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“We came close more than once.” He kicked the grass, making a brown spot on the perfectly manicured lawn.
“Too much information.”
?
??I’m makin’ a point here. I wasn’t the one who put on the brakes. It was Rid. I figured she was slummin’ with me, like I was good enough to mess around with, and that’s it.” Link was pacing. “But now, when I think back on it, maybe I was wrong. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me.” Link had clearly put a lot of thought into this.
“I don’t know. She’s still a Dark Caster.”
Link shrugged. “Yeah, I know, but a guy’s gotta have a dream.”
I wanted to tell Link what was going on, that Ridley and Lena might already have taken off. I opened my mouth, then shut it without making a single sound. If Lena had put a Cast on me, I didn’t want to know.
I had only visited my mom’s grave once since the funeral, but it wasn’t on All Souls. I couldn’t face it that soon. I didn’t feel like she was actually here, hanging around the graveyard like Genevieve or the Greats. The only place I sensed her was in the archive or the study at our house. Those were the places she loved, the places I could imagine her spending her days wherever she was now.
But not here, not under the ground, where my dad was kneeling with his face in his hands. He’d been here for hours and it showed.
I cleared my throat so my dad would know I was there. It felt like I was eavesdropping on a private moment between them. He wiped his face and stood up. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay, I guess.” I didn’t know what I was feeling, but it wasn’t okay.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, staring down at the headstone. A delicate white flower lay on the grass beneath it. Confederate jasmine. I read the curving letters carved into the stone.
LILA EVERS WATE
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
SCIENTIAE CUSTOS
I repeated the last line. I’d noticed it the last time I was here, in the middle of July, a few weeks before my birthday. But I had come alone, and by the time I got home I was so numb from staring at my mother’s grave, I’d forgotten all about it. “Scientiae Custos.”
“It’s Latin. It means ‘Keeper of Knowledge.’ Marian suggested it. It’s fitting, don’t you think?” If he only knew.
I forced a smile. “Yeah. It sounds like her.”
My dad put his arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, the way he used to after my Little League team lost a game. “I really miss her. I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
I couldn’t say anything. My breath was caught in my throat, my chest so tight I thought I was going to pass out. My mom was dead. I would never see her again, no matter how many pages she flipped open in her books or how many messages she sent me.
“I know this has been really hard for you, Ethan. I wanted to say I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this year the way I should’ve been. I just—”
“Dad.” I could feel my eyes watering, but I didn’t want to cry. I wouldn’t give the town casserole factory that kind of satisfaction. So I cut him off. “It’s okay.”
He gave my shoulder one last squeeze. “I’ll give you some time alone with her. I’m going to take a walk.”
I kept staring at the headstone, with the tiny Celtic symbol of Awen etched into the stone. It was a symbol I knew, one my mother had always loved. Three lines representing rays of light, converging at the top.
I heard Marian’s voice behind me. “Awen. It’s a Gaelic word that means ‘poetic inspiration’ or ‘spiritual illumination.’ Two things your mother respected.” I thought about the symbols in the lintel at Ravenwood, the symbols on The Book of Moons, and the one on the door of Exile. Symbols meant something. In some cases, more than words. My mom had known that. I wondered if it was the reason she became a Keeper, or if she learned it from the Keepers before her. There was so much about her I would never know.
“Ethan, I’m sorry. Would you like to be alone?”
I let Marian hug me. “No. I don’t really feel like she’s here. You know what I mean?”
“I do.” She kissed my forehead and smiled, pulling a green tomato out of her pocket. She balanced it on the top of the tombstone.
I leaned back and smiled. “Now if you were a real friend, you would have fried it.”
Marian put her arm around me. She was in her best dress, like everyone else, but her best dress was somehow better. It was soft and yellow, the color of butter, with a loose bow near the neck. The skirt folded into about a thousand crinkly pleats, like a dress from an old-fashioned movie. It looked like something Lena would have worn.
