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“I’ve been in pain for a long time, honey. I’m just tired now. You fight and fight and fight and then… Oh my. There are days I just want to stop.”
My stomach drops. “You can’t talk like that, Mom,” I insist. I’ve never heard her say anything of the sort. She’s always been so stoic about her illness. “You’re just weak and—”
“I amtired,” she interrupts. “I just want to rest now.”
I squeeze her hand tight. “Think about Dad,” I beg her. “Think about Celine. They need you.”
“No,” she says. Her voice trembles and breaks. “No, they don’t. I’m the one who’s needed the three of you all these years. And I hate how much that’s cost all of you.”
“Cost? What cost? We love you, Mom. We all love you so much.”
“Oh, honey, don’t you think I know that? But I don’t want any of you to spend your lives playing Nurse for a sick old woman. I want you to live.”
“Iamliving!”
“Are you?” she asks. Even in such a weakened state, she manages to squint at me in thatI-see-you-for-who-you-really-areway that only a mother can do. “Last I checked, you were majoring in a field you hated, in a college you chose purely because it was close to home.”
“I wanted to do that foryou.”
“Exactly,” Mom says with a nod. “But you shouldn’t be doing anything for me. You should be doing things for yourself. You and Celine both.”
I’m a mess, full stop. Tears, blubbering, the works. My heart has never ached so much in all the rest of my life put together. “I still need you, Mom.”
“No,” she tells me. “You haven’t needed me for a very long time.” She closes her eyes and a solitary tear slips down her cheek. “And Celine…everyone underestimates her. But she’s stronger than they give her credit for. When I couldn’t be your mother, she stepped up for both of us.”
“Mom, please,” I beg her again. “Stop talking like this is the end. You’re not dying today.”
The protests lodge in my throat. I furiously shake my head. I can’t accept this. Iwon’taccept her surrender. “Mom, no—”
But my words die on my lips when she folds her thin fingers over mine. “Sweetheart, when I got shot, I remember lying in the grass, looking up at the sky. I wasn’t in any pain. In fact, I stopped feeling pain altogether. All I felt wasrelief.”
I want to say something to change her mind. But my mother—my sunflower-loving, dance-in-the-kitchen-while-she-cooks, can’t-drive-to-save-her-life mother—has never been one to listen when other people tell her no.
And I can’t find the words anyway. They’re all caught in my throat, all the things I didn’t say enough.I love youandI miss you alreadyandthank you for sharing a part of yourself with me.But my voice won’t work and any air I manage to draw into my lungs burns away in an instant like useless fumes.
Then I feel a presence at my shoulder, and suddenly, I can breathe again. It’s a big presence. Powerful. It smells like whiskey and leather and summer rain.
Ilarion’s hand rests heavy on the back of my neck. “Fiona, you have nothing to worry about,” he tells her in a quiet rumble. “I will make sure your daughters are safe and comfortable for the rest of their lives.”
“I want both those things for them, Ilarion,” she whispers. “But above all, I want them to behappy.”
I glance at Ilarion. A war is playing out on his face. The promise she’s trying to extract from him is not something he can give her. Because there’s no way he can make us both happy.
It’s one or the other. Celine or me.
And if it were up to me, I’d take Celine’s happiness over mine any day.
26
TAYLOR
“Stop it!” I cry, breaking up the quiet moment. “Both of you, just stop it!”
“Taylor, honey—”
“No!” I leap to my feet. “You are not dying, Mom. Not ever! Andyou,” I growl, glaring at Ilarion. “How dare you come in here and act as though letting her give up is a gift that she’s owed?”
“Look at her, Taylor.” There’s actual sympathy in his eyes, but I don’t want to see it. Not at all.
