41. Rue #3
All the ice inside me simply… melts. The flood rises, rises, and swallows me.
I sink. Drift.
And then a voice envelops me. A current too strong to fight, it pulls me up and up.
“I’m sorry, Rue. I’m so, so sorry. You did everything you could. You were just a kid, and you fought so hard—you both did. Your parents failed Teddy, not you. It’s not your fault. He knows it. He loves you. He knows it’s not your fault.”
As I rise, I feel another current. Soft and warm and tickling.
Teddy.
“Are you ever going to tell me the end of the story?”
“There isn’t one, silly. All those jumps through space and time made Lucky St. James immortal. He’s somewhere out there right now.”
“But does he find it? His home?”
“I think so.”
“You think? What the heck, Rue!”
“I’m kidding! Stop tickling me!”
“Well?”
“Of course he finds his home.”
“I knew it. What’s it like?”
“What do you think it’s like?”
“Well, there has to be an ocean with white sand and a forest with big trees to climb. And there can’t be any of those poisonous plants that almost killed him on the alien-bug planet.”
“Obviously.”
“And there have to be people who love him.”
“There are. He has a big, beautiful family, and he tells them stories of his old world so the memories never die. He’s safe and loved and happy.”
“Forever?”
“Forever and ever, Teddybear.”
I’m almost there, but Teddy’s still with me. So close I see him.
He’s running down a hill covered in daffodils, his arms spread wide, a crown sitting askew on his short curls.
He looks back at me, his face alight with joy.
“Fly, Teddy, fly!”
And he does.
I surface with a gasp and crawl back to shore. Back to him.
“You’re almost there, Rue. Let it go.”
I don’t question how he knows.
“Mal and I decided not to go to the funeral my parents arranged. We had our own ceremony by this oak tree Teddy and I used to visit on our walk home from school. I braided him one last daffodil crown. She wrote him one last note. We buried them by the tree.
“My parents never really recovered—I honestly don’t know what was worse for my mother, Teddy dying or her belief that she’d failed her god. But either way, they acted like I was a ghost. I think we exchanged one sentence-worth of words over the next two years.”
“You stayed in the house?”
I glance up, catching the horror on his face before he masks it.
“Technically. I mostly slept at Ms. Lakin’s.
She offered to petition for guardianship of me, but I declined.
I guess… I wanted to hold on to the last place Teddy had been for as long as I could.
I threw myself into school, got my scholarship, and left the day of graduation.
I haven’t seen or spoken to my parents since that day. I’ve never regretted it. Not once.”
I pause for a breath, then finish it.
“Last year, a doctor asked me about family medical history. And it chewed on me. Not enough to call them, but enough to search up news from my hometown. Maybe it was a sixth sense telling me there was something I needed to know. And, um…” A humorless laugh leaves me.
“They’re dead. A hit-and-run a few years ago.
Their joint obituary said they’d been preceded in death by their two children.
Their daughters, Prudence and Theodora. Reading that…
it fucked me up, brought everything back.
All the anger and grief. I didn’t give a shit about them killing me in absentia—that was fitting. It was the injustice of it.
“Even in death, they’d tried to erase Teddy.
He was the brightest light in the world, and they snuffed him out simply because his light wasn’t the color they wanted it to be.
Instead of their deaths bringing closure, the news tore me open again.
The flashbacks, the nightmares, the guilt.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Ivy. I didn’t want to burden her; she’d already put me back together once.
I’ve… I’ve been trying to find my way since, but I’m so tired. So fucking tired.”
River’s breath warms my ear. “I know you are, and I know it’s hard to lean on people, to trust, but I’m here. You have me, Ivy, our entire family. We’d do anything for you.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know if I deserve a happy ending. Or maybe I just don’t want one without Teddy.”
“What do you think Teddy would say about that?”
I look up. River’s eyes are as wet as mine, but they’re calm. Golden pools of gentle conviction. I’m surprised again when my lips curve.
“He’d tell me to stop being a whiney wuss.”
He smiles softly. “Thought so. I bet Lucky St. James was tired at times too. Did he ever give up searching for a new home?”
My heart kicks my ribs, a forceful reminder that this is real. I’m not dreaming. I’m here. Safe in the arms of someone who sees me—a man with probable, implausible magic.
“No,” I whisper.
“And? Did he find it?”
I laugh as I sniff back more tears. “He did. He found a big beautiful family who loved him, and he… he shared stories of his old world so it wouldn’t be forgotten.”
River lifts my chin, teasing the tip of my nose with his.
“Welcome home, Rue and Teddy.”