Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “I tried to heal someone a few years ago.” I’d done it since, with the girl in school, but that hadn’t gone wrong. Not like Louisa’s.

  My statement had her brows rising. “You did?” She winced. “Went badly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not surprised to be honest. Momma said her first healing was the worst. She burned herself out for five years, only managed to get her powers back when—”

  “When what?”

  “When she met her one.”

  I’d already met Adam, so it wasn’t like that would revive my powers… but, did I even want them back at full throttle? Just healing that kid in school had been enough to tire me for a week. Inviting that into my life wasn’t something I wanted, selfish or not, I didn’t want that kind of responsibility.

  Uncertainly, I muttered, “I-I only found out about you because of someone called Lavinia.”

  “Vinnie never could keep her trap shut,” Genevieve muttered, but there was a rueful amusement to the words that told me she wasn’t annoyed.

  “She said Nanny knew her one, but they didn’t marry.”

  “No, they didn’t. She was smart. I wasn’t. It isn’t just his life you’ll ruin if you stay with him, Theodosia.” She peered around the caged walls. “It’s your life too. I’d hate for you to end up a bitter shell like me. Craving the one you lost, the one you hurt by being selfish.”

  For a second, my mouth just worked. I had no answer to that. No answer for that. What was I supposed to say?

  How was I supposed to react?

  The trouble was, I knew what it felt like to have Adam in my life. Not just at my side, but in my bed. In my body.

  It was bliss.

  Until life got in the way.

  Maybe life was the curse, not the trait we had in our line. There was a reason for the saying, “Life’s a bitch and then you die,” after all.

  “I want you to promise me something, Theodosia. I haven’t been a mother to you, because my decisions took that away. I’ll never know you as I ought to, and I’ll grieve that until the day I die—”

  “There’s always time,” I cut in, but she ignored me.

  “Time is something I have plenty of, you’re right. But the truth is, even if we did get to be friends, we’d never have the relationship we were born to have. How can we? I spent all the years I should have been raising you stuck in this place.

  “So, while I have no right to tell you this, no right to ask it of you, I’m going to do it anyway. This is my one and only chance of being a mother to you, and I’m going to ask you to heed it...” She sucked down a breath. “Stay away from him. Avoid him like he was the plague itself, because for you, child, he is. He’s in your blood, and I know how that hurts.

  “We Kinkade women, we were destined to meet our jílos, and we were destined to meet them young, so we know the pain of craving them and never being able to have them, of having to live our lives without them at our side.” Her voice turned lower, and her fingers stopped fiddling with the corners she’d torn off the candy wrappers. “Trust me, Theodosia, there’s nothing more agonizing than knowing your one doesn’t roam this world anymore, and it’s because he perished at your hands.”

  THEA

  “How does it feel, Theodosia?”

  My smile was too big for my face as I pondered the reporter’s question. “It feels like all the years of training, all the years of sacrifice, were all worthwhile.” I lifted one of the medals around my neck, pressed a kiss to the decorated face, and murmured, “More than that, it feels like I’ve finally found my place.”

  “Okay, so I’m curious…” Renee Lisette, the journalist I’d agreed to speak with, tilted her head to the side when I arched a brow at her. “Why did you agree to this interview?”

  “Better the devil you know?” I smiled. “I prefer to deal with people I, at least, have an acquaintance with, even if it’s only small, and you were always pleasant to me.” More than that, she’d never asked me stupid questions at press junkets.

  I appreciated that more than she could know.

  Renee nodded. “We’ve been around the circuit a time or two, haven’t we?”

  “We have.” I beamed at her as I lifted the medals over my head.

  The photographer had insisted I wear them, and though I’d felt like a real ass sitting at a coffee shop table with my six golds, Renee had agreed it looked impressive.

  Whether she was right or not, I’d find out when her piece went live.

  Placing them on the table, I separated them, staring at the gold faces that represented so much.

  Already, the sponsorship deals I was being offered were insane. I mean, I’d been happy before, but with so many in one sitting, I was getting more of those ‘female Phelps’ statements tossed at me.

  Stupid, but not for my bank balance.

  “What do you credit to your success, Theodosia?”

  I blinked at her. “Thea, please.”

  There’d been a time where I’d been Thea only to one person, but that time was no more. Now, I was Thea to everyone. Mostly because it stopped with the questions. I didn’t think Theodosia was that weird of a name, but apparently, I was the only one who thought that.

  “Thea,” Renee amended as she lifted her coffee and took a sip. She’d gone for one that smelled faintly of caramel, and though it was slight, it was sweet enough to make my belly rumble.

  In fact, fuck it.

  I twisted my head to the side to seek out a server, and when I saw one, raised a hand. “Can I have some of the cheesecake, please?” They had images of the jiggly dessert on the window, and I was craving some.

  “With raspberry coulis or without?”

  “With, please.”

  The woman bowed before disappearing, and I turned back to Renee and said, “Death.”

  Her eyes widened. “Huh?”

  “I attribute my success to death.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Well, it depends,” I began with a shrug. “If my father hadn’t died, I’d never have been allowed to compete. At this age, I’d be married and would probably have a couple of kids.”

