Chapter 9
NINE
Galen could hold a grudge but almost never did with me. He wasn’t angry about what had happened at Wesley’s farm — he wasn’t happy by any stretch, but he feared it would happen again.
We both knew that I would cross over to get my grandfather. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.
I was willing to put off my return long enough to come up with a plan, but I wouldn’t wait forever.
Galen chased me down the stairs after our shared shower — he was feeling frisky after playtime — and he gave my butt a light smack as we entered the kitchen, saying something about spanking me if I wasn’t careful. He pulled up short at the sight of his mother in the kitchen.
Marjory had let herself into the lighthouse without being invited more than once. Always — it looked as if today wouldn’t be the exception — she did it under the pretense of cooking us breakfast. The food items spread over the counter suggested that’s exactly what she was doing this morning.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, glancing between us. “If there’s to be spanking I can leave.”
“That would be great,” Galen replied blandly.
I shot him a quelling look and stepped forward. “We were just screwing around. There will be no actual spanking.”
Galen shot me a hot look, but I ignored him.
“I’m cooking omelets,” Marjory said brightly. “I have all of your favorite ingredients, Galen.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” he challenged.
“Well, I am doing something nice.” Marjory met her son’s even gaze. “Thanks are normally welcome under those circumstances.”
“We didn’t ask you to come here.” The way Galen’s nostrils flared told me he was close to losing it.
“We’re happy to see you,” I lied. I wouldn’t have picked this morning for Marjory to offer her olive branch, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter so I opted to look on the bright side. “It’s a surprise, but a good one.”
Marjory beamed at me.
Galen's expression was wary. “Why are you here?”
“I heard about Wesley.” Marjory flashed me a sympathetic look. “I thought I could be of service.”
“Oh, really?” Galen crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to load up a backpack and head into the woods looking for him?”
I was desperate to keep the situation from exploding. “I appreciate you coming,” I offered, and I actually meant it. “I’m really worried about Wesley.”
“There are rumors flying around,” Marjory hedged.
Galen barked out a humorless laugh. “You’re not here to help, you’re here for the gossip.”
Again, I glared at him. “Galen!” On one hand, his relationship with his mother was his own. It wasn’t my place to get involved. On the other, I didn’t think him harboring a steamship’s worth of vitriol for the woman would help anyone, especially himself.
Galen’s hand was big and comforting when it landed on my back. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’m not going to fight because Hadley is dealing with enough, but you need to tread carefully.”
Marjory eyed him. “I’m not a monster, Galen, no matter what you think.”
“You’ve spent the last two weeks pretending I don’t exist because you’re mad I didn’t handle the Julian situation as you wanted. You shut me out when I was meeting a new brother. You’re my mother. How are you not the monster in this situation?”
“I told you to let the situation go,” Marjory seethed. She might have come here to make amends, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight back.
“Why would I do that?” Galen’s eyes flashed with impatience.
“That boy is nothing to you.”
“He’s a man,” Galen fired back. “He’s a man and he was raised believing one man was his father when it was someone else. It was my father, who wasn’t a step up in the father department if I’m honest.”
“Don’t you dare badmouth your father,” Marjory barked. “He was a complicated man.”
Galen snorted. “Complicated is a word people use when they don’t want to admit the truth. My father was a douche.”
“Your father loved you.”
“I don’t remember the love. I remember the disappointment.” Galen’s voice softened and it hurt my heart when he spoke his next words. “He always told me I was a disappointment.”
“He never used that word,” Marjory countered.
“He hated that I hung around with non-shifters,” Galen explained to me. “He thought that made me weak.”
“Well, he was wrong,” I replied. “That made you stronger. Your friends have always made you stronger.” I shot Marjory a silencing look when she opened her mouth. “Pick your battles,” I ordered.
She looked taken aback but nodded. “You’re probably right. Galen is tired. You were at the ranch late last night, correct?”
Galen wouldn’t want the information that I had crossed to another plane spread, especially to his mother.
That news would become public soon enough — his men had big mouths — but this breakfast was already fraught.
I planned to keep the information to myself, but Galen opened his big mouth and turned the entire conversation on its head.
“We believe Wesley was kidnapped and taken through a plane door,” he announced.
