Chapter 12 Mabel #2
“I’m considering my options.” She laughs, light and melodic, then drops her attention back to the trail. “What was your guardian’s name?”
The smile falls from my face before I can stop it, and my brows shoot toward my hairline.
It seems like such an innocuous topic, but it hits hard and shakes my composure.
I should have expected her to circle back to it—I did tell her to ask a different question last time— but I’m caught off guard, and I’m not used to being caught off guard.
In the pause, concern passes over her face.
A dozen practiced responses flash rapid fire through my head. A dozen tried-and-true ways to change the subject. I could laugh it off. I could make something up. I could distract her with a teasing, flirty comment. I’m a pro at avoiding this topic.
But Aurora is right. I’ve been asking her a lot of personal questions, and she’s been giving me a lot of personal answers. Truthfully, I plan to ask her many more, because I want to know much more about her. And right now, as strange as it feels, I want her to know more about me, too.
So I go against fifteen years of instinct, and I answer.
“Mabel.”
My jaw tightens in anticipation, waiting for my confession to hit the ground and explode like a bomb. My ears train on the birds and the breeze, waiting for the sound of paparazzi shouting and shutters snapping. I brace myself for all of my fears to come alive.
None of it happens.
Instead, Aurora breaks into a wide, surprised smile.
“Wait, what? Your guardian’s name was Mabel, or is this some joke about how you’re your own guardian?”
God, she’s cute. Her nose scrunches up and the green in her eyes sparkles, and I can’t help but laugh. The anxiety fades away until not even a whisper remains.
“Foundation of truth?” I ask, and she nods.
“Obviously.”
I lean in and lower my voice. “Bubble of trust?”
“Of course,” she says, smile still playing on her lips as confusion mixes with her interest. “I won’t tell a soul. I promise.”
I wait for another few breaths to consider her words, but I believe her. I believed her even before she’d finished speaking. It might not be smart, but it’s where I am right now.
“My guardian’s name was Mabel. I called her Ms. Mabel. She died when I was fifteen, and I was sent to a group home. I lasted two weeks. When I ran away, I started using her name.”
Aurora’s jaw drops and her eyes go as wide as frisbees. “You stole her identity?”
I shrug. “I mean, kind of, but not really. I didn’t use her social security number or anything like that. I just started telling people my name was Mabel Rossi. When we signed our first record contract, I had to get all new legal documents, so I used her name and birthday for that, too.”
“What’s your real name?”
I smirk. “Mabel.”
“Okay, but who were you before you were Mabel?”
“Which time?”
“What do you mean which time?”
I laugh again. If I knew everyone would react in this way, I’d tell this story all the time. I don’t think Aurora has even blinked. She’s just staring at me with an amused, awestruck smile on her face, and I’m loving it.
“Well, I’m not sure if I was given a name at birth. I was surrendered at a fire station when I was a couple weeks old.”
“A couple weeks? You must have had a name if your birth parents kept you for a couple of weeks.”
A familiar pain shoots through me. She’s said what’s plagued me for years. Almost my whole life. It’s a question that’s been running through my mind a lot more recently. With my bandmates all pairing off and making new families, how can it not?
I was healthy when the firefighter found me. Fed and clean and happy. I was wrapped in a brand-new blanket and left with a bottle, diapers, and a can of baby formula. I must have had a name. I must have been wanted, even if just a little. I must have been loved...
I stave off the spiral—now is not the time or place—and shrug.
“Maybe. It’s possible. But the foster agency called me Susan. I was Susan until I was about three, then a foster family started calling me Ainsley. I went by Ainsley until I was fifteen and started going by Mabel.”
“Wow.” Aurora shakes her head. “How many lives have you lived, Susan Ainsley Mabel Rossi?”
“One for every name, at least,” I say wryly. “A different variation for every foster placement, too, probably. I had to try a few on before I found one that fit. But isn’t that the point?”
“What is? Trying on lives?”
“Finding one that fits.”
“I never thought of it that way.” She hums, the sound pensive, and when I look at her, she’s staring thoughtfully up into the canopy of branches. “So three, probably four names. How many foster placements?”
“A lot.” Too many. “Only two that mattered, though.”
It’s the truth. All the others run together, but two of them will stay with me forever, for better or worse.
“Will you tell me which two?”
“I will,” I say with a grin.
When I don’t elaborate, she laughs again and amends her question.
“Mabel, which two foster placements mattered and why?”
“Better.”
She rolls her eyes, and I have to suppress a giggle. An actual giggle. What the hell? I take a deep breath and refocus, bringing my hand up so I can tick off my fingers.
“Okay, so the two that mattered. First, the family that called me Ainsley. I was young when I was placed with them, but I remember liking them. They were nice. They almost adopted me.”
“Almost? What happened?”
