Page 86 of Night and Silence

I took a step back, twisting my shoulders and breaking free of his grasp. Cliff stood frozen where he was, hands grasping empty air. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. He was only human. He was just the man who had grown out of the boy who’d seen a girl on the sidewalk, two runaways looking for a better life together. It wasn’t his fault I’d never been able to give him what he needed.

And it wasn’t my fault, either.

“Let go of whatever it is you think I did to you, Cliff,” I said, voice soft. “I am the mother of your child. I am the woman who used to love you, who never meant to leave you, and I am asking you, let it all go. This is how you pay me for finding her. You stop fighting to keep me out of her life.”

“Miranda—”

“Miranda and I have already talked.” That was stretching the situation a bit. She had confessed, and I had listened. Still, she wasn’t going to argue when he said I needed to be allowed to hang around. There was a lot left that we needed to discuss.

He hesitated before saying, finally, “What if I don’t want you around?”

“What if I don’t care?” I looked at him flatly. “I broke your heart. I get that. I genuinely do. I didn’t mean to, but you’re never going to believe me, so whatever. You broke my heart when you slammed the door in my face. There’s a lot of bad blood between us, and from where I’m standing, you put most of it there. I didn’t have a choice. You did. Gillian needs to know me. I am her mother. No matter how much she wants to judge me or dislike me, she needs to know where I come from, because that’s part of where she comes from, too.”

Cliff glared for a long moment before he sagged, becoming nothing more than an aging mortal man whose world stubbornly refused to stop changing. He looked away. “You say I had a choice. I didn’t. You left me alone with a little girl who wouldn’t stop asking about you. Where you were, why you’d gone, why you weren’t coming back. Whether it was her fault you’d left us. I let you go because I had to, if I wanted to save her. Yeah, I slammed the door when you tried to come back. I had finally found a way to make things good again. You wanted to change all that. I couldn’t risk it.”

“So we both made mistakes. I let myself get lost. You refused to let me be found. Our daughter’s coming home, Cliff. Be glad of that and stop trying to turn me into your enemy. It’s never going to happen. Her existence means it can’t.”

“I . . .” He took a deep breath as he looked back to me. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.”

“That’s all I wanted.” I stepped backward, preparing to go.

“Toby?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

I smiled. Really and sincerely smiled. “Not a problem. Maybe next time ask before you accuse, though, okay? She’ll be home soon.” I turned and walked away.

The sound of the door closing behind me felt like an ending. A good one.

May looked up from her phone when she heard me coming. “Well?”

“We’re okay.” I opened the car door. “How’s Jazz?”

“Mad that we didn’t call her before we went chasing a kidnapper around Berkeley, but glad Gilly is safe.” May got in on the passenger side. “She says bring home donuts.”

“We’re going to Portland to find out how a deposed, elf-shot monarch was able to escape, make it back to the Mists, and arrange for the kidnapping and attempted murder of my daughter, and I’m supposed to stop for donuts?”

May shrugged. “I guess she figures you’ll have some free time.”

I had to laugh at that. It felt good to be relaxed enough that I could. Things were beginning to knit themselves back together. Maybe they’d even make it all the way back to normal.

We drove back to the house singing along to the radio with off-key gusto, and nobody tried to kill either of us, and no one wound up drenched in blood, and it was awesome. Technically, I spend more time not being threatened than I do running for my life. It’s just that the moments of extreme stress and peril tend to loom large on my mental landscape.

May looked over at me as I pulled into our driveway. “You going to talk to him? Now that he’s halfway out of his head? Because he’s just going to crawl back in and refuse to come out if you give him a chance.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” She tapped her temple. “I remember. I know a lot of people the way I know you. Healing takes more time than anyone wants to think it will, and it takes more than one big gesture to be finished. He needs time. He needs you even more.”

“I have a plan,” I said.

She looked at me. “In Portland?”

“In Portland.”

“Good.” She got out of the car, leaving that as the final word of our conversation. I shook my head, smiling as I followed her to the kitchen.