11. Mary
Mary
Six weeks after getting the results that changed my life, I was sitting in the grass in Surrey with a wooden dinosaur in one hand, a plastic teacup in the other, and the dawning suspicion that motherhood was mostly being given objects by small people with no explanation.
Mac placed a blue block on my knee.
“That’s for the castle,” he said.
“Naturally.”
“Not that castle.” He pointed to the flower bed, where Mila was attempting to bury a wooden knight with the solemn focus of someone involved in serious land management. “The other one.”
“Ah,” I said. “The invisible castle.”
Mac looked at me with the same expression his mother gave when someone had said something foolish and she was deciding whether education was worth the effort.
“It’s not invisible,” he said. “It’s there.”
He pointed at a patch of grass which I looked at.
“Of course,” I said. “How embarrassing for me.”
Mac nodded, satisfied by my growth as a person, and ran toward Mila.
Mila immediately held up both hands. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Mac said.
“No.”
“It’s my knight.”
“No.”
I leaned back on one hand and watched the negotiation collapse before it had properly begun. Children had a beautiful purity to their politics. No manifestos. No committee. Just direct refusal and an alarming willingness to play in damp soil.
The garden behind Maeve’s Surrey house looked like something I’d have resented on principle if I hadn’t been too tired.
Wide lawn, old brick walls, climbing roses, beds full of lavender and glossy green shrubs, a stone path leading toward the orchard, and enough security discreetly tucked into the landscape to remind a person that cozy did not mean unguarded.
The late afternoon air smelled of cut grass, warm stone, and whatever expensive candle Maeve had burning inside because my sister had become a woman of choices, a woman who owned seasonal candles and a Russian security team.
I was happy for her, truly and mostly, which was enough to make the small, mean ache under my ribs feel guilty three times an hour instead of constantly.
Mac ran back and pressed a toy car into my palm.
“Hold this.”
“Am I parking it?”
“No. It’s hiding.”
“From who?”
He looked over his shoulder at Mila, who was now wearing the wooden knight’s helmet on one finger. “Everyone.”
“Relatable,” I said, and tucked the car under the edge of my cardigan. The nice, soft, long one I stole from Maeve.
“Do you have a house?” Mac asked.
“Not at the moment.”
“Where do you sleep?” Three years old, a wooden knight in one fist, and straight to the only question that mattered.
“Upstairs in your home,” I said. “For now.”
“Good.” He appeared to consider the matter closed, and went back to the burial.
My own child would do this one day. Put sticky hands on my face, and decide that grass was a castle and adults were furniture.
He or she would look at me as though I knew how the world worked, which was unfair, because I’d recently discovered I didn’t know how my own life worked.
Obviously, I’d have no secret security nor acres of land.
I pressed my hand low over my stomach.
No bump yet, not properly. Nothing a stranger would notice. There was a softness that I noticed because it belonged to me, because I was the one brushing my teeth with one hand braced on the sink every morning, because I was the one crying over the stupidest things.
I was going to be a single mother. I could do it. Maeve had been prepared to do it.
She’d built a life around Mac before he was born, frightened, alone, and hunted by a man who should have been given a prison sentence.
Her pack had found her before she gave birth, but the fierce part had already been there.
Maeve had loved her son hard enough that the whole world had eventually been forced to rearrange itself around them.
I could probably do it too.
That was the part nobody put on inspirational mugs. With enough money, nausea medication, online classes, and the occasional private breakdown in a shower, I could become someone’s mother without ruining either of us.
Mac collapsed dramatically beside me, one arm across his forehead.
“I died.”
“Very inconsiderate.”
“You have to be sad.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
I patted his knee. “What a loss. History will limp onward.”
He opened one eye. “That’s not sad. You’re weird.”
“It’s sad in Ireland.”
Mila toddled over and dropped a fistful of grass onto his chest.
“Fowers,” she announced.
Mac sat up, delighted. “I’m alive.”
“A miracle,” I said, clapping.
Mila laughed.
“Mary.” Maeve’s voice came from the patio.
I looked up.
My sister stood beside the stone steps with a mug in one hand and Mila’s tiny pink cardigan in the other.
Maeve looked annoyingly good. Black hair loose around her shoulders, her green eyes bright, shiny pink lips, and her small body wrapped in a cream sweater that probably cost more than my first semester textbooks.
She had a softness to her now that still surprised me sometimes.
Not weakness, though. Maeve would rather eat glass.
But safety looked good on her. It had settled into her bones and made a home there.
