Chapter 14 #2
My skin crawled. He looked so real, my brain was having trouble keeping in mind he was a hallucination. “I’m not talking to you anymore. I know you’re not real.”
I kept walking, but when Simon reached out and tugged at my arm, he felt solid. The hand around my wrist was real. When he pulled harder, it was a yank that stung my shoulder. I wasn’t imagining that.
“Simon!” I gasped, inhaling sharply as I wrestled out of his grasp. I stumbled back, putting distance between myself and this hallucination—which had somehow turned solid. A ghost that was no longer a ghost. “Leave me alone. I’m in the middle of something.”
“I told you that I’m just here to help you.
I’m here to protect you. Your parents miss you.
I miss you. Your friends miss you. What about being a doctor?
You were supposed to help people. You’re wasting your life on this island, frolicking and pretending to be a queen, wearing a crown that doesn’t belong to you. You’re not royalty, Allie.”
The name jolted me back to the years I’d spent with him.
Allie. That was what everyone had called me.
It had been my name for so long, but I no longer associated myself with it.
When I’d moved to the island and people had started calling me Alessia, the transition had felt natural.
I hadn’t thought twice about it. I’d slipped into this new identity like it was an old, familiar sweater.
“I’m not Allie anymore,” I said. “My name is Alessia. That’s what people call me here.”
Simon gave a partial eye roll. Even his hallucination couldn’t win me over with politeness. The man didn’t have an ounce of kindness in his body, even his imaginary one.
“You need to let this go,” Simon said. “The sooner you come back, the sooner we can get all set up. We don’t have to send you to the nuthouse like your dad wanted. I never wanted that for you, Allie. I just wanted you back.”
“It wasn’t just my dad,” I snapped. “You were in on it. My mom was in on it. None of you believed me. None of you listened. None of you cared what I was going through.”
“I love you, Allie. I’ve loved you since I met you.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word love,” I said, unable to stop myself from arguing with this mirage. “I understand it now, and what we had was never love.”
Simon felt so real. The touch against my arm had brought everything back. He even smelled like Simon—that expensive hair gel, the soap he wouldn’t let me use because it cost more than gold per ounce. I’d thought it was classy at first, but now it made my stomach roil.
I was used to Silas now. The way he smelled like earth and power and mystery. That edge of darkness combined with the plain, minty soap Millie crafted from garden herbs. I longed for his arms around me.
“That’s enough of you, Simon,” I said. “I am done with you forever. I’m moving on. I am helpful on this island, or at least I’m trying to be, and I’m not going to stop. My duty is here. Not with you.”
Simon called after me, but I turned away.
It was hard to take the first step and harder to take the second, but after that my confidence grew.
Simon’s voice faded as I climbed higher.
It seemed his spirit—or the mirage, or whatever he was—was stuck at a certain elevation.
The farther I climbed, the faster I left him behind.
When I glanced back, all I saw were indented steps in the grass and fluffy clouds pooling beneath me.
Simon was but a distant memory, right where he belonged.
I felt victorious as I continued climbing upward. But the buoyant sensation didn’t last long, only until I heard more whispers from up ahead. More familiar whispers. More of my past catching up to me in the place I wanted to encounter it the least.
It made me uncomfortable, these reminders of my past life.
I’d shed that life so completely, it was like a snake’s second skin left out to dry and grow brittle, eventually fading away completely.
And yet somehow, that life kept coming back, haunting me, no matter how I tried to sever myself from it.
“Alessia,” a new voice said. “Simon didn’t mean all that. You know how he can get when he’s stressed.”
My mother’s voice. It was her voice, but it wasn’t her words.
The tone now was kind and gentle, a voice I’d longed to hear for years.
The voice I’d chased by getting straight A’s, wearing my hair the way she wanted it, choosing the friends she approved of.
The voice she’d withheld from me so often when she spoke to me instead with disapproval and frustration.
“Mom?” The word came out tired and weary.
I had tried so hard to build a relationship with her, and when that hadn’t seemed to work, I’d convinced myself over and over to give up the idea of having a relationship with her at all. I’d convinced myself that I no longer cared what she thought, that I was my own person.
