Chapter 51
elaine
Caitlyn found me out in the back garden behind the safehouse, overgrown and full of the sounds of crickets and the cool, damp breeze in the leaves and vines around us.
Her wheelchair rolled over the small stones and twigs on the dirt path, stopping next to where I sat on the old stone bench.
“Vera?” she said, and I only barely managed to nod. “What happened?”
“She wants me to go,” I whispered. “Away. Somewhere safe.” I opened my hand to show her the wedding band, sitting in my palm next to where I was still wearing mine, and wasn’t that symbolic?
“Oh, no.” She clasped my hand in between hers. “That stupid, stubborn wife of yours.”
I shook my head. I’m not going to cry again. I’d already cried enough. “She’s not really my wife, you know. It was just…”
“You’re in love and you got married. And I also know too many details, so let’s just say, yeah, she is.” She squeezed my hand. “Even when she’s pulling something like this.”
“I’m just a burden in the end. Just people trying to move me out of the way, get rid of me so they can do the real work… and I should just give them what they need and then stand aside.”
Just like Mom. She never loved me. She never wanted me around. She just wanted the idea of me, the image of me. And she wanted what I could do for her.
Then once I was done giving her the money, she would get rid of me. That was how it always happened.
“You know that’s not true,” Caitlyn said. “You brought this whole family together. If it weren’t for you doing what you do, they would have killed you and me both, Glenn would have killed Vera and Petra, Yulia would have never been involved…”
“But now that it’s done, I’m not supposed to be here anymore.
” I buried my face in my hands, tugging away from Caitlyn and feeling the cold metal of Vera’s ring against my face as I cried.
“I hate the South Yard. I hate my granduncle I never knew who left this with me even knowing what it would do to me. I hate the Blackbirds, I hate the Whitecliffs, I hate everything about this city.”
“Elaine.” Caitlyn reached for me as I stood up, but I didn’t look back, just kept running until I was back in the bedroom, looking forlornly at my and Vera’s things. Our things that were about to split into her things and my things.
I was already at my lowest point, picking through the small essentials we’d grabbed from the manor before we fled here, trying to pick out the even smaller essentials for what I needed once I was gone, when I got a phone call that made my blood curdle.
Mom.
My stomach was uneasy as I picked up, heart slamming against my ribs. I wanted to be able to ignore it, but I couldn’t. I saw her name and I picked up automatically, ready to help.
“Hello?” I said.
“Elaine?” Her voice was small and weak, and I felt tears sting at my eyes. “Where are you?”
“I’m… I’m staying with Vera right now.”
“Please tell me you’re still in Merona.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m… sick, Elaine. I’m very, very sick. It’s taken all my energy… just to make this call.”
I flew to my feet, my heart pounding. “You’re sick? What… what with?”
“I… I don’t know, dear. At first I thought it was food poisoning. It started after I went out for lunch yesterday. But it’s gotten so much worse, I’ve been throwing up, and I’m so pale, it’s like I can see right through my hands… like I’m fading away.”
No. Did they poison her? Who? And why?
I gripped my phone tighter, tears biting my eyes. “You need to get to the hospital, Mom. This is serious.”
“I already called the doctor. He said to just rest on it. But I feel so faint…”
Dammit. I gritted my teeth, my chest heaving. “I… I’ll be right there. Please try to just stay awake a little longer.”
“Oh, thank you, Elaine. Thank you. Please hurry. I don’t know how much longer I… oh…”
“I’m coming, just—”
The call ended. I threw the phone down into bed.
“Dammit!”
Why did it always come back to this? Why always her?
I cleaned myself up in the bathroom as quickly as I could, getting dressed and stumbling out of the bedroom. I lingered at the door up to the steeple, my hand curled into a fist on the wood.
She would never have let me go. And we didn’t have time to debate it. Every second we argued over it was a second closer Mom could have been getting to dying.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the door, and I turned, and I fled into the cold morning air beyond the safehouse.
petra
“I just wish I could do something for her,” I said, sitting moodily slouched over the table in the meeting room, an old office space with antique wood furniture converted into a war room for Whitecliff operations.
Caitlyn, who was making frustrated faces at her laptop, finally gave up with what she was trying to do and shut the laptop, turning to me.