Behind her, through the open doors, I could hear Ivan laughing at something inside. Artem’s voice followed, low and dry. Somewhere deeper in the house, a dog barked. Fergus, presumably.
He was a dog that had done well. He had upgraded from living on the streets, to chomping on cheap slippers to enjoying sneaky treats. And he relished his new kingdom.
Maeve came down the steps and sat beside me on the grass, carefully avoiding a patch of soil Mila had recently attempted to redistribute.
“Mac,” she said, “take Mila inside while I talk to your aunt.”
“I’m already talking to her.”
“I want to talk about serious things.”
“I just died. That’s serious.”
Maeve glanced at me.
“Fowers. Live,” Mila added.
“Yes. Her flowers brought him back from the abyss.”
“I wasn’t dead really.” Mac retrieved the hidden car from under my cardigan and took Mila’s hand. “I’m going to tell Daddy you said we can have ice cream.”
Mila grinned. “Ohh.”
I took Maeve’s silence to mean her need to talk to me outweighed her need to stop her children raiding the freezer.
Maeve waited until they were far enough away not to listen. “You should try to find them.”
No lead-in, no gentle transition. Just my sister being my sister.
I stared at the lawn. “Good afternoon to you too.”
“It’s a good afternoon. You’ve been pretending to enjoy a children’s coup for twenty minutes.”
“I’ve been enjoying it.”
“You’ve been touching your stomach every time Mac says something adorable.”
“That’s because Mac is emotionally manipulative.”
“He’s three.”
“Exactly. Untapped potential.”
Maeve nudged my shoulder with hers. “Mary.”
I sighed. “I don’t know their last names.”
Maeve stopped dead. Then her head turned slowly. “You don’t know their last names.”
“I was busy.”
“Busy.”
“In heat.”
“Mary.” Her voice dropped low.
“Oh, don’t Mary me in that tone. You once hid a pregnancy from three Russian alphas while running a coffee shop and harboring a dog with a footwear addiction.”
Maeve’s mouth pressed flat. “That’s different.”
“It always is when it’s your scandal.”
She looked away, which meant the arrow had landed. Immediately, I felt awful, which was rude because I’d been enjoying being correct. “Sorry,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Not entirely.” I picked at the grass beside my knee. “I know their first names. Hudson and Lincoln. They were English and in Boston for work.”
“Do they know you’re pregnant?”
I glanced at the sky. “No.”
“Do they know your actual name?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s something.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Not such a triumph considering I was living in Boston and meant to say Marli.”
Maeve watched me for a moment. “But they were English and in Boston?”
I blew out a breath. “Yes. How many times, Maeve?”
“As many as it takes until I understand how you managed to get pregnant by two men whose surnames you didn’t collect.”
“Again, I was deep in heat. You know, when omegas think about nothing but knots and—”
“You still had a language in common and a mouth you’re not scared to use,” she interrupted me mid speech.
“My mouth was busy with other things.”
“Mary!”
I grinned.
“What are you going to do about your studies?”
“I’m finishing online.”
“Can you?”
“Yes. I already arranged it. My advisor thinks I’m recovering from a medical issue and need to be closer to my family. They’re giving me a little time.”
“That’s not entirely untrue.”
“Exactly. I’ve become honest through technicality.”
Maeve leaned back on her hands and looked back at the house. Mac and Mila hadn’t made it inside, because Mac had discovered a stick and was explaining how to use it as a weapon to Mila.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she said.
My throat tightened.
That was the problem with Maeve. She could argue like a solicitor with a grudge, but then she’d say something plain and kind and ruin my ability to be evasive.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I’m in a fortified Surrey house surrounded by people who could make your mafia ex disappear. I’ve gathered the context clues.”
“He’s not dead yet, and that’s not what I mean.”
“I know. But they did dig the grave, so the opportunity is still there.”
“When I was where you are,” Maeve said, ignoring me. “I had a coffee shop, a dog with a shoe problem, and a plan made almost entirely of spite.”
“It worked.”
“It nearly didn’t. I wasn’t brave, Mary. I was cornered, and people call that brave afterward because it makes a tidier story.”
I pulled up a blade of grass and split it down the middle.
“You’re not cornered,” she said. “That’s the difference between us. You have a choice, and you’re carrying it about like a life sentence.”
We sat with that for a while.
The garden moved around us. Leaves shifted in the breeze. Mila squealed when Mac waved the stick too close to her shoe. A guard walked along the far wall, discreet as a shadow and twice as observant.
“They should know,” Maeve said.
“I know that too.”
“Then why haven’t you told them?”
Because they might be kind.