Why don’t you ever wear pants?he’d asked once, back when he was barely taller than her thighs.
Pants are for males or for pixies, she’d replied. Whatever that meant.
“You can’t think like that, Sean,” she said now. “The what-ifs will drive a person mad.”
He sighed because he’d been down this thought path hundreds of times, but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching the same conclusion. “If she hadn’t been hiding from the world, she wouldn’t have died.”
Blaire squeezed his hand. “You don’t know that. Sometimes the Mother has bigger plans for us.”
Sean gritted his teeth. Blaire’s bohemian religious beliefs often snuck into these conversations. It was one thing for her to seed an ivy plant in tribute to life or dance around a fire to celebrate the balance of all things. It was something entirely different to believe her deity had a hand in his mother’s death.
Lana Archer had been murdered in cold blood. What kind of plan could that serve?
Sean lifted his gaze to meet Aunt Blaire’s. She and Cole looked so alike. Cole had inherited her messy auburn curls, but her eyes weren’t quite as dark. More like cinnamon than coffee. Normally Sean could play off her comments with a smile and a subject change, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to dig in and find the treasure she hid.
“What plan does the Mother have for me?” he asked.
Her eyes shuttered, and she pulled her hand back.
“Other than to orphan me,” he added, prodding at her tender parts. “To strand me in this place, handcuffed by a promise I made when I was just a kid?”
“Your mother had her reasons, Sean, as you well know.”
Sean studied her expression, but it revealed little. “I know there are reasons. I still don’t know what those reasons are. Isn’t it time you told me?”
She stood abruptly and went back to her dried jasmine blossoms. “What has you thinking of this today?” Her tone lightened, but he could hear the strain behind it. “You should be celebrating your birthday. Not thinking of sad times.”
“I ran across her note,” Sean admitted. “In my nightstand this morning.”
Blaire’s mouth tightened, but she said nothing.
“Everything I did was for you.That’s what she said.”
“And it was true.”
“Everything I did.What did she do, Blaire?” Sean asked, point blank.
He’d never done this, never cornered her like this. But the festering questions had turned rotten in the last few months, and he had to know. Why was he moldering in this tiny existence? Why was it so important that he not go to college? That he keep close to home? Was it simple paranoia or something bigger?
For so many years, he’d counted on the latter. He’d believed, deep in his gut where nothing but instinct lived, that something massive hovered just out of reach, and his mother and aunt had kept him safe from it. Since he was a small boy, images had flashed in his head that made no sense. Pictures of a world that didn’t exist, of people he’d never known, a girl who haunted his heart. Dozens of times, he’d watched a broadsword pierce his chest.
But perhaps it was all deep-seated paranoia. Maybe he was sick in his head, and the images were nothing but a manifestation of that.
Aunt Blaire huffed at his question. “Sean.” His name on her lips was an argument and a plea all in one.
“Blaire—”
“I have to go,” she said suddenly. “I told Mr. Henderson I’d bring him some of my special joint cream. I can’t talk about this now.”
Sean raised a nonplussed brow. “You have to go? Right now?”
“Yes.”
With that, she abandoned the kitchen, leaving him to stare at the doorway. “What? Are youwalking?” he yelled after her. “Cole has the car.”
His answer was the smack of the front door as it closed.
With his wavy black hair in some sort of order, Sean threw on his work clothes and headed out into the early fall air. The saloon turned fitness center off Old Route 49 was the perfect job for him under the circumstances. After high school, he was swiftly promoted from check-in clerk to personal trainer,since he’d spent most of his time helping people perfect their technique anyway. The position helped release some of the pent-up energy always brewing inside, and they let him use the punching bag whenever he wanted.
