I wondered why the hell she would do this. Call me right here, right now, and just lay this on me. Why not later, at some more convenient, more appropriate time? Christ, she hadn't even asked where I was before she started.
On top of everything, my mother had been replaced with a pod person. Fucking fabulous.
"I don't even know what to say," I admitted. "Just, I'm sorry. For everything."
"I love you. I just want you to be happy."
"I am."
"I know." A sound then, a massive intake of air.
I'd heard it once before that I could recall. Not even that night after I'd electrocuted that guy in the alley. Years before, a decade and more. I sat down on the nearest chair so hard, I jarred my tailbone. "Jesus, Mom. Are you crying?"
"I don't know…how to…"
"Okay, just hold on. Are you home?"
"Yes."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"Honey—"
"I'll be right there."
*~*~*
I burst through the door into the mahogany-inlaid foyer, halfway expecting to find her on the ground, staring at the ceiling, clutching at her chest or something. When this gruesome sight didn't greet me, I was so relieved that I almost had a heart attack myself. I staggered into the pristine granite-tiled kitchen to find her at the center island, sitting on one of the stools, sipping a martini.
But her eyes were red-rimmed. No mistaking it.
I went to her. "What happened?"
"Jamie…"
"You can't be this upset over some stupid argument with me."
"No. And yes. I—" She reached up, laid one soft hand against my cheek. "I'm very, very sorry, honey."
"You're freaking me out." I recognized the absolute contrition in her eyes, though I wasn't sure I'd ever seen it before. But then, they were my eyes too. "Tell me what happened. Please."
"Mae tried to kill herself last night."
"In…San Diego?"
She nodded, retracting her hand and applying it to the martini. The soft white light of the twelve-times-remodeled kitchen highlighted the gentle curves and lines of her face, etched into my brain in a similar but ageless, possibly even angelic, form.
It's like, you know your mother's human. It's just easy to forget if you're not paying attention.
She said, "I'm fine, honey. I just keep thinking of Margaret and what she must be going through. She's gone there now, to see Mae."
"What did she do?"
"She took some pills. She was afraid to come home because…"
"Because she thought she'd have to marry me." I tried to think back to that e-mail. Had I been vague? I'd said something about thinking we felt the same, but I was pretty sure I'd been, well, terse. As in, definitely not trying to charm. There was no way she could've thought—
"No. Margaret says she was afraid…you didn't want to marry her."
The Red Alert siren went off in my brain. Yes, Mae had been a quiet, frightened child. Yes, she could possibly have reason to believe that I didn't (or did) want to marry her (depending on which gossip her mother passed on, depending on which gossip she chose to believe, and how that gossip spun my spare communications).
But apart from how drastic this all was, add in that her one discussion with me in the last ten years had been an absolute brush-off on her end, and it did not compute. Either my e-mail cry for help made her think I hated her and sent her into a suicidal downward spiral of despair, or someone was lying about something.
So, yes, clearly it was that second thing, because the first… What the fuck?
"If I'd been more honest, if I'd listened to what you've tried to tell me for years, it wouldn't have happened," Mom said. "She's such a sweet girl."
"I'm practically a stranger," I said. "How can she—"
"You know how the Haywoods are. It's everything to them. They're such traditionalists, and Mae put it off for so long."
"She never even called. I practically begged her last week and didn't get so much as an e-mail."
"It was like that in the old days."
I sat down hard. "Shit. Should I do something?" Like what? Call her up and say, "Don't feel bad, Mae. You can't help not being a guy"?
It really didn't feel right. Mae was shy, and Margaret was certifiably insane, but they couldn't be this far removed from reality. There was this shadow over it, something I couldn't quite see.
"It's not your problem." Mom shook her head.
"No, it's not."
"I only called because—Honey, it's Margaret's fault. She must've known how Mae felt. Am I any better?"
I swallowed hard. "Yes."
She took another drink. The specific shape of the martini glass made it all too obvious that her hand was shaking.
"You raised me to be who I am, even if you didn't want to see it for a while." I took her free hand and pressed it, trying to still it. Reminded me so much, too much of hugging her in this kitchen all those years ago. Fifteen and scared and thinking I'd almost killed someone. My throat contracted, but I pushed out, "You'll never come that close to losing me again."
She set her drink down and wiped beneath one eye, then the other. There were no tears, but maybe it was a preemptive strike.
I kissed her cheek, then sat back and pulled at my hair for a few moments, trying to wrap my head around this. She pushed her martini across the counter to me, and I took a grateful sip.
She almost smiled. "Help yourself, honey."
"Thanks." I stood again and headed right for the liquor selection glowing under the track lights on the far end of the kitchen. "I think I'm gonna need it."
*~*~*
I stayed in my old room that night. Kellan was too relieved that I was working things out with my mother to mind that I ditched him and said if I needed to bail on the market, he'd explain things to his mom. I told him I'd pick him up at nine, and we'd leave as planned.
Mom and I downed martinis and vacillated wildly between argument, affection, and understanding. She apologized profusely for her handling of my queerness, and I apologized profusely for keeping it closeted. She reminded me I had to be careful with Kellan, reiterating that it would never work, and I told her it was none of her business who I was in love with. She told me she only wanted me to avoid a broken heart; I told her I wasn't sure I'd have a heart at all without him. And we were back where we began.
