Chapter Five #2
“I worry about you,” Marin said. “That’s why I’m here, to make sure you knew things are unstable and that you shouldn’t take any jobs that go through Alyssium, at least until we’re sure it’s safe.
” If the empire had truly fallen and the revolutionaries had already won, perhaps she was just being overcautious?
It felt too soon for better, but maybe it was. Did she dare hope?
She didn’t trust hope.
In her experience, things usually got worse, not better, especially when you trusted the wrong people. Ugh, she wished coming home didn’t remind her so much of Iovar. Was he going to color her view of everything forever?
Pa scooped the cut peaches into the bowl and mixed them so the sugar, cinnamon, and other ingredients clung to them.
“Bah,” he said. “Your mother won’t let us take any jobs beyond the nearest isles regardless.
” He waved a meaty hand westward. The nearest islands were all within an hour or two’s sail, and the seas around them were known to be calm, due to a stretch of barrier reefs.
“We both agreed,” Ma said calmly.
“You proposed,” he said. “I nodded.”
Marin’s mother considered that, then shrugged. “That’s worked well throughout our marriage.”
He grinned, leaned over, and planted a kiss on her cheek.
Ma laughed and swatted his arm lightly. Marin kept chopping peaches and didn’t fight to keep the smile off her face.
They’d nearly lost everything two years ago, but it hadn’t changed them.
She didn’t understand it, but she was grateful for it.
And they never once blamed me.
Instead, they’d rallied to help her escape.
Carrying the bowl of sugary peaches, Pa led the way inside, poured it into the ready-and-waiting pastry shell, and then slid the pie into the oven. Meanwhile, Ma poured iced peach tea into three jars and set them on a tray to carry back outside.
While the pie baked, they drank tea beneath the peach trees and watched the winged cats attempt to chase a seagull, who was having none of their nonsense.
As the afternoon wore on, Ma and Pa took turns gossiping about the neighbors—who had had a baby, who had painted their fence an alarming color, who had plans to dominate at the End-of-Harvest Festival with his pies …
which was Pa. Pa had plans to dominate. He’d perfected a pie crust with just enough vanilla to make the judges meow.
“Meow?” Marin asked.
“It’ll be good enough for a cat.”
“You shouldn’t be feeding the cats pie. Pa, are you feeding the cats pie?”
“Ooh! Have to check the oven!” He darted away without, she noticed, answering the question.
Ma turned to Marin with a serious look on her face, and Marin automatically braced herself.
Other than stopping to make a delivery before coming to Flicker—one single well-paid stop—she didn’t think she’d done anything that warranted that kind of expression, but who knew?
She wondered if it was Iovar, but she didn’t want to ruin the beautiful afternoon by saying his name out loud.
It felt like casting the worst kind of spell.
“What?” Marin said when the look went on a few seconds too long.
“You should come back for the End-of-Harvest Festival,” Ma said.
She held up her hand to stop Marin’s immediate protest. “It would mean a lot to your father, and I believe it’s time.
You’ve exiled yourself for long enough—what happened wasn’t your fault.
You were the victim. He was the snake in the grass. ”
Yeah, but Marin should have spotted the snake before it struck. I was the one who invited the snake into the house. Into my bed. She wasn’t here to argue, though. “I think it’s better if I—”
“It’s not,” Ma said. “You tried disappearing. You tried keeping your distance. Did it make you feel better? Are you happy sneaking into your own home like a criminal when you were the victim? What are you afraid of? So you may see him. So what? He can’t hurt you now.
He can’t hurt any of us. We’re done with him.
But we don’t want to be done with you. We want to see you more.
Your father and I … we’re getting older, and we won’t be here forever. ”
They were not old, and wow, she did not want to be having this conversation. “Ma, I can’t—”
“How about this: come back to celebrate with us. Just the family. You don’t have to see anyone else if you don’t want to. Watch the pie contest from the sidelines. Place a bet on the winged cat race under a false name. Wear a disguise. Whatever makes you comfortable. Just come.”
Before Marin could trot out the million excuses why this was a terrible idea, Pa emerged from the house, all smiles, holding the peach pie with two oven mitts. “Ta-da! Look at this perfection!”
Ma applauded, and Marin joined in.
He placed the pie on a kitchen towel on the table with a flourish. Steam curled out between the pastry lattice. Peach liquid bubbled around the edges, and it smelled like the most glorious dream of peach, cinnamon, and pastry.
Ma cut the slices and served them on her favorite mismatched dishes, the ones painted by her mother with little flowers on each. Marin’s plate had buttercups around the edges.
“You try it first,” Pa said.
Marin cut the tip of the pie with her fork and popped it in her mouth. It exploded on her tongue like sunshine at dawn, bright and sweet and cheery and … “Oh, there’s the vanilla!”
“And what does it make you say?” Pa pressed.
“Meow!”
“Excellent.” He beamed.
Ma leveled a look at her. “And?”
She couldn’t say no to them. How could she?
Yes, they were admittedly a bit much sometimes.
It was possible that her younger self had used the word “smothering” once or twice.
But they loved her unconditionally and wholeheartedly.
Even before Iovar, they had supported her dreams. When she was a chubby toddler drawn to the seashore, they’d taught her to swim.
When she’d spent hours at the harbor watching the boats, they’d taught her to sail.
Whenever she’d wax on for hours about her dream of being a sailor, the best sailor the Crescent Islands Empire had ever seen, and visit every island she could reach, they’d told her they believed in her, and she could do anything and be anyone she ever wanted.
They were, in short, the best parents anyone could ever wish for, and it was impossible to repay them for any of it.
She certainly couldn’t say no to them over what should be a simple request, not when they were looking at her with such naked wide-eyed hope in their eyes.
Wishing she knew how to disappoint them without disappointing them, Marin summoned up a smile she didn’t feel and said, “And I’m looking forward to watching you win at the End-of-Harvest Festival.” She managed not to wince after she said it.
Both her parents smiled at her as if she’d gifted them the sun and the moon. She supposed she had almost three weeks to figure out how she was going to manage that. A future problem, she thought as she ate another bite of pie.
“So, discover any new wonders out there on the big blue?” Pa asked.
As they ate the best pie in all the islands, she launched into a mostly true tale of one of her supply runs, to an island populated predominantly by penguins and one old man who insisted on knitting them all sweaters, and she tried not to think about any problems at all—present, future, or past.
No worrying about the revolution, about imperial retaliation, about Rijes Velk, about the statue and the gardener, about the sorcerer and her family’s debt, or any of it.
Still, in between bites and stories, for no particular reason that she could name …
she couldn’t help wondering if Dax had ever tasted peach pie.