by A. L. Knorr
I followed Saxony as she carried four candlesticks on her way back to the kitchen. Handing the dishes to Ainslie, I left Saxony to help her with the last bits and returned to where Liz waited in the hall. She had a finger at her lips as she considered the sculpture of a seated greyhound which Gavin used as a doorstop. I directed her to sit on an upholstered bench against the wall and sat beside her.
"I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you alone." I tucked a hair behind my ear. My fingertips felt cool and butterflies of anxiety fluttered low in my belly. Would she lie to me?
Liz angled her shoulders toward me, her face composed and waiting, hands folded in her lap.
Nothing to be done but dive straight in. I took a breath and looked her in the eyes. "I need you to tell me the truth about my father."
Surprise widened her gaze. "Brent? What do you mean, Poppet? What truth?"
"I have questions. That is, I'd like to know about the circumstances of my conception." I made an effort to keep any accusatory edge out of my voice, and I purposefully chose words that were as close to legalese as I could manage. I hoped it would keep my mother’s hair from standing up. But my cheeks heated and my pulse jumped, and there was nothing I could do about that. Liz and I had been close when I was young, but those days were long past now. I hadn't spoken to her about anything so intimate, well, ever. Even when I'd gotten my period, I had spent more time talking with Saxony's mom, Annette, than I had talking with Liz about it. Liz seemed to prefer it that way.
She let out a scoff of half-humor, half-disbelief. My heart retreated from the sound like a threatened animal. It meant she thought I was being ridiculous. "Georjayna, it’s a little late for this conversation, don't you think? Don't they teach you these things in grade six?"
I counted to five inside my head. "I don't mean how I was conceived, Mom. I mean, the circumstances of my conception. Where you were, and about dad. I want to know about Brent, mostly. Why he left, and who he really was. Was there anything unusual about him?" There, I could hardly get more specific than that without sounding like I really had lost my grip on sanity.
My mother's lips parted as she stared at me. Her expression suggested that I was not only impertinent to be asking, but that I was slightly daft. "Poppet, where is this coming from?"
Trust my mother to answer a question with a question.
"Please, Mom. Just, I need to know about my father. I think you owe me that."
Mom straightened and pulled her shoulders back. Her chin lifted a little. I didn't like the hard look that came over her, like someone had snapped down a shutter behind her eyes.
"I owe you?" She gave me a smile with no warmth in it.
My stomach shriveled. It wasn't just a shutter. It was a thick metal door with a sign in big block letters saying: CONVERSATION OVER.
"Georjayna Sutherland, I don't know what you're implying, but I don't like it one bit. If you have an accusation to make, I wish you'd just come straight out and say it instead of playing games."
"I'm not playing games." Oh, the effort it took to keep my voice calm and ... not yelly. My hands were beginning to quiver. I pressed my palms together and pinched them between my thighs. It was like putting an ice-cube there. The last time I’d been angry with my mom, I’d accidentally put her in the hospital. Her doctor thought she was malnourished and dehydrated, but I knew it was my Wise powers that had drawn vitality out of her.
"You have a funny way of thanking your mother for coming halfway across the world to visit you." Her knuckles had turned white in her lap where her hands were still folded.
"I didn't intend to insult you; I only want to know if there was anything different about my dad. Maybe something about the way you met or how you dated, or ..." I shrugged and held her gaze. I'd not be the first one to look away. "I don't know. Just anything."
My mother was difficult to connect with at the best of times. I didn't want to ask her leading questions; I wanted her responses to come from her own memory.
"Georjayna, you know all this." My mother's voice was like a cool blade sliding up between the floorboards beneath my feet. To my initial relief, she went on, but my relief was short-lived as she proceeded to bite off sentences describing the usual diary entries. "Your father and I met while I was at university. He was studying to get his trade papers. When I became pregnant, we married in a private ceremony. You were born soon after I graduated. Your father worked as a bookkeeper at Harrison's Accounting firm, and I got a position at the law firm. He was a distant father, shirking his duties and not taking an interest in his family. He chose to invest more time playing billiards at that horrible bar around the corner from his office than he ever invested in us. Eventually, he left, and that was it. It was just you and me. Always, you and me. But you know this. You were there."
