Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
I knew my mother wanted to talk, though I wasn't exactly sure about what. But these talks usually ended up with fighting, reaching an impasse, and her not giving any leeway. I gripped the back of the chair, my fingers tentatively digging into the hardwood. What I really should have done—and it did cross my mind—was walk out of there. At least, that's what I thought right then.
In the past, when she said she wanted to talk, it was usually because she, too, was tired of fighting, and I think that was all we'd done leading up to that moment. I know I didn’t always help, but I was at that age. I guess it didn’t matter.
I let out a sigh. I also knew that if we talked, it was more about her trying to persuade me to come around to whatever she wanted. The bags on the sofa near her told me exactly what the topic was—moving. Not a talk as such, but more her reasoning for it.
"Please, sit," she said, offering the chair out to me.
I hesitated and watched her. Sometimes, there was this weird thing that happened. I'd see her, my mother—not the barrier she was in my life, or at least the barrier I thought she was, and not the woman who told me what to do, but my mother, my mum. There was something in the way she was looking at me.
She looked young, vulnerable. I'm not actually sure if that’s how she looked, or if I was pulling emotions from her without meaning to. I was already fighting with everything from Tia, and then to come into this... Yeah, my panther and my head were all over the place.
But she did look different. Funny, though, I didn’t actually know how old she was. I guessed and figured. I was seventeen, so she had to be almost forty. It was hard with shifters anyway. We rarely looked our ages once we reached adulthood. It was like age slowed down, but I think that had something to do with our effective healing times. The few times in my life I’d asked how old she was, she’d told me, "Old enough to be your mother," and that’s all I needed to know.
She liked to keep her life separate from me, but that never bothered me either. I guess kids are selfish, and a little on the narcissistic side of things. Life is about us. What we want, what we think. Sure, we have our parents, but as long as we're safe and out of harm, with food and shelter, the other stuff is just ... stuff.
"Are we moving again?" I asked when I finally did speak to her. "Is that what you're going to tell me? That we're moving." I'm sure she didn’t appreciate the tone I used, and it wasn’t actually on purpose. It was hard to keep the panther from my voice when he had his own shit going on.
"I'd like to talk about it, if that’s okay." I could hear the caution in her tone. Maybe she sensed what had been in mine.
"I don’t want to move. I like it here." In my head, I could see Tia, her walking away, and I know she’d told me to go, but I could be here, I could talk to her, and maybe we could figure it out. We’d been good together, and I didn’t know what had happened, who had hurt her, or what had gone down after the police took me, but I did want to find out, and I wanted to talk about it. I couldn’t do that if my mother moved us. "I have my job and college." They were my bargaining chips.
"But you could have those any—" Maybe she caught what she was going to say, because she caught herself and cut off. She splayed her fingers on the table. "It's just talking. And there are other things I want to talk about too. I feel like we're always fighting these days. There’s so much tension between us and I don’t like it. You’re my son, Raven. The one person in my life I do everything for. And I’m not saying that because it was a sacrifice. It wasn’t. These were my choices, and I chose you." She paused. "I hate fighting with you. It doesn’t feel good inside. I know you're pretty much an adult now, and can make all your own decisions, and you know, I knew these kinds of days would come and it’s hard to accept." She smiled a little. "As cliché as it is, you’re my baby. You might be ten times as big as me now, but you're still that little boy who used to climb on my knee and read with me."
I gave her my own smile. "I’d break your knees now if I tried to sit on them."
"And probably crush me too."
See, this was new. My mother’s talks were her telling me what to do. She’d say we’d talk, and I’d voice my opinions, but in the end, we always did what she needed and that was fine. She was right about what she was going to say about work and college. I could do them anywhere, but I didn’t want to. This home was the longest time we’d stayed anywhere.
"Can you tell me why you want us to move? I never understand it and you never tell me. This was just some silly scrap with some idiot humans who wanted to flex their muscles and I was their target. It happens because of my size. They want to take me down and show me who is boss. I can’t hide every time that happens, or run off."