And of course we talked about Mae. The more I expressed my bewilderment, explained how my attempts at contact had gone nowhere, the more Mom came around to it. The specifics were too vague, the motivations murky. Maybe thirty years ago, Mom admitted, but would a person independent enough to live on her own for a decade all the way across the country, intelligent enough to do postdoctoral work in nanotechnology, really consider something as idiotic as suicide over another person she'd not seen since she was a kid, a person she'd shown no interest in either then or since? It was the plot of a bad movie from the thirties, starring Kellan's little Lord Jamie and the duchess of Monday characters.
It was a farce. But to what end?
I explained that much to Kellan on the way to Medina. This may not have been my best idea ever, as it flipped his switch from "understanding, concerned boyfriend" mode into "silent but righteous fury" mode without so much as a pit stop in the middle. We spent a sunny afternoon with his mother, and I used my highest level of performance to be sure she'd never know my mind was somewhere else entirely. Kellan was less convinced; he knew very well where my mind was and kept shooting me looks behind his mother's back, his irritation growing more and more obvious in the straightness of his spine, the set of his jaw, and the aggressive angle of his shoulders.
So I thought it best not to tell him right away when Mom texted me with: Marg back from SD. Mae's weak, but ok. Thinks you should visit. Not sure, myself.
But we managed to leave his mother with a smile on her face and an invitation to do it again in a few weeks. When we piled back into my baby (Mercedes-Benz W126 SEC coupe, by the
way. Fuck yeah.) and got on the road, I said, "You're pissed."
The muscle in his jaw twitched. "Why did you even come if you were going to be somewhere else the whole time?"
Once I started the car and got us moving, I said, "I wanted to see your mom. I don't think she noticed."
"I did."
"I'm sorry. I wanted to talk to you about it. I needed to."
"They're jerking you the fuck around, Jamie."
Which was a fair enough cop, really. But even if it was belligerent, I did need his opinion, needed his outsider's point of view on the proposition before me. Not to mention there was no way to hide something that had this much effect on my life from him, of all people. Even if I wanted to try, which I really, really did not. "The latest is that Margaret thinks I should pay Mae a visit."
He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and buried his hands in his face. "Fuck."
"It could be a way to get to the bottom of this stupid—"
"Why the hell is it your fault if some delusional fucking debutante fixated on you? She doesn't even know you."
"Whatever happened isn't her fault. It's her mother's fault. And my mother's."
"So let them fix it."
"I can help. I should help. Mom was so freaked out last night. I've never seen her—"
"Jesus, Jamie. I know other rich people. This is not how they do things. Even actual princes get to pick who they marry these days." His glare burned right through me. "Why else would she have done it? Why else does some jack-off pop a bunch of pills and claim it's all for the love of a goddamn stranger?"
"That's what I have to know."
"What if that's really why she did it?"
I swallowed hard. I had to consider it; I'd since gone back to my Sent folder and checked out my last e-mail. In a certain heightened state of panic and madness, it might've been possible to misinterpret what I'd said as an "I need you now" or "I need to get out of this now because I hate you." But it would take a seriously unbalanced mind to think of it as either. I'd been vague not only out of politeness but because I'd assumed we were in agreement. I had not, however, been alarmist, for fuck's sake.
Thing was, if this was really happening, if Mae had really put herself in the hospital, well, she was clearly not so balanced.
I didn't believe it, but I had to prepare myself for the worst. Therefore, I had to admit, "Then it's kind of my fault too. If I'd just come out to my mother sooner, she would've handled it with Margaret."
"Do you even hear yourself?" His voice went up at the end. He paused, hands clenching into fists, and visibly gained control of himself. The pitch and volume lowered substantially when he asked, "Do you actually have no idea how insane this is? It is batshit insane, Jamie. You always fucking let them drag you into their melodrama, and it's like watching you submit to emotional blackmail. But this…this is a whole new level of batshit."
My mind fluttered to come up with the proper terms in which to couch things, how much I could say, how much I couldn't. A full silent half-minute later, I felt as if my head might explode. I stared hard at the abandoned country road stretching out before me, put my foot down harder on the accelerator, tried to take comfort in the soothing hum of the engine.
But it was no good. All I could get out was, "So, are you trying to say I should never have told you about it?"
I felt the glare again, this time even hotter. "That's really how you're going to play this?"
"Play? Is that what you—"
"Yes, Jamie, play. It's always a play with you. You pull me just close enough that I start to think I know you, and then some fucked-up thing happens that shows me that…that there's a goddamn glass wall between me and who the fuck you really are. Then you start the fucking play so I'll forget it's there until the next time something happens."
"Kellan—"
"I don't want some dumbfuck excuse." He turned his glare forward, and I could see him out of the corner of my eye, twitching, fuming. "You say you have all this respect for my intelligence—well, act like it. If you go to California, I'll have to either assume that you've gone completely out of your mind or that you're not telling me the whole story."
I gripped the steering wheel hard, gritting my teeth.
