Chapter 2 #2
I was so angry I couldn't speak. How did she get that picture?
Later, I would go check the silo for cameras, but she'd gotten them out. That was her only chance to get us like that. Inside the silo doin' what we do.
And she knew it.
She burned her bridge to give me that photo.
Why? I never knew.
"You look angry," ghost-Eleanor says now, watching me remember. "You were angry then, too."
"You invaded something private," I say, the words coming out rough. "Something that wasn't yours to see."
Eleanor smiles, that same cold smile I remember. "Nothing is private, Legion. Not in this world. Not with my daughter."
I stare at Eleanor's ghost, my chest rising and falling too fast. Every memory of her, every secret exchange between us, pulses through my mind.
"You had no right," I tell her. "No fucking right to any of it."
Eleanor tilts her head, studying me like I'm something behind glass. Just like she always did. "To what, exactly?"
"To photograph us in the silo. To follow me. To make me—" I stop, the words tangling in my mouth.
"Make you what?" Her smile spreads slow, knowing. "Love me?"
The accusation hangs between us. I want to deny it, but the truth is worse than whatever she thinks. She was there when no one else was. She showed up. My own mother was drowning in her own mind half the time, and when she wasn't, she was working double shifts or dealing with Deacon's bullshit.
"You were a predator," I say finally. "You hunted me."
"And you let me catch you." Her voice stays even. "Over and over again."
I shake my head, but the denial feels hollow. "I was a kid."
"You were never just a kid, Legion. You were always more." She steps closer, and I can almost smell her perfume—something expensive, with notes of roses. "You came to me when I called. You posed when I asked. You took the money I offered."
"I needed that money."
"Did you need the attention, too?" She arches an eyebrow. "The praise? The way I looked at you like you were worth something?"
This question hits. I did need the attention. Craved it, even. In a world where I was invisible at best and a problem at worst, Eleanor saw me.
Like… really saw me. In a way no one else ever did, through the lens of a camera.
"You made me love you," I say, the words burning my throat.
She laughs, the sound echoing in the empty silo. "I didn't make you do anything, Legion. You just knew it was real. So you figured… why not? Why not do more than tolerate the woman who really raised you. Why not love her back."
The worst part is, she's right. I knew what she wanted, what she was doing. And I let her do it. Because she was there. Because she gave a damn when no one else did.
"You know why I did it. You've known for fourteen years, Legion."
Eleanor's ghost stands before me in this strange memory-silo, her smile cold and knowing. She waits for me to speak, like she always did—setting the trap, then watching me step into it.
"You made a deal with me," she says finally. "When you were seventeen."
I didn't want to remember this. Any of it. But the memory rises anyway, thick and choking.
Eleanor found me at work one day. She waited in her Range Rover across from the garage, engine running. I pretended not to see her at first. But she didn't leave. Just sat there, patient as death.
When my shift ended, I walked over. Not because I wanted to. Because I knew she wouldn't go away until I did.
"Get in," she said.
I got in. The car smelled like her—expensive perfume and leather. She drove us to a lookout point outside town. No one around for miles. Just us and the Montana sky.
"I want to tell you about your father," she said.
I stared straight ahead, heart pounding. "I don't have a father."
She laughed. "Everyone has a father, Legion."
"Not me."
"His name was Matthias," she said, ignoring my denial. "Matthias Kane. He came through Drybone on a motorcycle when I was twenty-three."
I didn't look at her. Didn't want to give her the satisfaction. But I listened. How could I not?
This woman had a piece of my history. Something that didn’t belong to her, but she had it nonetheless.
And she was gonna give it back to me.
"He stayed six months. Long enough to charm half the town. Long enough to make promises to your mama, marry her, and then leave her pregnant." Eleanor's voice softened. "Long enough for me to fall in love with him."
That got my attention. I turned to her, searching her face for lies. "Love with him?"
"I loved him more than anyone," she said. "Except maybe your mother."
I shake my head. Pushing these things away.
"I have proof." She reached into the back seat and found an envelope, then handed it to me.
I pulled the photo out slowly. Revealing a man on a motorcycle. He was tall, lean, with my exact jawline and blue eyes. His hair was longer than mine at the time, but the same dirty blond. He wore a leather jacket with patches I didn't recognize.