Disappointed, I began to lose the thread of control I had over my voice. "I was just a kid. I don't remember anything much about him other than playing memory games with him, until he stopped coming over."
Mom crossed her arms over her chest, the gesture like a full stop at the end of a sentence. "Then you remember perfectly everything that's important." She got to her feet. "Now, if you don't mind, I've rudely left Bonnie and Faith with no explanation for my disappearance."
"I'm sure they wouldn't mind you taking a minute or two out to talk to your daughter," I replied sharply.
"I wouldn't call repeating painful details about a past we both endured as 'talking' to my daughter. This has been more like an interrogation."
A hot wire of anger flared in my chest. I'd made every effort to ensure she didn't feel interrogated, but it didn't matter. She saw things the way she wanted to see them. I got to my feet. "I haven't accused you of anything."
"Oh, haven't you?" Mom blinked up at me, arms still crossed.
I stood near her, looking down from my great height, and the perspective triggered a new thought. "How tall was dad?"
"Excuse me?"
"Brent, how tall was he? I remember him as a giant, but all adults seem that way to little kids. So, I'm asking you a completely benign question to which there is only one answer, one simple fact. How tall was my father?"
"I don't know, Georjayna. I never measured him." Liz took a step back and made another of those little scoffing sounds.
I stepped close enough to kiss her forehead and looked down at her pointedly. She looked up at me, expression bordering on hostile.
"Was he taller than me? When you kissed him, did you have to stand up on your toes?"
"This is ridiculous. I can't believe I came all the way to Scotland to be insulted by my only offspring." Liz let out another huff and dropped her arms, they hung stiffly at her sides and ended in little white fists.
All the anger drained out of me, but I wasn't ready to give up. "Why can't you just answer the question, Mom?"
Bonnie and Aunt Faith's voices drifted down the hall followed by soft footsteps on the carpet runner. Neither Liz nor I moved or looked away. We were frozen, our gazes locked like sabers. Not until Aunt Faith appeared in the door, followed by Bonnie, did we step apart.
"There you are." Bonnie sounded delighted to have recovered the lost member of her tour group. "Would you like to see the original Dugal Sutherland in the blue silk room, Liz? I'd be happy to take you back and show you. It's a wonderful watercolor landscape. Very rare."
Aunt Faith's sharp eyes didn't miss a thing as they darted from Liz to me and back again. She frowned, her brow tightening.
"Yes, that would be lovely. Lead the way, and do forgive me for abandoning you." Mom enunciated every word with her crisp, manufactured British accent. She should have sounded Irish, like Faith, but she'd taken elocution classes to train herself out of it. The result was a brisk, aristocratic inflection that reminded me of Queen Elizabeth, whom Liz had always admired. I wondered if it grated on anyone else's nerves as much as it frayed mine.
Mom followed Bonnie, and the two of them began to chat as they went down the hall. My mother l
et out a soft laugh that was so fake it made me cringe.
Aunt Faith touched my elbow. "Everything alright?"
I turned to tower over my aunt instead of my mom. At least Faith's eyes were warm and inviting. "I'm trying to get Liz to talk about Brent without getting her nose out of joint. It hasn't worked, in case you didn't guess."
Faith's fine brows arched high. "Your father? What do you want to know?"
I examined my aunt's soft features, her inquisitive, guileless expression. Faith had never been able to see the fairies, but she knew they existed. She'd allowed Jasher to build a greenhouse to provide a safe place for them to hatch. So fae seemed a good place to start.
"There are fae here, Auntie."
She smiled. "How delightful, I'm not surprised."
Jasher had drawn countless pictures of the fae who had hatched at Sarasborne, the ancestral home Aunt Faith and Liz grew up in. Faith still lived there, and I didn't think she'd ever move. In fact, I had many ancestors who had made artwork of the little fairies that hatched in the greenhouse at Sarasborne.