My eyebrows almost took flight.
“Excuse me?” Marjory looked confused as she whisked eggs.
I was desperate to seize control. “Do we think he was kidnapped or lured to the door?” I blurted.
Galen glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”
“If that killer shadow can get to this side to kidnap him, why not just stay? We’re considering that he wants me, right? It makes more sense for Wesley to have been lured there.”
Galen rubbed his chin before moving to the coffee pot. “I guess I never really thought about it that way but you’re right. It makes way more sense for Wesley to have walked into the same trap you were drawn into.”
“Unless there was more than one trap,” I countered. “I don’t think Wesley went that far out after the barbecue with his men. The trap I found yesterday was created for me. What if a different one was created near the house for him?”
Galen didn’t immediately answer but I could see him considering the possibility.
Marjory was a different story. “I need to be caught up on a few things,” she prodded.
It was inevitable that she would hear the story, so I figured it was better that we give her the facts.
“We kind of had an ordeal yesterday,” I explained before launching into the tale. It took about ten minutes to tell her everything. All the while, she worked on breakfast and by the time I finished she was folding the omelets.
“Well, that’s quite a tale.” Marjory’s eyes moved to Galen, who was at the kitchen table glowering over his coffee. “You must have been terrified.” There was no judgment in her tone for a change. She looked legitimately concerned for her only child.
“I was,” Galen confirmed. “Time moves differently on the other side. Hadley was gone an hour to her reckoning. We’re estimating the difference is about one hour on that side to twelve hours on this one.”
“You saw your mother?” Marjory’s eyes brimmed with pity when they locked with mine.
I nodded. “At least she looked like my mother.”
“That had to be some sort of illusion,” she demanded of Galen. “She didn’t really see her mother.”
Galen lifted one shoulder. “Obviously we don’t know for certain.” He darted a worried look to me. “It’s not unheard of for souls to be trapped on other planes.”
“Yes, but in Emma’s case, how would she get there? She died giving birth to Hadley … on the mainland. There was nothing paranormal about her death.” Her gaze moved to me. “Was there?”
“How is she supposed to know?” Galen barked. “She was a newborn.”
“Her father was present. He would have seen a monster rushing in to harm his wife,” Marjory argued pragmatically.
“To my knowledge, there was nothing paranormal associated with my mother’s death,” I offered, choosing my words carefully. “My father isn’t great at keeping secrets. He knew my mother came from a paranormal family, but he doesn’t know much about the paranormal world.”
I considered it further. “Even if he didn’t tell me before I came to Moonstone Bay, he’s visited since. He would have told me then when he realized that I was embracing magic.”
Galen, his hand moving over to squeeze mine, agreed. “He would’ve used it as a reason for you to leave the island and return to the mainland. He didn’t, which means there was nothing paranormal about your mother’s death.”
That made me feel marginally better.
“That’s all well and good,” Marjory said pragmatically. “If it’s true, the creature Hadley saw on the other side couldn’t be her mother.”
My heart absorbed a hard punch with her words. “She knew things,” I countered. Why I was clinging to the idea that my mother’s soul was trapped on a different plane I couldn’t say.
“What did she know that other people wouldn’t?” Marjory asked. Her tone wasn’t accusatory but her ruthless pragmatism was meant to trip me up.
“Don’t answer that,” Galen instructed. He jabbed a finger at his mother. “Do not push on this, Mother. If Hadley believes that was her mother—”
“Galen, I’m not trying to hurt Hadley,” Marjory fired back.
“I don’t believe it.” Galen glared at his mother. “You don’t mind hurting people if it means you accomplish your goals.”
“I’m being realistic,” Marjory snapped back. “If that was a trap designed for Hadley what better way to draw her in than to dangle the mother she’s desperate to know in front of her?”
I expected Galen to continue arguing with his mother. Instead, he snapped his mouth shut.
Galen didn’t want to hurt me so he was going along with whatever I said regarding my mother. He didn’t believe it was her.
I should have taken what the freaking sheriff — he knew things that I likely would never understand — believed and internalized it, accepted it, but I couldn’t.
“She said I got my sense of humor from May,” I insisted.
“You do sort of have May’s sense of humor,” Marjory said. She acted surprised, almost disappointed that she hadn’t seen it herself before.
