Page 137 of Tracking Snow

Snow is even smaller than her, but Snow made our world expand. She made us wonder. Laugh. Want. Burn. She made us look at ourselves and imagine something other than restraint.

She made us bigger than we’d been before.

Mother has always made us smaller.

Snow made us more.

The thought should feel like a betrayal, but it feels like...freedom?

Queenie rounds the island to the refrigerator. Cold air rolls out when she opens it. She pulls out a fresh bottle of water, cracks the seal, and the click of it is the loudest thing in the room.

"She fled Brightpath House years ago," she says, softer now, half to herself. She takes a sip. Condensation runs over her fingers, and she watches the middle distance. "I thought she was dead. Had I known..." Her eyes come back into focus and pin on me. "You are to get that girl and bring her to the facility. Do you understand?"

My breath sits high in my chest and stays there.

"No. No more," I say. It’s low but clear. "You have enough people to help. You don’t need her." I’m surprised by my own words, but I know I mean them. We all do. All of us who are left.

Queenie jerks ever so slightly. As if I’d slapped her. Capping the water bottle, she sets it down on the counter and takes a step toward us. She narrows her eyes as if looking at us for the first time, examining us with a hard, measuring look.

What is she going to do? Yell at us? Three says, and there is a challenge in his tone.

We suddenly realize she doesn’t hold power over us anymore. We are more powerful, more than we thought we were, and we don’t have to do what she says.

Even Seven grinds his teeth, ready to challenge Mother. We don’t need to take Snow.

On this, we are aligned. We would never betray her. Not like that.

So the rest of the betrayals are hunky dory? Taking her friends? Five throws out there.

I ignore him.

Mother’s eyes continue to search ours as if gearing up for the tongue-lashing to make us remember our place. And then that hardness falls away. In its place is an old woman with soft, sad eyes.

Then Mother closes the distance between us, reaching out. We all tense. Her fingers come within a breath of our cheek, and everything in us strains toward her, the skin there waking up, waiting. She hasn’t touched us since we were human.

She'd push our hair back and tell us she loved us. Our mother would pull us against her where we sat in my twin bed with the colorful planets on the bedspread. I’d breathe in the spearmint and flowers of her scent as she read us bedtime stories. There were kisses on the forehead, hugs in the morning and night. She’d ruffle our hair in a teasing way, then hang our terrible crayon art on the fridge in the pristine kitchen like it was the best art she had ever seen.

Our hearts crack open looking down at our mother. A woman who lost her child.

Before her fingers make contact, they go limp and fall away. As if what she was reaching for was never there for her to grasp.

But we’re right here. All of us. As one, Five cries out with sad frustration.

"Why her?" My voice is small to my own ears.

Queenie’s shoulders drop. The lines at her mouth deepen. "The Seven. This girl is the key to everything." Her voice is slightly rough as if clogged with emotion. "She is going to cure you. You're going to become my Logan again. Don't you want to be a family again? Don’t you miss...us?"

The need for her touch, her love, her approval. It's so strong it hurts. Every minute of every day.

It’s all we’ve craved for over twenty years. The one guiding light we’ve been trying to get back to and now she is telling us there is a way to have it again. And it all hinges on bringing Snow to her.

There is a resistance pushing against it from Three, Five, and even Two, yet it is me, and Seven, who force the nod of our head.

A lopsided smile tilts her lips, and she reaches out and brushes her fingers through our hair. We do our best to suppress the shudder. We can't.

"You're right," she adds gently. "I am still your mother, and you should call me such. I just...I just want you to be my son again."

Snow learned the difference between us inside of a week. She tracks the change behind our eyes mid-sentence and finishes the sentence to whoever arrived.