"So if you have a better explanation for why you're considering this, for why you even give a shit, you better get it together and tell me." He was mostly grumbling under his breath when he said, "The shit I put up with…"
Well, if it was so awful, "Why do you put up with it?"
"I ask God that question every night, James. When he gets back to me, I'll let you know."
Verbal evisceration, as only Kellan could deliver it. Cold settled over me. He looked out his window, chewing on his fingernails, jaw twitching. I squeezed the steering wheel and tried not to scream.
He was right. I had no counterargument, no possible explanation that could satisfy—
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," he said out of nowhere.
This was not a curse; this was a prayer. I looked out his window, down one of the little dirt cross streets just past a crumbling red-washed barn and saw exactly what had inspired it. One little hatchback and one big old Ford truck slammed into a twisted pile of metal. There was a teenage-looking kid just outside the open door of the truck.
I jerked the car off the road, heart in my throat. We were both out of it and running for the accident without another word. Now it was obvious the truck had been coming out the open barn door and the car blazing along the little dirt road toward the highway. It had been T-boned for its trouble, the passenger side bent inward and completely mangled.
"Oh shit, there's a kid." Kellan took off after that announcement, and he got to the crash about ten yards ahead of me and looked in the backseat. Sure enough, I heard someone crying in there. Kellan opened the door before I could say anything; a little boy spilled out. There was a woman strapped into the front seat. She was still.
"Don't let anyone move!" I shouted.
The teenager who'd oozed out of the truck was hammering at a cell phone and sobbing.
I ran to his side, asking the most useless question imaginable. "What happened?"
"She's not moving, man," he blurted, speech thick with panic. "There's no signal. No fucking signal."
I grabbed him by the shoulders, checked out his eyes. "Are you hurt? Look at me. Look me in the eye. Are you hurt?"
He held my gaze; when I let him go, he stood straight, shook his head. "No. No, man. I'm fine. Just—"
"What's your name?"
He replied.
"What's the date?"
"What?"
"The date, tell me the date."
He did.
"Ears ringing?"
"What? No. What the…?"
I checked my own phone, just in case. He was right: no signal. I pointed down the road. "See that house?"
He looked past the crunched grill of his souped-up truck. The big old farmhouse was at least a quarter of a mile down the stretch, but it was the only one in sight. "Yeah."
"Go there. Call 911. Now."
He stood a little straighter, nodded, and took off at a sprint.
The little boy had returned to the backseat but only halfway, choking on sobs, red-faced. Kellan turned around, panic in his eyes. "Jamie, what the fuck do we…?"
I checked out the woman without moving her. No visible bruises, no bumps, no blood, but she wasn't breathing. She was warm, but if there was a pulse, it was incredibly faint.
I closed my eyes, let my electricity take over in that subtle, unquantifiable way, and felt for her. The only way to explain it is like…every human being generates an electromagnetic field, but we awakened have a special organ, one we can control, just for that purpose. Part of being extra-strong even for an electrical manipulator is that I can kind of push my field and feel for it in others. And, thanks to training, find spots where it's strongest or being generated.
There was electrical activity in her, but it was about to die. If s
he went without oxygen to the brain, it wouldn't matter so much if we aggravated a spinal injury or not. Split-second decision. I said, "Help me."
We got her out and on the ground. I wasn't even thinking, just started delivering CPR. Kellan tried to soothe the little boy, who was up on his feet by then, walking back and forth and moaning. I heard Kelly saying, "Sit down, please, sit down. If your neck hurts…"
I counted it out, breathed for her, counted it out again. "He almost to the house?"
"Still running," Kellan said, voice tight. "Please, kid, come here. What's your name?"
Middle of fucking nowhere. By the time the teenager called 911, how much of her would be gone? By the time an ambulance made it…
I paused briefly to feel her carotid—something there, faint, dying again. I reached out, sensed the electrical impulses in her, but they were weak and fluttering.
A shiver began down low in my spine.
I stamped it out, crushed it with a ten-ton anvil, and said, "Kellan, keep him busy. Turn him away. You too."
"What?"
"Please, just do it."
"But—"
"Now."
I put both hands on her chest, this time up higher and to her left side, let the electricity sing through my bones, measuring, careful. So fucking careful. It had been too long since Dr. Mehlman's special awakened lecture on defibrillation. Obtain a shockable rhythm in the heart, then—
I let it go, a single charge, fizzling blue around my hands and into her, deep. She bucked. I checked, and there was no change. Again, palms against her chest, closed my eyes and let it amp, just a notch or two more. One, two, three. She rocked with the fizzle of electricity; I pulled it in tight, wrapped it up, checked her pulse. One more time. One more time, don't think about it; don't think if this doesn't work…don't think, just do, just do—One, two, three.
She twitched, then gasped, lips grayish pale. Her chest rose, fell.
"Blanket," I said, putting two fingers against her neck again. The thump of life was there for sure now. Slow, slightly irregular, but there. "Forgot to bring the kit. It's in the trunk."
Footsteps behind me, Kellan saying, "No. No, just stay in the car, Andy. Stay in the car, okay? I'm coming right back." And then he took off like a track star.
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