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Aside from going back into a coma and never waking up?I shake my head.
“If you want to escape your parents, come to my house.” Grandpa ruffles my hair as if I were still a child. “Get well soon, kid. I mean it.”
And then he’s out the door, probably to get my nan and leave. She’s been there with Mum every step of the way, fawning over me, and making sure I’m comfortable.
That means she’s given less attention to Grandpa.
He’s never liked sharing Nana’s time with anyone, including his grandkids. Except for Glyn. She’s always had an all-access card to Grandpa’s mansion.
Now, apparently, I do, too, since he invited me over.
I’m staring at the rain, absentmindedly patting Tiger’s head when Mum comes in carrying a plate full of all sorts of food.
She’s wearing a beautiful white dress that makes her look younger. The dark circles and bloodshot eyes eventually disappeared as I was getting better, and she’s been dedicating her life to becoming my personal chef.
Something she really sucks at—cooking, I mean—but Dad, Eli, and I choose not to tell her that fact.
It’s how I managed to eat all of Annika’s horrible dishes when everyone else avoided them like the plague.
My wound itches at those memories, tingling and burning, and it takes everything in me not to rip the stitches open.
As if feeling my distress, Tiger jumps from my lap and chooses the chesterfield sofa as his next sleeping spot.
Mum places the tray on the small table in front of me and stares at the door. “What happened? Why did Agnus look mad and Dad actually seem happy about it? And does it have to do with Jonathan’s smug expression?”
“Definitely. But you don’t want to know about it.”
“You’re probably right.” She strokes my hair away from my face. “You need a cut. Or not. I like the new look, actually. What do you think?”
“I don’t have a preference.”
“Why, of course you do.”
“I don’t, Mum.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Do you want to go back to school?”
I stare at the tiny droplets of rain that dust the tall windows. “Don’t care either way.”
“Are you mad at me, Creigh?”
My gaze slides to her wretched-looking expression and I frown. “No. Why would I be?”
“Because we hid the truth and ever since you found out about it, nothing good has happened.”
Thanks to Landon’s big mouth, Dad found out everything that went down, but Mum still believed it was a robbery gone wrong. But she had a hunch that no one was telling her the whole truth, so Eli gave her a recounting of events.
Like me, he hates to put her health in jeopardy, but we don’t like hiding the truth from her either.
After all, she’s the woman who gave me unconditional love when she didn’t have to.
“I’m not mad at you, Mum. I’m mad at myself for digging deeper, for not respecting your wishes and keeping the past where it belonged. If I had, if I’d given up after you told me to, I wouldn’t have been standing at this edge of in-between. I wouldn’t have lost…everything.”
“Oh, Creigh. You didn’t lose everything.” She grabs my hands in hers. “You have us. No matter what happens, no matter what the world, nature, or science says, you’re my son. You became my son the first day I met you in that room at the shelter. You were so scrawny and small, but you didn’t hide. You stood up from that bed on your tiny feet and stared at us with these beautiful inquisitive eyes. They held so much pain, so much torture, but they had a lot of hope, too. Hope for a different life, hope to move past your trauma, and hope to actually find a family again. You looked at us like we were already your parents, and I fell in love at first sight. And believe me, I’ve never fallen in love at first sight, not even with your father, not even with your brother—since I gradually fell in love with him during the nine months of pregnancy, but you, you’re different, baby. You’re the one I’d fall in love with over and over again if I had to. I’d kill your demons for you. If I’m ever reborn, I’d sacrifice myself if it meant I’d get to have you as my son again. So please, if you have any issues, talk to me, or your father, or Eli. Don’t just battle your demons on your own. Don’t just…leave us.”
She’s flat-out crying, my mum. Her tears cling to her chin, and that wretchedness fills her once bright blue eyes again.
Is this what I do? Put darkness in the place of light?