“See.” I didn’t break out in an end zone celebration, but I’d proven my point.
“That only proves this creature got information from someone who knew both you and May,” Marjory argued.
Galen snapped his eyes to her. “What do you mean?”
“Hadley does have May’s sense of humor,” Marjory acknowledged. “She’s snarky and loves banter. There are plenty of people on this island who have interacted with both Hadley and May.”
“That would mean someone on this side is working with the shadow on the other side,” Galen said.
“Isn’t that a given?” Marjory sounded logical rather than condescending for a change. “The symbol was burned into the ground. That would have happened on this side. There was a spell attached to it. That would have happened on this side too.”
“And, if we’re assuming there were two traps, the first for Wesley, that was concocted on this side as well,” Galen said.
Marjory bobbed her head. “Any way you look at it, someone on this side is facilitating this.”
Galen slowly tracked his eyes to me. “It makes sense.”
I swallowed hard. It was pity I saw reflected back when I looked at him. It hurt so much I had to look away.
“Hadley, I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said. “I need you to look at this from all sides.”
“I know.” I was trying to sound strong, but my voice was a squeak.
“Oh, baby.” Galen pulled me to him and wrapped me tight in his arms. “We don’t know that it’s not her. We’re just sharing hunches.”
I buried my face in his neck, but I could see well enough out of the corner of my eye to register Marjory’s eye roll.
“I’m not stupid,” I blurted when nobody said anything for several moments. “I get that there are holes in the story and it makes no sense.” Things suddenly felt bleak. “I feel it, though. Not because I want to feel it. I don’t know how to explain it but I think it was her.”
Galen stroked over my hair. “Then I’m with you,” he said.
“Galen!” Marjory’s voice was full of scolding.
“Hadley saw her,” Galen fired back. “She knows better.”
“Hadley has never seen her mother,” Marjory argued. “For that matter, neither have you.”
That’s when I remembered what my mother had said about Marjory. “But you have.”
“I knew your mother.” Marjory nodded solemnly. “She was … a unique individual.”
My lips twitched involuntarily. “We talked about you.”
Marjory made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Did she mention how close we were?”
That was a test. Marjory wasn’t fooling anybody. “No. I told her I was engaged to your son.”
“She thought it was fabulous, didn’t she?”
“Actually, she said she hoped that meant Galen was nothing like you and your husband because that would make him a monster.”
Maybe it was petty, but I enjoyed watching her jolt.
“She said that?” Marjory no longer looked smug.
“She did,” I confirmed. Well, not the monster thing, but Marjory didn’t need to know that.
“Did you get along with her?” Galen asked his mother.
“I was older, so we didn’t interact that much,” Marjory replied evasively. “I would not say we were friendly.”
“Were you enemies?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say that either.” Marjory managed a half smile. “Your mother was a bit of a free spirit. She liked walking shoeless downtown and would play a game hopping from shady spot to shady spot on the hot pavement. She would play that game even as a teenager.”
“The floor is lava,” I mused. “My father taught me that game.”
“I believe she might have said something like that,” Marjory acknowledged. “Your mother was a bit of a nut if you ask me. When you moved here I assumed you would be like her.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me for Galen?”
“We’ve been over this.” Now Marjory looked tired. “I wanted a shifter for him. Now I see that you’re the only one he will ever love and I’ve accepted it. Let’s not rehash this.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I just … isn’t it possible it was really her? If she was trying to pull one over on me, wouldn’t the perpetrator assume my mother would have liked my future mother-in-law?”
Marjory didn’t answer.
“She has a point,” Galen noted.
“Maybe.” Marjory shook her head.
Galen was all business. “You can think about it at the office today. Hadley is going into work with you. I’m going back to Wesley’s ranch.”
“You said I only had to work in the morning,” I argued. “You said I could go back out in the afternoon.”
Galen shook his head. “I said that we would talk again at lunch. That’s all I’m committing to right now.”
“Galen.”
“Hadley.” His eyes were fierce. “You have to give me space to do my job. We’ll talk at lunch.”
He was dismissing me and I didn’t like it. “Fine. I’m going to be mad at you for the rest of the day.”
“I’ll try to survive.”