nothing.
My hand trembled as I reached toward the painting, my fingers hovering above the damp-looking blues and greens. “She painted her own death,” I whispered. “She painted her suicide before she killed herself.”
A gray moth tangled in her painted hair. And there, warped in the water’s reflection, the red moon. Symbols. Us. Hidden even here.
Heat surged up my chest, anger and grief knotted together. If my mother didn’t love me, then why paint me? Why paint gray moths and red moons into every single painting?
And if she did love me, then why would she leave us? Why would she let the world say she’d gone mad and abandoned her daughters? Why would she kill herself and leave our lives to the mercy of fate?
Then I noticed her hand, the way her pale fingers in the painting were not floating aimlessly. They were angled… a single finger pointing.
Pointing at what? My brows drew together as I leaned closer.
Pointing to something in the reflection on the surface of the water, something distorted because of the dust that still clung in the grooves of the paint.
I rubbed the spot harder with my sleeve, getting the last film of dust off, my movements growing sharper.
It was the reflection of a person standing at the water’s edge. A dark silhouette distorted by the painted ripples.
Watching her drown.
Cold flooded my limbs. My fingers went numb around the frame. I yanked it off the wall and threw it before I realized what I’d done.
The painting hit the floorboards with a flat heavy crack and skidded to a stop face down, the back of the canvas now facing the room.
I saw it at the same time Lorcan did.
The envelope. Wedged between the wood and the back of the canvas. Right where the painted finger had been pointing.
The breath I’d been holding came out of me in a rasp.
I dropped to my knees on the cold boards and pulled the envelope free with shaking hands.
On the front was a painted gray moth and a red moon, small and careful, like a private greeting meant only for us.
My hands shook as I opened it, the paper soft with age. The flap tore raggedly under my fingers.
It was a letter, pages thinned and yellowed, folded over themselves, the ink bleeding slightly in places, but the words were still legible, still hers.
My dearest daughters,
my moth and moon,
The first line blurred as my eyes filled, then sharpened again as the letter shook in my hands.
Words can’t say how much I love you.
My chest clenched so hard it hurt, the ache spreading into my shoulders.
You probably have questions about your father. For your protection, I can’t reveal him. But know I named you after how I see him.
Lorcan leaned in to read over my shoulder. “What does that mean?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
Forgive me. I came back to Ravenwood to expose the rot. And I am so close.
If you’re reading this, then I have failed.
And they have covered up the truth with lies.
I don’t know what they told you, but you need to know…
I hid you to protect you.
The letter dropped to my lap. My hands wouldn’t hold it anymore.
A sob tore out of me.
Lorcan was on the floor with me before I’d registered him moving. His arms around me, his chest against my back, his face pressed into my hair.
“She loved me.” The words scraped out small. “She loved me.” My fingers curled in his sweater, needing something to hold on to.
“I know,” he whispered. “I know.” He held me, one hand stroking up and down my spine, his breath warm against my hair. He did not try to fix it. He just stayed.
Everything I’d built my anger on, every story I’d swallowed about the unwed college girl who didn’t want her babies, shattered.
My mother had loved me.
She hadn’t abandoned me. She’d hidden me.
Someone murdered her. And covered it up with a lie.
Someone who was still out there.