"That's not proof of anything," I said, but my voice shook.
"I'll tell you everything I know about him," Eleanor said. "Every detail. Every story. But I need something from you in return."
I scoffed.
Of course, she did. That’s how Eleanor Ashby worked. Quid pro quo.
But the photo was too tempting to say no. That’s why she dangled it in front of me like a carrot. It was bait. "What do you want?"
"Pose for me. Let me photograph you."
I handed the picture back. "No, thanks."
"You don't understand." Her voice hardened. "I'm offering you your history, Legion. The part of yourself you've never known."
I got out of the car then. Walked back to town in the dark. But the damage was done. She planted the seed.
Two days later, I found an envelope on my motorcycle seat outside the trailer. Inside was another photograph of my father. Younger this time. And a note: He loved thunderstorms. Would stand outside in them, face turned up to the rain.
I crumpled the note. Threw it away. But I remembered every word.
The next week, another envelope. Another photo. Another detail: He could play the guitar. Knew every Johnny Cash song by heart.
It went on like that for months. I never agreed to her deal. Never said yes. But whenever I saw her, I... stayed. I didn't run. I let her take her stupid pictures.
And in return, she fed me pieces of a man I never met.
"You were never paid," ghost-Eleanor says now, reading my thoughts. "Not for the photographs."
"No." The word tastes bitter. "Just information. Scraps about a man who left before I was born."
"You wanted to know him."
"I wanted to know where I came from." I look away from her, at the dust motes dancing in the silo light. "If I was like him."
"You are," she says softly. "In all the ways that matter."
I don't ask what she means. I don't want to know.
"I remember the first time I held you," Eleanor says, swayin’ the conversation into a new direction.
Her voice goes dreamy, lost in memory. "You were nine months old.
Your mother was in the drugstore, and she dropped her purse.
Everything spilled out—her wallet, keys, lipstick.
She was counting change to pay for medicine.
"You were crying," Eleanor continues. "Red-faced with fever. An ear infection, your mother said. I offered to hold you while she gathered her things. You stopped crying the moment I took you in my arms."
I close my eyes, not wanting to hear more. But she keeps going.
"I gave you back, of course. And I paid for the medicine before I left. But on my way out, I thought—he would be so easy to love. A child that wasn't mine, but that didn't matter."
"So you stalked me," I say, anger rising. "Took pictures of me from a distance."
"At first, yes." She doesn't deny it. "I kept my distance until you were older. But I watched you grow up, Legion. I saw you become the man you are."
"You're sick."
"I'm honest," she corrects. "More honest than you're being with yourself right now."
I shake my head, disgust churning in my stomach. "I never told Savannah about any of this. About you and me."
"No," Eleanor agrees. "You kept our relationship separate. Apart from what you had with my daughter."
"It wasn't a relationship, Eleanor."
"Wasn't it?" She raises an eyebrow. "You came when I called. You let me photograph you. You listened to my stories about your father."
"I never agreed to any of it," I insist. "I just... whenever I saw you, I stood still. That was all.”
And, technically, what I’m tellin’ her is the truth.
I stood still while she took her pictures.
There was no discussion. Not at that time.
She captured me in her camera and then I’d find something.
A note stuffed in my jacket pocket or attached to my motorcycle handlebars with a rubber band.
It went on like that for a whole year. The stories about him trickled out like that.
"You got what you wanted," Eleanor says. "And I got what I wanted."
I got what I wanted, all right.
An excuse. A way to justify this cravin’ I had for the outlaw life.
Eleanor's ghost moves closer to me. "The first time I saw you on that Honda Shadow, I thought he was back from the dead. You looked so much like him, it hurt to breathe, Legion."
I turn away from her, unable to bear the naked emotion in her eyes. This is what I never told Savannah.
How her mother loved a ghost, and saw him every time she looked at me.
Is this what's in store for Savannah if she and I stay with it. If we don't give up. If we make good on that pledge we said only with our eyes that first time we held hands.
Will I turn into my father, causing her to turn into Eleanor?
Or will she become something less?
Truth be told, it's the second one that scares me.
I don't want her to be something less.
I want her to be something more.