But no matter how many times I convinced myself—or my therapist—it never really mattered. She was still my mother, and I still cared.
“Simon has always had his flaws,” my mother said gently. “You know that better than anyone. I could see it, your father could see it, everyone could see it.”
“If you could see it so clearly, then why were you so adamant I marry him?”
My mother gave a long, heavy sigh. “You’ve got to keep in mind, darling, life isn’t exactly simple. Not all of us are as strong as you.”
“Strong as me?” I gave a throaty laugh. “You never thought I was strong. If you’d thought I was strong, you would’ve let me do things on my own.
You never let me do anything on my own. I couldn’t even have friends over without you running background checks on them and their parents.
You would ask me what kind of car their parents drove so it wouldn’t embarrass you when they pulled up in front of our house. ”
“I understand,” she admitted. “And I’m sorry.
What I’m trying to say is that I was taught to act a certain way too.
I wasn’t as strong as you, as willing to bend the rules of the society I lived in.
We had a comfortable life with your father.
Yes, my relationship with your father hasn’t always been based on love—”
I gave a soft huff of laughter. “Oh, really?”
“But it was very convenient and mostly amiable,” she said. “My marriage to him gave me safety. It gave me security. It gave me you, and I could never regret that.”
I swallowed hard. I would’ve loved to have heard my mother say these words ten years ago. Maybe I would’ve believed her even a few months ago. Now, even though my heart was thudding and my palms were sweating, I was skeptical.
I reached out to see if she, too, was a mirage. But when my hand touched her, she was solid.
“I love you, honey.” My mother reached up and stroked her thumb down my cheek.
It felt so real that my skin tingled beneath her touch. I pressed my hand to my cheek after she dropped hers, wondering where this sentiment had been my whole life. Had it taken losing me to realize what we could’ve had? A real relationship between mother and daughter?
“No,” I said aloud, sounding argumentative, if only to myself. “You’re not real. I don’t know what this is, but you are not real.”
She looked offended. “Of course I’m real. A man named Seer Goddard visited me and explained everything. He said you needed help. If my daughter needs help, I’m going to see to it that she gets it.”
I blinked. The way she said Seer Goddard’s name jolted something in me. Like they were familiar. Like maybe he had visited her and explained everything.
“Seer Goddard explained everything,” she repeated. “I finally understand, and I’m sorry I couldn’t see it sooner. I always knew you were special. I just didn’t have the strength to stand up to your father. He had ideas of who he wanted you to become, and I went along with them.”
It sounded plausible. My mother had never worked a day in her life. She’d gone straight from college into a high-profile marriage where she’d mostly been known as a Mrs.
Had she ever really had the power to do what she wanted?
Had anyone ever asked her about her dreams and aspirations, or was she merely the woman behind my father?
And if she didn’t obey his wishes, then what?
She had no security net. No job experience.
If he left her, what then? Was it really impossible to believe what she’d said was true?
“But you could’ve loved me, even back then,” I said softly. “You could’ve shown a little kindness, a little understanding.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I regret it. Deeply. I never gave us the opportunity to be close, and I apologize for that.”
“It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “What do you want from me? I’m not going back to New York. My life is here now.”
“I understand,” she said tiredly. “But I want you to know there’s a place for you at home. With me. If you need me, I’m there.”
“What about Dad?” I asked. “How is anything going to change? It’s still his house, his rules. I know how this works.”
“If you’ll come back and be with me, that’s all I need. I’ll leave him.”
I stared. My mom would never leave my father.
“You have to choose,” my mother pleaded. “You can’t be in two places at once. You can’t be the powerful Fae Queen vanquishing evil on a magical island and also my daughter in New York.”
“I’ve already made my choice,” I said, though my voice was shakier than I wanted to admit. There was a tremble of doubt. But I repeated, “I’ve made my choice. I’ve got to move on.”
“You only get one mother. If you stay here, you’re abandoning me. You’re abandoning everything that we could be.”
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to be what you wanted. It was never enough.”