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He walked straight to me and pulled me into his chest. I felt his heart beating through it, strong and vital, as though it had been renewed somehow.
“Enid, Robert, this is Vivian,” Rupert said, pulling me to his side. He radiated pride and I reached out to shake their hands, smiling from ear to ear like a crazy person.
“And this is Minty,” Hector said, wrapping an arm around her neck like a stronghold.
We engaged immediately in lively banter about the boat trip over, Minty’s close call with over-the-edge nausea, mine and Rupert’s trip to London and how out of place he looked in a dingy black cab. We chatted incessantly for a long time. It wasn’t until a whole hour had passed that I looked around and noticed that Adele had slipped quietly away. I smiled to myself then caught Minty’s eye. She’d noticed too. We nodded to each other, an acknowledgment that we’d be there for our new friend whatever happened.
Rupert
“We’ll be back soon.” Vivian’s arms tightened around me as we left the shores of Edinburgh behind. “We just need to say our goodbyes properly, then we can move to the mainland for good. And you can see Enid and Robert as often as you like.”
I sighed, quietly. “I can’t believe I’ve gone without having real, genuine parents for twenty-seven years.”
She rubbed my shoulders; I could feel they were thick with tension. “You’ve found them now. There’s no point in looking backwards. You have a whole life ahead of you and plenty of time to spend with them.”
“They showed me more love in three hours than Iris and Sinclair did in nearly three decades.”
“Iris and Sinclair were not capable of showing any love,” she said, rolling her eyes. “At least you have real parents. Ossian only had the Thorns. Is there really any wonder he turned out the way he did? And can you imagine what it must be like to go through a whole lifetime not ever experiencing unconditional love?”
I turned and cradled her warm face in my hands. “I can’t imagine that, no. That would mean imagining I’d never met you.”
Footsteps came up behind us and we both turned to see Hector watching us with a smile. “Being in love looks good on you, brother.”
I raised my brows. “You too. Speaking of which, is Minty okay?” It turned out her land legs didn’t do too well on water.
“She’s throwing up in the bathroom as we speak.”
“Shouldn’t you be holding her hair back and offering tissues?” Vivian asked, and I remembered her saying he’d done the same for her.
“Yeah, I should,” he said, frowning, “but she kicked me out of the bathroom. Said she’d rather pluck her own eyelashes out than let me watch her vomit.”
I shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Vivian flashed her eyes at me. “I’ll go check on her.”
Hector arrived in the spot Vivian had just vacated and we looked out together at the mainland getting smaller and smaller.
“I never thought I’d consider that place somewhere I’d call home,” he said. “But I dare say I could get used to it.”
I grinned. “No, you could get used to The Glasshouse. Living there on a normal person’s wage might be very different.”
“I get that,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “But I don’t just mean the five star hotels. I mean, we have no family on Crow – only Aro, Isobel and Dax, and they’re not blood. Even when we thought they were, I feel so differently about Enid and Robert. And it’s so obvious they’re our parents.”
“Right?” I turned to face him, seeing Robert in every crevice of his face. “It was like looking in a mirror.”
“There’s no wonder Iris and Sinclair sent them away. Anyone with more than two brain cells would have spotted the similarities between us.”
I watched the land mass disappear and directed my next question into the biting wind. “How do you feel about them now? You were pretty angry earlier.”
Hector sighed, his breath carrying high and far. “I still feel angry, but not at them. I don’t think I was ever angry at them, really. I guess I’m just carrying a lot of anger. Too much to direct solely at Sinclair and Iris. I’m angry at every fucker who knows us – even Aro.”
I blinked slowly, at pains to admit it. “Yeah, me too.”
“The only people I can’t be angry at are you, Vivian and Minty.”
“Not me?”
Adele’s voice hooked the corners of my mouth and we turned to see her rubbing warmth into her hands.
