Page 117 of Bound By Fury

“I don’t know if I can live with this grief and confusion and pain all the time. Never knowing when my body might start to betray me, when those pins and needles might come back. If I’ll be able to control it this time, or if I’ll hurt someone I care about. I need help.” I’m choking on my words. “Please.”

My head falls into my hands; loud, aching sobs rack my body. The room has grown dark, bundles of clouds rolling over the sun and casting us in shadow.

Now we both know why.

Maureen gets up from the couch and sits beside me. Her wrinkled hand traces light circles on my back as I cry. We sit like this for a long while. Rain pattering against the large window facing the front lawn, the music a fitting soundtrack for my sorrow.

She doesn’t push me further, but she also doesn’t offer more information. Instead, she’s simply there. After Gigi died, I moved right into Black Mountain Academy, and I haven’t had a chance to feel it. The hole in my chest pulsating in her absence.

When I have nothing left to give, I sit up, wiping my tears and snot onto the back of my sleeve and cringing when I realize what I’ve done. Maureen only smiles and hands me a tissue that I take gratefully, blotting my cheeks.

Her eyes are swollen and wet, pitch-black mascara muddying the paper-thin skin beneath them. “I’m so sorry you’ve been going through all this alone. Harper wanted to tell you. Was planning on it. She was gonna sit you down on your sixteenth birthday, consequences from your mama be damned…”

I brace myself against the stabbing pain that shoots through my chest. This is exactly what Gigi said in the dream.

Maureen sighs. “She was planning on writing you a letter to help her get started. She was scared too, you know? Of what you’d think. She worried you might hate her.

“But she knew that you were strong and special and that, whatever came of it all, you could handle it. And now that you’re here, and you’re ready, we have a lot of work to do.”

She rubs her temples. “Before I can figure out where to start, tell me, did she end up writing that letter?”

I nod.

Maureen meets my eyes.

“I guess that means you already know about the Mother.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

“COME ON. LET’S GO TO the kitchen. If we’re really going to do this, I’m gonna need more than plain old tea in my cup.” Maureen holds a soft, aged-marked hand out to me, and I take it, her firm grasp steadying the tremor in my own. Thoughts of the letter twist and turn in my head, just as they have every day since I read it. Wondering what Gigi would have told me if only she’d woken up that morning.

But even with my racing thoughts, a wave of relief washes over me. I’ve come here for answers, and I am finally, finally, getting them.

I’m led through the living room and into the bright, large kitchen. Visions of Gigi and Maureen sitting at the table in the middle, round eyelet tablecloth hanging over the edges just enough for me to hide under. Everything looks the same. From the sage-green cabinets that wrap around the room, to the floor-to-ceiling windows, the white appliances, and countertop microwave.

Maureen catches me staring at the wall of ceramic cats of all shapes and sizes and colors.

“Ah, yes! The collection has grown quite a bit since you’ve last been here, I suppose. You know me, deathly allergic to those little monsters, but Petunia and I like to look at them and think, Boy, wouldn’t it be nice?”

I pull out the heavy wooden chair and sit down, placing my cup in front of me as she wanders over to a cabinet, taking down a bottle of dark liquor. Pouring two healthy tips of the brown liquid into her teacup, she points the neck at me in question.

My eyes widen. “I’m sixteen.”

Shrugging, she returns the bottle and sits across from me.

I fold my arms at the elbows and lean forward, regarding the woman whose love for my grandmother may be the only love left in this world capable of rivaling my own.

Maureen brings her mug to her lips and takes a healthy gulp, the skin around her eyes tensing as she swallows down the burning liquid.

“Tell me what you know about Earnest,” she starts, and at first I hesitate, confused.

“Um, well, we’re in Western North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains. It’s small. Not too far from Asheville,” I rattle off the things I know. The facts. I don’t mention how it’s always called to me. Or how Gigi used to say it was rotting. How more and more, I’m seeing evidence of that.

The decomposing bloodroot, the dirt like moldy apples on my tongue, the sickly sweet scent permeating campus.

“All of that is correct,” she says. “But Earnest is so much more than those things. This town is a very special place.”

I nod. I know that. I always have.