She leant back in her seat, watching me. I wasn't used to this version of her. I searched in my head, letting my walls down a little to push out. And it wasn’t anger like usual, it didn’t have that bite to it. Before I could say anything, she pushed her chair back and got up from her seat. She went over to the cabinet that was over the sink, and took out a bottle of whiskey. I think it was the Scottish in her that had her favour that drink, though her accent had dimmed over the years. Mine was only a hint of it, unless me and my mother were shouting.
She took out a glass, poured herself some, turned and leant her back to the counter as she sipped. "You know I was only fourteen when you were born?" she said then took another swig.
I wasn't sure how I felt about that. "Fourteen?" The number didn’t really register. "That’s ... you were just a kid." I frowned because I couldn’t even imagine it and with not knowing her age, I’d have never guessed it. "I didn’t know. I thought ... that means you're only thirty-one?"
She nodded and sort of smiled, but it was a shy sort of smile, not an ah-ha, you didn’t know, did you, thing.
"I don’t know what to say about that. It seems so ..."
"Hard is what it was. I was fourteen going on fifty and I thought I had the whole world figured out. We do at that age. All of us. Me, you, we all think we're so grown up." She held up her hand as if I was going to speak, which I wasn’t. "I don’t mean that as a dig at you. I’m generalising, but I remember being your age and thinking I had everything sussed. I was so grown up and what the hell did everyone else know?" She laughed. "What the hell did I know? I know you won’t believe me now. I'm an adult and we say these things all the time, but then one day, you grow up and you remember and realise all the adults that told us we were still kids, were right. You'll think back to today, and realise, you didn’t know as much as you think you do, right now. And I'm not patronising you. It’s just life and how it is."
She took another drink, pausing and not looking at me as she did.
"How come you never told me your age before? I asked many times and you shrugged me off."
"I don’t know." She was shaking her head as she spoke. "I just ... I think I just wanted to focus on you all the time, and if you knew, then it’d switch to me and it's never been about me."
"But your life has to be about you, right? Or what is the point?"
She took another drink, stared into the glass as if the answers might be in there. "Maybe. I guess I never really thought about my life before. It's just stuff, facts. They don’t mean anything."
"Maybe they mean everything, but even if they don't, it's nice to know. You know everything about me and I know very little about you."
"Most of it you’ve been around for, that’s why. You know my parents died when I was a child?"
"I do know that. I don’t know if you told me, or I guessed." Or I just knew. Of course, I never said that part. I don’t think she knew I could feel what others felt. It was something I never talked about. And maybe that was why I wasn't mad she’d kept herself secret. I had my own things and that wasn’t even including Tia in that mix. "Will you tell me what happened to them?"
She ran her fingers around the edge of her glass. I thought about sitting down on the chair I was still holding, but that felt wrong to move. Like I’d maybe tip the gauge the other way and make her clam up. She never talked about herself. Not once. I couldn’t even say what her favourite colour was.
"My parents died when we were kids." When I frowned, she said. "Me and my brother, Christian. I know. You didn’t know about him either. But, we were young. Our parents didn’t die together. It wasn’t some tragic car accident or anything like that. Maybe it’d been easier if it was. Our mother died when I was two. Christian would have been, three maybe four. There's eighteen months between us, and I don’t know so much the dates. Just that I was two."
"That's very young to lose your mother."
"Aye. I don’t really remember her. Maybe the odd flash here and there. Our father never talked about her, not that he was around to actually talk. He worked a lot. We didn’t get to see him that much. He’d be gone days, weeks sometimes." She drained her drink, turned to fill it again. I didn’t speak that time either. I let her have the silence. "We lived in Inverness in the pack lands. Our father was one of the Alpha's enforcers. A strong man, mean, though. Not to us. He was strict, but he didn’t beat us or anything. We just knew our places." She met my gaze. "Maybe that's where I get my harshness from. I don’t mean to, you know. I just see where you’re going wrong." She sighed. "Anyway. I don’t know what our father did, or what caused it, but he got kicked, not just off the job, but out of the pack and fast. He packed us up in the middle of the night, and dragged us out of there."
