28. Mary
Mary
By the second afternoon in Surrey, I had seven paintings around me and absolutely no evidence of emotional stability.
The room Maeve had given me smelled of turpentine, and not much else, but that was my fault.
My easel stood by the window where the light came.
Canvases leaned against the wall. One had the orchard half-finished.
Another was nothing but river light, which was unhelpful because I wasn’t in London and apparently my subconscious had become a traitor.
The others were messier. One was a flash of black coat, a hand on glass, violet under storm clouds, and a door I had painted three times.
I painted like something was chasing me, with fast strokes, too much color, and a desperate need to get the feeling out before it could take flight. Today, I stood in front of the canvas with my brush in my hand and waited until I knew where the next line belonged.
My body had calmed, which was also new.
The panic had gone. My heart still hurt if I pressed it, and I’d pressed it often enough.
I wanted them to bridge the distance with Damien more than anything else.
I didn’t want to be in the middle of that place.
But I painted slowly because it reminded me of Hudson and Lincoln’s silence when Damien claimed I’d set everything up.
I dipped the brush into a blue paint, added a little black and white, and then added a thin stroke to the sky.
“Well,” I told the babies, “your mother has become atmospheric. Very unfortunate for everyone.”
They didn’t answer.
“Strong silent types. Suspicious. Just like your fathers.”
The bedroom door opened with the stealth of a small person who thought stealth meant pushing something slowly while breathing loudly.
Mila waddled in.
She wore yellow leggings, one sock, and a blue sweater with a white rabbit on it. Her dark hair curled around her ears, and her cheeks were pink from either sleep or criminal activity. With Mila, it was best not to assume.
“Hello,” I said.
Mila looked at me, then at the paintings, then at the chair by the window.
Her mission became clear.
She crossed the room with the determined wobble of a person who had recently learned walking and was never crawling again. Then she climbed onto the chair by the window using both hands, one knee, and a noise of immense effort.
I set my brush down and moved closer. “Can I help?”
“No,” Mila said.
“Fair. Very modern of you.”
She hauled herself into the chair and sat there, pleased and breathless, looking out over the grounds as if she had conquered a minor nation.
“Comfortable?”
“Da.”
“Excellent. I agree.”
Mila pointed at the canvas.
“That’s a painting,” I said. “Or the start of one. Or a cry for help with a frame.”
She babbled back at me, serious and fluent in a language I didn’t speak. She had many words in her vocabulary; just today she chose to make some up.
I nodded. “Yes, I’ve considered adding more green. But then it becomes too obvious, doesn’t it?”
Mila slapped the arm of the chair and laughed.
“Exactly. Restraint. You’re very wise.”
Mac appeared in the doorway with a biscuit in one hand and a look of disappointment, which was strange for a boy of his age. “She asked what you’re painting.”
I looked at him. “No, she didn’t.”
“Did,” Mila said.
I stared at her, then at Mac. “Oh. You really do have superpowers, don’t you?”
Mac stepped into the room, crumbs on his sweater. “Not yet.”
“Mila does, apparently.”
He looked at his sister with the resigned air of someone who had suspected this for some time. “She knows things.”
Mila kicked one foot and looked smug.
“Can she close her eyes and tell me what Hudson and Lincoln are saying?”
Mac’s face changed. That was when my hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“That’s why I came up,” he said.
My chest went cold. “Why?”
Mac looked down at his biscuit. “They’re downstairs.”
For a second, the room disappeared. Not fully because Mila was still in the chair, humming to herself and smacking one palm against the window as if testing its strength. “Hudson and Lincoln?”
Mac nodded. “Daddy A said they could come in because Mama said you said the gates can open.”
I had said that. Last night, after Maeve sat on the end of my bed and asked if I wanted the gates kept closed forever, I had told her no. Not forever. I had said it because forever was too big a word to hand to fear.
Apparently, forever had arrived early and brought alphas.
“Are they...” My voice went odd, so I tried again. “Are they angry?”
Mac looked offended. “No.”
“No?” I repeated.
“They look sad.”
That was worse.
Mila babbled from the chair. She sounded like my grandmother when she’d been on the Jamaican Rum.
Mac nodded at her. “She says one looks like Daddy G when Fergus was sick.”
I closed my eyes. “Excellent. Thank you both for the devastating field report.”
Mac came closer. “Are you hiding?”
“No… Well a little,” I admitted.
