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Four
Aela
“Seamus?”I called out, as I hauled a bag from my room and dumped it in the hall.
The trouble with packing up all my stuff was that there was a lot of it.
I mean, I knew that. I had to pack everything sporadically anyway when we moved, because we moved a lot.
Intentionally.
I never liked to stay in one place longer than necessary. Sometimes, I’d stay only long enough to do a course or to teach one. Sometimes, it was for as long as it took to craft a particular project. But Rhode Island? I’d gotten soft.
I’d been stupid.
Instead of changing scenery a few years ago, I’d stayed here because Seamus had said he was sick of moving, so I’d gotten a job teaching at one of the best art schools in the world. I’d loved my role there, loved my position and the way I could create and help propagate more creations in the seeds I helped sow in students.
So I’d stuck around, let us get some roots, and I’d seen how Seamus had flourished. It figured he’d be like his da in that. His father who’d never lived anywhere other than Hell’s Kitchen. His father who practically thought New York was an island all of its own.
I’d monitored him over the years. I’d been compelled to.
Not only to make sure that we were under the radar, but also because it was a sick, bittersweet need to check in. To see what he was doing. To make sure the life hadn’t killed him.
Even while I’d run, far and wide from him, I’d never stopped caring.
Couldn’t stop.
This kind of love didn’t just die. Didn’t just burn away.
It stayed there, pretty much like the Olympic goddamn flame—
“Mom?”
Seamus’s voice was a little squeaky, but I was getting used to that. He had zits on his chin that he moaned over in the mirror too, and when I said he stank at the end of every day? I wasn’t joking.
Hormones weren’t only a bitch for him.
“What is it?” I called, moving toward his voice because he sounded a little on edge.
Sure, he was randomly squeaky, but at moments of high pressure, it stayed that way.
As I trudged down the hall, with its tribal red and white rug that I’d picked up on a job in Dubai, where Seamus and I had lived with a Bedouin tribe for three months, I stared at all the trinkets I’d picked up over the years.
I couldn’t take everything with me even if I wanted to.
And want I did.
These things were my past. Each item had a memory.
Like the massive seashell on the stand from when Seamus and I had gone out to collect sea glass in Devon over in the UK. Then there was the wooden mask from the Zulu tribe we’d interacted with when Seamus was about four.
He didn’t remember it, but I did. They’d painted him up like he was one of their own and he’d run around, wild and free, more wild and free than most kids could ever imagine.
He’d had more opportunities with my career than any boy could hope for. Had seen things, done things, lived more in his fourteen years than most did in a lifetime.
I had to believe—
No, I hadn’t done wrong by him.