"He was afraid of something?"
"Aye. I don’t know what and I never got to find out. I was nine by this time. Christian was eleven. He didn’t want to leave. Kicked up a right fuss, and someone heard him. I don’t know, maybe they raised an alarm or something. The alpha came with some of his men and they killed our father. Right there in front of us."
And I felt it. As she said it, as she reached the climax of her memory, I felt her heart hammer, I felt the little girl she’d been at the time and the utter devastation in her world. I saw it. I felt like I saw it. Like a movie in my head that wasn’t mine. I had to swallow down hard and push it all away before her memories became mine and engulfed me. It was a wave of darkness going through me, seeping into my soul. Even my panther felt it, and he let out a slight whimper, his claws extending.
"I'm sorry." But it sounded so pathetic to say.
She nodded and shrugged at me. "It was a long time ago now. Christian and I ran that night. I don’t even know how, or why, or where we went. When they killed our father, Christian grabbed me, and we left, never looking back."
"You were two children living on the streets?"
"For a little while, maybe. We managed to come across this group. There were six of them. Like strays, I think. They found us, took us in with them and we travelled. Moved around a lot and kept our heads low."
I did sit down then. I wasn’t sure when I’d actually done it, other than I was listening to her, feeling what she felt and trying to imagine it all.
My mother finished her drink and she didn’t refill it. She put the bottle away, put her glass in the sink and came over to me. "I'm telling you this so you know things, but also so you know, I understand. I know how hard it is to move from place to place, to leave your things and never feel like you have a home or roots. There are few panthers as it is, without us taking ourselves away."
"If you know how it feels, then let us stay. Don’t move us again."
Her eyes were so bright as she looked at me. I swear, I could see her panther roaming behind those eyes. "I've been running my whole life," she said. "I'm not sure I know how to do anything else."
I kept myself quiet for a moment. Part of me felt like this was walking on a tightrope. Maybe it was just me. I wasn’t getting anything off her that’d suggest that, but I had seen my mother get mad, seen her flip out. But what I was getting off her was so different. It threw me, I guess. "You’re running from the men who killed your father? Is that why we move so much?"
She put her head down. She was then sitting on the chair opposite me, but we’d twisted so we were facing each other and there wasn't a table between us. She had her hands clasped. It took her a minute to raise her gaze back to mine. "I'm running from my brother," she said. "From Christian."
"Why?"
"You know, I always knew one day I’d have to tell you all these things. It was great when you were little. I didn’t have to worry. You were quite happy when you asked where you came from, and I told you that you were hatched—you accepted that. I miss those days." She sucked in a long, deep breath and pushed back. "Because he thinks things should be one way, and I want them another."
"Does he know about me?"
She laughed and got up. I thought she was going back for her drink, but she didn't. Instead, she grabbed the bag off the sofa and plunked it onto the table. But she didn’t do anything with it, just sort of held onto it. "Aye. He knows about you. I was only a kid and he was the one who was there for me."
"Not my father?"
"No, your father was there too, but he ... he was much older than me and it was hard for him."
"How old?"
She smiled at that and blew out a breath. "He was thirty. You get your height and dark hair from him. He had it styled like you do, too. Sometimes, when I look at you, or when I see you, I think it’s him." She paused again. "Can we talk about him another time? It has been a lot, and I've talked. I want to ask you something and I don’t want you to lie to me. Would that be okay?"
It was my turn to pause and to take a breath because she was asking that, I was sure it was maybe something I didn’t want to answer. "Okay," I said, cautiously.
"How much trouble are you in with the humans?"