There was a chance Aunt Faith knew more than she was letting on. Encouraged, I continued, "They're not little like the ones that grow in the greenhouse. They're big. Taller than the average human. They have pointed ears, and magic. Some of them even have wings."
Aunt Faith cocked her head. "Really? Our size, you say?"
In for a penny ... At least she wasn't looking at me like I'd grown a second head. "They live in an adjacent realm. I can't tell my mother this stuff, you know how she'd react."
"Yes, Liz never believed, even while we were children. But what does this have to do with Brent?" She laid a warm hand on my arm and looked up into my face.
"I'm half fae, Auntie," I whispered. "I need to know how it happened. Either Brent was fae, and she knows it and has been lying to me all my life, or Brent wasn't my real father, and she's been lying about that all my life. Either way, she's been keeping me in the dark about who ... what I am."
Aunt Faith considered me for a moment. "I seem to recall that when he finally left for the last time, he left you with a phone number."
I nodded, feeling a draft of cool air wash over me that had nothing to do with a lack of heat in the room. I hadn't allowed myself to consider this option because it was the last thing I wanted to do.
"Why don't you call him? Perhaps he'll be more forthright than your mother."
Numbly, I swallowed, and my vision went fuzzy at the edges. The details of Aunt Faith's face blurred. I put my hands over my eyes and rubbed them.
"What's the worst that could happen, Georjie?" I felt her hand tighten on my shoulder, rubbing to ease the tension growing there. "It might not be a comfortable conversation, but I find that more communication, not less, is the secret to resolving conflict. Even if it’s painful."
I opened my eyes and looked down at my aunt. "If I want to learn the truth, it seems I have no other choice."
Chapter Six
Sitting in Gavin's office with the door closed, I stared down at the crumpled note with my father's handwriting on it without seeing it. Distantly, I heard the sound of conversation from the parlor. Gavin had invited me to use his landline if ever I needed to make long distance calls as he had an excellent service plan, so I’d closed myself in his office in preparation to call Brent. I was less likely to be disturbed in here as I’d trained the family to expect I was doing homework whenever I used his study.
Saxony had gone to shower and unpack her things after the meal, leaving me with a short window of time. I had to do this now, there was no more delaying it. Whatever I learned from Brent meant another conversation with my mom, and it was pretty much guaranteed to go the same or worse than the one we'd just had. It was evening here, which meant Brent would be starting his day. If I waited until tomorrow, I might not be able to slip away. And if Mom and I were going to have a confrontation, it would be better to have it as soon as possible before she had to leave. I didn't want our last words to be spoken in anger. What if ... I shook my head against the thought of failing at my task. The alternative was simply too awful to contemplate.
I lay a hand over the phone's receiver and took a deep breath. Some part of me had known this day would come. Why else had I never been able to throw the number out? There was a chance the number was out of service, but there was also a good chance it wasn't.
If Brent answered, what would I say? What would I ask? I couldn't just blurt out, "Are you fae?"
I turned the note in a little circle on the wooden top of Gavin's desk with my other hand, screwing up the courage to make the call with every rotation. Finally, I picked up the phone with trembling fingers. Afraid of a dead line but also afraid of a line with a voice on the other end of it, a voice I hadn't heard since I was a young girl, I punched the number into the keypad.
A knock on the door made me slam the receiver back into its cradle. "Yeah, um, yes? Come in."
The door opened, and Lachlan's face appeared in the crack.
"Hey!" All of my nerves disintegrated as his smile spread through me. I got to my feet feeling like I was following my heart across the room. Going around the desk, I met him at the door and threw my arms around him. He'd texted while we were eating dinner, letting me know he was running late but that he was excited to meet my friend and family. "I didn't think you'd get here for another hour."
His warmth enveloped me, and some of the tension drained out of my body. I had wanted to do the phone-call alone and hadn't told anyone I was making it. Only Aunt Faith knew. But now that Lachlan was here, I felt nearly overwhelmed by the desire to spill everything to him.