“For Vera?” she said. “Or for Elaine?”
“It’s all one and the same now, isn’t it? Just Vera who won’t recognize it.”
Caitlyn nodded. “I know Vera’s just trying to protect Elaine…”
“Vera’s trying to protect herself. From being in love.” I shook my head. “I mean, hell, I get that. Wish I couldn’t fall in love. Being human sucks.”
“Have you?” she said. “Been in love, I mean.”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to hear about my stupid shit.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “You can talk to me.”
“You and your sister are such saps.”
“Hey,” she laughed. “Someone’s gotta balance out you and Vera. And it’s not going to be Yulia.”
I closed my eyes. “There was a woman. Victoria. We had the best few months of my life together. We made promises… like the world was for her and I. One day we’d claim it.”
“Petra… what happened?”
I sat up taller. “I’m not trying to flash you right now.”
“I’m… sorry?”
I pulled the hem of my sports bra down, showing the ugly scar there. Caitlyn’s breath caught, her pupils dilating.
“She tried to kill me,” I said. “Turned out she was a spy the whole time. Featheridge family, who mainly operate on the south side. She’d been seducing me for insider Blackbird information for months, and once I’d served my purpose, she tried to kill me in my sleep and get out.
If I hadn’t worn a thick bra to bed that night, I’d have been dead.
Took most of the force out of the knife.
She hadn’t been expecting it. But I was still out of action for two months.
Two months of sitting there doing nothing but thinking about how stupid I was.
How useless I’d proven myself to be yet again. ”
“Oh my God, Petra,” she whispered. “That’s horrible.”
“Then I had my first big job coming back from that. My chance finally to prove I wasn’t just the idiot who’d fallen for a pretty face and lost confidential intel to the oldest trick in the book.
I’d never wanted to do any job as badly I wanted to do that one.
And then in the last minute, Vera stepped in to do it instead, and they just put their hands up and let her.
” I shook my head, dropping back into my seat, kicking my feet up on the table.
“So I decided that from that point forward, every time I saw her stupid smug face, I’d try to punch it.
I never was able to recover, institutionally, from that. ”
“I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to… have to recover from the shame of falling in love with someone.”
“I didn’t. I fell in love with the image someone was putting on.
Someone doing shadow puppets on the wall, and I mistook the shadows for my wife.
I’m stupid and I’ve accepted that. So I get it.
But even so… she just pisses me off,” I muttered.
“Vera, I mean. But I still want her and Elaine to be happy. To stop doing this bullshit.”
“Me too,” she sighed. “But I guess it’s hard to come back from… something like that. You’ve never been in love since then?”
“Ha. Nah. Not really my speed. Not saying I’d go Vera Farkas on the situation and bury myself to avoid it if I fell for someone, but I like just having a good time. I’m a free spirit. Can’t be pinned down. People get weird about the scar, though.”
“Does it hurt?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. People just think it looks scary.”
She blushed a little. “I don’t think it’s scary… I think it’s beautiful.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What, you got a thing for girls with scars?”
“Well—no—I mean—” She blushed harder, shaking her head. “I just thought it looked a little like a rose. I almost wanted to draw it, when I saw it. But that’s—that’s a really weird thing to say.”
She was kind of cute, now that I thought about it. And I knew she couldn’t kill me if she tried. I wasn’t going there, though. But that didn’t stop me from tugging on the edge of my bra and saying, “What, telling me to take this off so you can draw me?”
“No—Petra!”
“Like one of your French girls?”
“Oh my god. Forget it! I’m never drawing you again.” She folded her arms, looking away. “No, worse. I’ll draw you looking scrawny, with tiny little stick-figure arms.”
“Ah. I beg mercy. My pride couldn’t take it.”
A knock came from the door, and I looked up at where Jenna poked her head in. “Hello, dears,” she said, her voice soft with worry. “Do you know where Elaine is?”
Caitlyn and I exchanged glances. “Elaine?” I said. “I think she’s in her room.”
“She’s not responding, if she is.”
Slowly, I stood up, my chest clenching. “Caitlyn, check the cameras around the place. I’m going to go force the door open and find out.”
I had a bad feeling about this.