  “You’re Romany, right?”

  I shot her a smirk. “Like you didn’t already know that.” Everyone had been calling my run of success ‘Gypsy luck.’

  Like there was even such a thing.

  If anything, it worked the opposite way.

  Cursed.

  That was how I felt. But you couldn’t admit to that out loud when you’d just won six gold medals at the most important sporting event in the civilized world, could you?

  “Your father died when you were young, didn’t he?” Renee asked carefully.

  “Yes. My grandmother told me Mom killed herself soon after.”

  She blinked at me. “You sound so matter of fact about it.”

  “Would you prefer for me to start sobbing into my coffee?” My lips curved. “It was a long time ago. For many years, I used to think she was a fool.”

  She jerked back at my words. “That’s not fair—”

  Carefully, I described what I’d been told for most of my life, a story that had been sold to the press long ago by Robert, to stop them from hunting out the details—the truth. Somehow, I had a feeling that truth would be brought into the light now I’d made a name for myself…and that changed things.

  It made me want to control how it was released to the world.

  “My nanny told me about this great love story. She used to say that Momma couldn’t imagine a life without my father in it. But to me, that wasn’t romantic. It was just stupid. If she’d been depressed, I’d have understood it more. If she’d been sick, in need of psychological help, then suicide is terrible. I work with a lot of charities that aim to prevent suicide, especially in kids, by getting them to open up, to talk about their problems. But Momma? The way Nanny told it, killed herself because she couldn’t continue without Father.

  “I guess that’s depression in a way, but to me i
t was a toxic dependency. Especially how my grandmother described it. Like it was a fairy tale. Like she accepted my mom’s suicide because it made sense.”

  The server brought the cheesecake, and though my appetite had soured a little, I’d promised myself as soon as the games were over, I’d try this mofo of a dessert—it was why I’d picked this particular café in the first place.

  So, drooling, I slipped my fork through the thick pudding, pricked it with the tines, then shoved it in my mouth after dragging it through the pot of coulis I’d been given.

  It tasted odd. Good, but eggy. With the icing sugar and the fruit, though, it was great. The whole place was.

  An entire café dedicated to cats.

  I fucking loved it.

  There were cats everywhere, and I’d been especially amused when one particular tabby had insisted on sitting on my knee for half of the photographer’s attempts at a portrait of me. I liked that the first photos of me, post-Olympics, would be that informal. I didn’t have a stick up my ass, and those images would reveal the true me.

  If cats liked me, then I had to be a nice person, didn’t I?

  The tabby was no longer stalking my lap, but she was definitely watching me. A table away, there was a bookshelf loaded with heavy books, and she was perched on a shelf. Her belly was big enough that I wondered if she was pregnant, and how she didn’t fall off the shelf was an engineering miracle peculiar to cats.

  But it had felt good to have her on my knee, and I liked how she watched me now, so much so that it made me question if I could have one when I went back home. I didn’t have a life that involved me being in my apartment that much, but cats were independent, right? They spent a lot of time outdoors.

  It wouldn’t be too cruel to have one with my busy schedule, would it?

  “Thea?”

  Renee reached over and gently patted my hand. “Are you okay? I know we’re talking about heavy subjects.”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking about getting a cat.”

  “A cat?” She frowned, and I got the feeling this interview was nowhere near what she’d expected.

  Maybe she’d thought I’d be a cookie cutter athlete. Spouting about the American dream and my goal to win another twenty medals before I retired. But that wasn’t me.

  That wasn’t Theodosia Kinkade.

  “Yeah. A cat. I’m pretty lonely, I guess. A cat would do me good.”

  “Are you lonely because—”

  “Because my life is training.” I snorted. “Simple. They don’t tell you that when they show us all looking fancy. They don’t tell you about the sacrifice, the blood, sweat, and tears.” My lips curved as I rubbed the face of a medal I’d been working years to gain with my thumb. “I mean, it’s worth it for me. I have these. But for most people, they don’t come home with a medal, do they? They’re winners too. We all made it to this event, we all achieved enough success to get here. We deserve a round of applause.”

  Though I sensed I’d surprised her, she smiled at me. “Do you have any regrets?”

  “Yes.” I took another bite of cheesecake.

  “What are they?”

  The recorder whirred at her side, and I stared at it for a second, wondering how candid I should be when there were other implications that wouldn’t just involve me, so I decided to start off small. “I wish a couple who helped me through some tough times had been there to watch my races.”

  Her eyes widened. “Who were they?”

  “The driver and the housekeeper of the Ramsdens. They died in a car crash a few months before I graduated high school.” My mouth was tight with grief—I still missed Peter and Janice. “There was a pile up in the O’Neill Tunnel. It was a freak accident. No one else was even injured.”

  “I’m really sorry. I can see their passing still affects you.”

  It did. My throat was tight as I muttered, “They were the first kind faces to get me through a tough time. They had faith in me, and I would have liked them to see me coming out on the other side, you know?” More than that, I’d have liked them to retire and for me to help them achieve what they always wanted—to run a bed-and-breakfast in Maine. I could afford to give them that now, but it was too late.