“I don’t know everything that went into it, but the lady got pregnant with twins and soon after that, I was back in the system. By that point, though, I’d gotten used to being called Ainsley, so it stuck.”
I feel her eyes on me again, but I keep mine pointed forward. When she speaks, her voice is soft, and though we’re not touching, I can imagine being held. Comforted.
“That must have been hard.”
“I was young.”
“Yeah, and it must have been hard.” She bumps my arm with hers. “Foundation of truth.”
Now it’s my turn for a playful eye roll, then I sigh.
“Yeah, it was hard. I spent the next few years trying to be what I thought my new placements wanted me to be. Like, if I could make myself into what they wanted, I’d get to stay in one place, you know?
It never worked. Not until Ms. Mabel, which is ironic because by the time I got to her, I was a mess. ”
Aurora laughs. “You were a troublemaker?”
“No, not really, but I had an attitude. I could get mean.”
“I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Oh, believe it. I was an asshole.”
I think back to my first weekend with Ms. Mabel and can’t help but smile.
I told her my new bed was trash and so was her cooking, so she erected a tent for me in the living room and we ate pizza five nights in a row.
When I complained about my new school clothes, she took me to the mall and let me buy three new outfits.
And when I woke up in the middle of the night crying from a nightmare, she played with my hair and hummed lullabies until I fell back asleep.
“Every time I lashed out, she responded with nothing but love and understanding. Didn’t matter what I said or how I behaved, she was this steady, calming presence. It took me a year to really get comfortable, but once I did...”
I pause and breathe in through my nose, fighting the sting of tears.
“She was the first person I ever remember really feeling like home. Not the house or the room or the neighborhood. Her. She was everything I needed at that time in my life. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I really don’t know where I’d be if not for her.
She died right after my fifteenth birthday, and as much as it fucking hurt, threw everything into a tailspin, I still feel lucky I was placed with her. She changed my life.”
“My mom would have called your Mabel a passing comet. Brief and brilliant. Not meant to stay, but to blaze through and leave your sky rearranged.”
I smile. “I like that.”
“Yeah. My mom could liken anything to astronomy. She was a big nerd.”
“Is that where your name comes from? The Aurora Borealis?”
“It is indeed.”
“Have you seen it? The Northern Lights?”
“No. We were actually supposed to go after I graduated, but then they died...” She shakes her head with a heavy sigh, then shrugs. “Someday, maybe. We’ll see.”
They.
She said when they died.
She’s mentioned her mother’s death, but Aurora is shouldering the grief of more than one loss. When did they die? For how long has she been hurting like this? Her voice holds so much pain that it makes my chest ache. It’s a sound that I recognize, and I don’t know how I missed it before.
I stop walking, and she does the same. When she turns to face me, she’s clutching the pendant on her necklace, and I reach for it slowly.
Instead of removing her hand, she settles it on my wrist as I take the disc between my thumb and index finger.
The circular pendant is etched with lines and dots, and the metal is worn in places from her touch.
I turn it over to find a similar design on the back.
“Are these constellations?”
I bring my gaze to her face, but her eyes have fallen shut. Every time she inhales, her chest rises toward my hand, barely grazing my knuckles. When she answers, her whispered words kiss my cheeks. My lips.
“It’s the sky from the night I was born.”
“And the back?”
“My brother. It’s his night sky.”
I run the pad of my thumb over the design, over her night sky, just like she probably does.
Her brother. Her mother.
Her father, too?
“I worry that I’m letting them down by not doing all the things I’d said I’d do. The things we were going to do together before the accident. They died, but what if I’m the one who stopped living?”
God, I hurt for her.
“You’re in Australia on a rock and roll tour.
I think that counts as living,” I say teasingly, and it brings a small, sad smile to her lips.
I brush my fingers up her jaw, then rest my hand on her cheek as she leans into my touch.
“You’re not letting them down. You’re just in recovery mode. You’ll get there, Roar.”
I hope like hell she hears the honesty in my words. The conviction. She will get there. I know it. Maybe not to see the Northern Lights, but to a place where it doesn’t hurt so much. To a place where she’s not afraid to dream again, whatever that might look like.
She opens her eyes and holds my gaze, but she doesn’t speak. Then she nods once, and I drop my hand and step back, giving her space. Giving me space.
We walk back to the lodge in comfortable silence, stopping every so often so Aurora can photograph a plant or a bird. Later in the afternoon, I catch her inspecting her orchid closely with a furrowed brow. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I wish I did.
I stand beside her and focus on Arthur’s tiny bud, trying to see what she sees.
“Maybe he just needs to feel safe,” I say, my voice low.
Her shoulder moves with a sigh, then I feel her eyes on me.
“We’ll get there.”
I don’t ask if she means only the flower, or if she somehow means herself as well.