Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
We made it back to Celia’s house, and I handed her the letter written for her and then attempted to leave the car to give her peace, but she stayed me with her hand.
“Read it with me? But fair warning, I’m going to be a sobbing mess,” Celia said.
I nodded. I was actually dying to know what my mother’s letter to Celia would say. How it might differ from mine.
Celia caressed the words on the front of the envelope as if lost in a distant memory. Taking a deep breath, she tore it open gently, unfolding the letter and holding it out for both of us to read.
Cel,
You know how much my mom broke me, how much she made me feel like I didn’t have any family, that I was unlovable.
And then you became my family. You are my sister, my best friend, my mother, my everything.
Any good thing left inside me is alive because you nourished it when my mother beat it down. I need you to know that.
The deep admission shocked me, and I peered at Celia to see that tears were streaming down her face. An unbridled rage rose up inside me at Kitty. I thought they had a falling-out, a few fights, but this sounded much worse than I ever could have imagined. I continued reading.
I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about why I ran away. I hope when you think back on memories of me, they are all good, and this one bad thing I did doesn’t stain me in your heart forever. But if you can’t forgive me for leaving, I understand. I’ll take the consequences of my actions.
I likely will never see you again, a thought that causes me unmentionable torment. I hope you grow up to be a badass hunter and that you and Derek have four kids just like you wanted.
I love you so much,
Molls
Celia sat there in silence, tears streaming down her face as she looked at the windshield of the car. My mom didn’t say anything about me or being pregnant with me. She also didn’t mention a dark secret that needed to be figured out. Our letters in fact could not be more different.
“You said my mom went missing and then was declared dead.” My voice was crackly in the old BMW, the sound shattering the morose silence.
Celia sighed. “She ran away twenty years ago. We were twenty-four. Derek and I had just married. She was my maid of honor.” She smiled at the memory, but then her face darkened.
“So why would she run away? It sounds like everything was going great,” I asked.
Celia peered at me with a small smile. “For me. Everything was going great for me . For Molly… She had a rough childhood. Kitty was…controlling, abusive, unloving. Robert caught Kitty cheating and divorced her when Molly was twelve, and then he died when she was fourteen. Cutting Kitty out of the will and leaving everything to Molly made Kitty even worse. Molly moved in with me and my family when she was sixteen and the courts let her choose. She paid her mother a heavy monthly salary from the trust fund just to keep her happy and off her back.”
“Jeez. What kind of mother acts like that?”
Celia met my gaze. “One that never wanted to be a mother in the first place. One who sees their child as competition. Someone who is sick in the head.” There was an angry growl in her voice.
I nodded. Kitty was awful. Got it.
“But that wasn’t what broke Molly. She was used to Kitty’s crap. It was Donovan that made my best friend unrecognizable.” Celia stroked the wheel of the BMW, lost in thought again.
I perked up at that. “Donovan?”
“Molly and Don had known each other since forever. Everyone does here. It’s a small town, small school, but senior year of high school, I noticed him looking at her differently.”
Oh, a love story. I leaned in, listening intently.
“Donovan watched Molly date a few guys in high school and our first year at the academy. He was always in the friend zone, but it was our second year when she finally noticed something different about him .” She grinned, and I found myself smiling too.
“Did they fall in love?” I asked.
Celia rolled her eyes. “Girl, you have no idea. Derek should have taken romance classes from Donovan. He’d leave her flowers in the library when he knew she was going to study. He wrote poems and taped them to our dorm window. He’d scream he loved her across the practice quad for everyone to hear.”
I was grinning. “I love that.”
“We all graduated together. We would go on double dates all the time, and we were in the same unit. Your mom was my arcanist, Donovan was the sentinel, and Derek was my tracker. We were all inseparable.”
I had a feeling this was going somewhere bad.
“What happened?” I asked.
She’d said that Donovan ruined my mom.
“By age twenty-three, we were talking about marriage and kids and having houses right next to each other. Donovan proposed to your mother three times, but she kept saying not yet. I think on some level, Kitty made her feel unlovable. It didn’t deter him.
A week after my wedding, Don proposed and Molls finally said yes, regardless of what Kitty thought of his family.
” She gripped the wheel tightly then, her knuckle skin going taut.
They were engaged. My heart began to pick up speed in my chest.
“What happened?” I braced myself, knowing it would be bad. Did he beat her? Did he cheat? Did he die?
“A week after their engagement party, we were all in the mortal realm out on a raid. Donovan…was turned by a sire.”
I gasped. Silence filled the car and left behind a ringing in my ears.
No.
No, my poor mother.
“She lost him,” I said to the empty car.
Celia nodded. “She had always told me she’d never marry.
She never trusted marriage after seeing Kitty and her father.
But Donovan was perfect for her, and eventually his steadfast loyalty won her over.
Something died in her that day. Her zest for life, her light.
The spark that made my bestie my bestie was gone.
I thought it was depression and that it would subside, but she got distant.
Started going to the mortal realm for a few days at a time without a team. I think she was searching for him.”
Chills rushed up my arms. “Why?”
Celia peered at me, clearing her throat. “We all sort of have a code here…hunter to hunter. If you see one of us get turned, we want you to take us out rather than have us live like that.”
Take us out… Kill them?
She went to kill Donovan?
“Life here became too happy for her. She said she felt bad being around me and Derek as newlyweds all the time and bringing us down. Which she obviously wasn’t. Then one night, she just left. No note, no packed bag, just gone.” Celia shook her head.
My mind spun as I did the math. And then a year later, she got pregnant with me.
“Can a vampire and a hunter have a baby together?” I asked suddenly.
Celia chuckled. “No. Donovan can’t be your father. Besides, he would have come up in the hunter DNA database.”
Whew. There went that theory.
So… Who was my dad?
“I heard a rumor she went to Europe for a bit. Then I heard she’d been spotted in the northern area of Veil Haven where Shadows Hallow Academy is.
Then she just fell off the map. No one had seen her or heard from her, and Kitty had her declared legally dead.
It wasn’t until…well, now that I think of it, a few days after your birth that I found her dead in Spokane. ”
Spokane…a few days after my birth.
“Wow.” I sat back in the car and blew air through my teeth.
Celia turned to me. “Did she leave you a note? Did she know she was pregnant? How did she have a will?” She was speaking to me but also to herself.
I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to read that letter to her. I knew I could trust her with 99 percent of it, but this one thing Molly had asked me to hide for whatever reason.
“No note.” I shrugged.
Celia nodded, then turned to face me. “If you want to get some of that money and say goodbye to your friend, I got permission to take a two p.m. portal to the mortal realm with you today.”
I perked up. “See Rae? You did?”
She inclined her head. “But you’ll have to see her to say goodbye. Whatever cover story you want. Scholarship to college in Australia, I don’t care. You can’t be checking in with her every week. This is goodbye.”
I nodded in understanding. Then a thought came to me. “Can we get the money first?”
Celia grinned. “I’d do the same.”
I chuckled. It wasn’t what she thought. I had something different in mind.