  Death, as usual, made it too late for me to help the people I loved.

  “Makes perfect sense,” she concurred softly, and I was almost amused by how gentle she was being with me, but I was more grateful than anything else.

  Wanting to change the subject from a wound that was still open, I carefully tacked on, “I was a victim of bullying.”

  “I remember. It’s been well-documented in your rise to success.”

  Meaning a lot of journalists had gone out of their way to dig up dirt ever since I’d won my third gold. As I ratcheted up more wins, they’d found more and more dirt to uncover, and because my past was so juicy, there was plenty to find.

  One of the reasons I was doing this interview was to put my take on it. Last night, when he’d confirmed the times with Renee, Robert had told me it was a smart way to control what went out. An interview, one-on-one, talking about what I wanted out there in the world.

  There was a lot of responsibility there. I could really fuck up, change the world’s perception of me, of my people too, and ever since, I’d been thinking about how best to approach the many facets to my history.

  “Well, the bullying was more hazing that went too far. It messed a lot of people’s lives up. I regret that.”

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong. You were the victim!”

  Her shock had me shrugging. “My life has proven to me that sometimes, victims come in all shapes and sizes.” I forked up some more dessert. “So, when Mom killed herself, I thought it was because she was so in love with my dad that she couldn’t face another day without him, remember? Nanny told me that to make me feel better.”

  Renee frowned. “I’m not sure how that was supposed to make you feel better.”

  My lips twitched. “Nanny was a realist. I always thought we moved away because of that. Suicide, in my culture, is a sin, and it taints a household. It would’ve tainted me. Made me unmarriageable.

  “But when I was old enough to look for myself, I went back to where it happened and asked around.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my memories were different than what Nanny had told me.” And I’d been miserable enough to wonder if I was just as bad as she was. As weak. There’d been times after Adam’s marriage where…

  Well, I didn’t want to think about that now.

  “Did you find something out?” she questioned softly.

  “I found out my father, who used to beat my mother, was the victim. So, for me, that’s why victims come in all shapes and sizes. He beat her. I remember it so clearly. He beat her until she could take no more.”

  Our eyes met, and she flinched. “She…killed him?”

  I dipped my chin.

  “Wow.”

  That pretty much summed up my reaction to learning the truth too. A truth that Robert had spent a fortune hiding from the masses with carefully manicured press releases and rare interviews that were engineered to discuss my past in a cookie-cutter way.

  Spreading my hands out, I asked, and carefully didn’t reveal the whole truth as I questioned, “So, who’s the victim? My mom? Married at sixteen, pregnant with me at seventeen, and a murderess at nineteen? Three years of abuse, of cruelty and spite. Or my dad. Spiteful, cruel, abusive. Drawing his young wife into doing something she would never have done unless provoked.”

  Renee dropped her chin as her finger moved to circle around the rim of her cup. “Nothing is ever black and white.”

  “Exactly. My future spawned from that moment. My grandmother took me away to spare me. Mother’s sin was even worse now. I have to assume that Nanny told me she killed herself because she knew she’d go to jail, knew she’d spend a large chunk of her life inside a prison. I understand that more than I do the alternative.”

  “Why?”
/>   “Because if I couldn’t swim every day, just like if she couldn’t sit outside every day, I’d feel like I was dying inside.”

  Shoving the cheesecake away half eaten, I murmured, “The hazing was unfortunate and unnecessary. To get to where I am today, I knocked someone off her spot on the team. My times were impressive, and I just kept on winning—”

  “Is it true you haven’t lost a race you’ve taken part in?”

  I dipped my chin. “Yes. Crazy, but true. Even the relays. That’s why they always put me in last. I tend to rectify other people’s bad times.”

  “Definitely insane, but a testament to your skill.”

  “Maybe.” I pursed my lips. “Maria was jealous and someone, a supposed friend of hers, made her do something stupid.”

  “Is it true they tried to drown you?”

  “Yes. Well, Maria was trying, Cain succeeded.”

  “You almost died?”

  “Would have if a teacher hadn’t burst in at that moment.” My smile was tight. “Cain and Maria were expelled, Maria was charged with assault, but Cain—”

  “Served time for attempted murder. That’s also been well-documented,” she said ruefully.

  “I had bruises between my shoulder blades where he held me down.”

  “Do you think he wanted to kill you?”

  “I think he was jealous.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was the prodigy of the team, and I was taking his place.” I blew out a breath. “It’s a tragedy really. So unnecessary. I was just trying to get out of the pit of poverty I was living in. I didn’t care about any of the crap they did. I just wanted to make something of myself.”

  “But they wouldn’t let you.”

  “No.” Sadness filled me. “I only met Cain a handful of times.”

  “You knew his brother well at that point, though, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did.” Past tense.

  “Is it true he helped get you onto the Almanac Water Sports Team?”

  “He did. He saw something in me that no one else did. And I’d never have met Adam if all that hadn’t happened in my past, didn’t lead to our attending the same charity event.”