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“Neither do I.” Remedy pushes back from the table. She doesn’t look angry, she looks tired. Like she could close her eyes and sleep for a year. “I’m committed to this mission or whatever it is, but we’ve got to find our mother. She is somewhere and we need to find out where.”
“Gaia said we needed our sister for that,” Lark says.
My mother exhales, her fingers back the orb. “You need her, but not in the way you thought.”
“Then how?” Remedy asks.
“It’s time for her to pass to the next world. And she knows how to do that. There she will find the one you seek.”
“Our birth mom?” Lark asks. Mom nods, squeezing Lark’s hand.
“So, what do we do then?” Harlow asks.
Mother smiles, and oh, how I wish I could reach out, wrap my arms around her neck, and return to long ago when I fit in the crook of her arm.
“Now,” Mother says. “We wait.”
16
Tennyson
I push myself up out if the water, gasping for air. My head is spinning with images I don’t want to push away.
My sisters were there, in the kitchen. Sisters I never knew I had. Lark is not just a cousin. She is my sister.
And I will never get to meet her as she is now. A grown woman.
“Tennyson,” Hawthorne says my name, but his voice feels so far away. “Hey, hey, you’re okay.”
I swallow, standing up from the river bed, my toes sinking in the mud, my clothing stained and wet. My heart as heavy as my dress.
Lennox watches me with trepidation and one look in his eyes and I know he saw what I saw. He knows what I know. They all do.
I have to leave.
“Ten.” South takes my hand and pulls me to him, steadying me.
I let myself fall against his chest and he picks me up. Eric is behind me, telling me he’s so, so sorry.
But he has nothing to apologize for.
“Did you know she was pregnant?” Hawthorne asks Eric.
Eric wipes tears away from his eyes. “No. I thought I’d only been gone a few days... but Harlow looked so far along.”
“Time here is different,” Hawthorne says.
“One day can change everything,” I whisper mostly to myself.
And it’s the truth. This day is changing everything.
South sets me in the boat and begins rooting around for an old blanket, but what I really want to do is peel these clothes from my body and press my skin against the bodies of the men I love. I want to spend what time I have left in their arms and their arms alone.
But there is something else I must do now. First. Before they fade.
“I need to get the ferryman, Charon.” My chin quivers and my heart pounds. “Now.”
“What do you plan on doing there, Ten?” Hawthorne asks nervously.
“The right thing.” I could say more, but I’m so raw from what I just saw.
Three sisters, all counting on me.
I have to find our birth mother.
The shock of that statement alone has me shaking. The mother who cared for me as a child wasn’t my actual mother.
The men row, but they keep looking back to check on me.
One day can change everything.
This is not what I meant... or was it?
I’ve longed for something more for so long and this is more. Surely it is. But it isn’t the more I was hoping for.
This is final.
I’m not ready to say goodbye. But I don’t have a choice.
I have a chance to give my life meaning, a purpose. I won’t die in vain. The boat moves along the marshy river, the vision filling my mind. Sounds echo off the water, croaking frogs and chirping crickets, but it all seems far away. As we glide through the water, all I can think about is that cozy kitchen Mom had, all my half-sisters, women I never knew, talking about me around the table. My heart aches for all I lost since the day I slipped on that ring.
“We’re almost there, Tennyson,” Lennox says, coming to sit next to me as South eases up to the dock where the ferryman waits for his passengers.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I wish we had more time.” I pull him to me, seeing the way his chest fades.
“Hello there,” South calls out. “Ferryman?”
A shadowy figure emerges from behind a tollbooth. “Who is it?”
I stand, my body practically gone, but my heart still beating. I can do this, as my final act of love.
It’s not what I want, but it is what I must do. I can claim my place in the Underworld, having no idea why my father is looking for me, why he wants me, what he intends to do.
I can do this.
The mother who cared for me said it must be done so I will do it. For her.
Other words, deep in my marrow, call to me too...