He cradled my jaw as he kissed my lips. In the soft light of the desk lamp, the only illumination in the office, he gazed down at me with gentle eyes, a question in them.
"What are you doing in here? Surely not hiding from your guests?" He gave the smallest of dramatic gasps.
"Of course not, I'm excited for you to meet them. I just ... there's something I have to do." I closed the door behind him and leaned my back against it.
"You okay?" His brows pinched.
"Actually, I'm glad you're here. I've decided to call my father."
His mouth opened then closed as surprise spread across his features. "That phone number you keep trying to throw out?"
I nodded. "That's the one."
Lachlan took my hand. "Why the change of heart?"
I drew him to a chair near Gavin's desk. "My mom won't give me a straight answer about my dad, and Aunt Faith doesn't have the answers either. I don't have a choice."
Lachlan looked bemused as he sank into the chair. I took the one beside him. “Help me out here, Georjie. I haven't seen you since I loaned you my car. The next thing I know some strange man in weird leather trousers is delivering my car to my driveway, sparkling clean and with a full tank of gas. He tells me you're safe in Stavarjak and will be getting in touch with me soon. Then I get a phone call from Bonnie, inviting me to come up to the castle so I can meet your mum, your aunt, and your friend who all dropped in out of the blue. Your mum all the way from Canada, no less.”
I was starting to feel sorry. Given everything that had gone on, Lachlan had been a rock, but he had to be wrestling with his own doubt and confusion. "I know; I didn't know they were coming. It was a surprise."
"And now we're hiding in Gavin's office and you're about to call the father who walked out on you when you were barely out of training pants." Lachlan rubbed the back of his neck. "Forgive me, but I feel like I have whiplash."
"I'm sorry. I know things must seem so weird and disjointed right now." I chewed my lip, not sure where to start. What else could I do but dive in? "On this last visit to Stavarjak, I learned what a Wise is—what I am—and it was a bit of a shock. I mean, maybe it shouldn't have been, in retrospect maybe it should have been obvious. But it still stunned me." I laughed nervously then blurted: "I'm half fae, Lachlan. That's what a Wise is, a fae-human hybrid. There's no way my mother is fae. She's
more likely to be half cat than half fae. So it has to be my father. And I can't help thinking that his nature has something to do with why he abandoned us ... me. If it is Brent and not some unknown ..."
"Whoa, slow down, love." Lachlan's hands enveloped mine. "How do you know you're half fae?"
"Because, I have ears."
Lachlan cocked his head, gaze flicking to my right ear.
"I mean fae ears, Lachlan. Pointy ones."
His brows jumped. "Like Laec's?"
"Yes, only his are sharper than mine."
He took a second to absorb this, then put on a southern drawl. “I don’t see no pointy-ears on you, little lady.”
“You can’t see them because they only manifest in Stavarjak. They don't for Laec because he's full fae. I'm only half, so while I'm here, I look human. But while I'm there ..." I trailed off and put my face in my hands, choking off another laugh before looking up at Lachlan again as I heard myself, how crazy I sounded.
Our relationship was good. I loved him, my heart knew it, and I thought he knew it too. But I'd just told him I was only half human. How was he supposed to feel about that? What was he supposed to think?
"It's okay, Georjie." His voice was calm. "If you're worried about what I'm thinking right now, you can put it out of your head. I'm thinking only about you."
I shook my head at him, feeling a little dazed. "How do you do that?"
"What?"
"Know what I'm thinking before I hardly know myself?"
He smiled, but it was a sad smile. "It's called empathy." He looked over at where the crumpled paper with my father's number on it sat, the only thing on the desk. "Do you want me to go? I guess I interrupted you."
"No, please don't. Now that you're here, I realize what a comfort it is not to be alone."
Some of the sadness washed out of his face. "Alright."
Getting up, I went around to the other side of the desk and sat in front of the old-fashioned telephone. This time, when I dialed the country code and the number, my hands were not trembling. Putting the receiver to my ear, I made eye contact with Lachlan, and he gave me an encouraging nod.