“Mama says hiding is okay if bad people are coming. And then you should run to the safe room.”
“Your mama is wise.”
He nodded. “Are Hudson and Lincoln bad people? Do you want to go to the safe room?”
“No.” The answer came before fear could interfere.
Mac took a bite of biscuit. “Then why are you hiding?”
I looked at the paintings around the room. “Because sometimes good people can still hurt you.”
“Did they say sorry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why are you still up here?”
“Because I didn’t let them in.”
Mac considered that while Mila held out one hand toward him. He gave her the rest of the biscuit automatically, which she accepted as her due. Then he looked at me the way his mother does. “Mama says that’s when you tell them,” he said.
“Does she?”
“She tells Daddy G. He gets sad if she doesn’t.”
A great deal of adult wisdom sat inside the fact that Gregor, who looked as though he could uproot trees for sport, got sad when Maeve didn’t tell him things.
I sat on the edge of the bed. The babies shifted in my stomach.
It wasn’t a proper movement. Too early for dramatic kicks, according to every pregnancy article I had read at three in the morning.
But a flutter moved low inside me, or my body wanted me to think so because it was tired of my nonsense.
“What do you think?” I whispered to them.
Mila babbled.
“I was asking the babies, but thank you.”
Mac climbed onto the bed beside me. “Babies don’t talk when they’re inside you.”
“You made up for that when you came out.”
He grinned. “Mama said I’m a good talker.”
“As a compliment?”
“Yes, she said I could be a politician one day.”
“Mmm.”
My phone sat on the bedside table where I had left it face down. Hudson had called that morning. Lincoln had sent one message.
Hudson: We are here when you are ready.
I read it four times and then put the phone down like it was hot.
Now they were downstairs, not at the gates, forcing or demanding, but inside because I had said the gates could open.
The bruise in my chest shifted.
I thought of the half second and of Hudson’s face when Damien said disgusting.
Mac leaned against my arm. “Are you going downstairs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mama said not to ask you too many questions because you’re having feelings.”
I bit my lip and shook my head. “Your mama is very wise and also very rude.”
“Yes, she always says she is the wise one in the family.”
“And the most humble.”
Mila slid off the chair with alarming speed.
I jolted. “Careful.”
She landed on her bottom, blinked once, then laughed.
Mac laughed. “She does that.”
“Her approach to gravity is bold.”
Mila pushed her hands on the floor and stood before walking to one of the paintings. She patted the bottom corner before I could stop her. Her fingers came away with a faint smear of violet.
“Oh no.” She looked at her hand, then at me. Then like an artist signing a masterpiece, she pressed her purple fingers to the blank lower edge of the canvas.
Mac gasped. “Mila.”
I stared at the print, small and messy and perfect. And for some reason, that was what made me cry. The tears didn’t come loudly or dramatically. They simply slipped down while Mila stared at me as if adults were strange creatures.
Mac put his biscuit-free hand on my knee. “Should I get Mama?”
I wiped my cheek. “No.”
“Daddy G?”
“No.”
“Fergus?”
“Absolutely not. He’ll eat the evidence.”
Mac nodded. Sensible.
I stood and looked at the painting again.
The sky was unfinished, the door was still wrong, and the violet handprint sat at the bottom like a small, stubborn claim.
Maybe a painting didn’t need to be finished to be true, and maybe neither did I.
“I need to wash your sister’s hand,” I said.
Mila held it up proudly. “Kaka.”
“Yes, it is,” I said, my heart starting to beat too fast, “I think I need to go downstairs.”
Mac jumped up. “Should I tell them?”
“No.”
He paused. “No?”
I picked up Mila carefully, keeping her painted hand away from my sweater. “I think I should.”
Mac looked satisfied, as if I had finally reached the conclusion he and his superpowered sister had been politely herding me toward all along.
“Good,” he said.
Mila patted my cheek with her clean hand. “Ba,” she said.
“Yes,” I told her. “Exactly.”
I carried her to the bathroom, washed violet from her fingers, and tried not to think about the fact that Hudson and Lincoln were beneath my feet, waiting without forcing the door.
When I came back into the bedroom, the seven paintings looked different. They were still messy and honest, but they didn’t look like evidence of collapse anymore. They looked like proof I had been working my way back to myself.
I took a breath, smoothed my paint-stained sweater, and opened the bedroom door.
For the first time in days, I went to meet my alphas instead of running from them.