by May, W. J.
“Shut up,” Rae snorted. “I sincerely doubt Julian would like it if you—”
“Physicality, Rae,” Angel clarified with a laugh, “not brute force. Honestly, get your mind out of the gutter.”
Rae pushed back her curls with a shaky smile and tried to gather herself together. Not the easiest task. Her face was swollen from crying so hard the night before, and as she felt around in her hair she realized there were still leaves from the park and a little shard of plastic from the alarm clock buried inside.
Perfect. A testament to my misery and shame. I’m like a piece of walking, talking performance art.
“Yeah, you look really bad. If that’s what you were wondering.”
Rae rolled her eyes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “Okay, since you’re the only one who’s here, can you just pretend for a second you weren’t raised in a cave by a lunatic and try to show a little human compassion instead?”
Angel leaned back with her hands on her hips. “Okay, first of all—too soon. And second, I know you’re freaking out here, okay? I get it. I get it because I know you love Devon as much as I love Julian. And I can’t imagine losing Julian.”
Rae bit down hard on her lip as another wave of tears slipped down her face. “So, what do you think I should do?”
For the first time, Angel didn’t know quite what to say. At first she had been stern and determined, but the longer she stared down at Rae’s defeated form, the more her eyes shone with gentle pity. “Well, I was going to tell you to get up, stop crying, and pull a ‘Rae Kerrigan’ to fix all this.”
Rae pulled in a ragged breath, keeping her eyes on the floor. “And now?”
“Now…I’m going to tell you to go and fix you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Rae.” Angel frowned sympathetically. “Go get yourself together, find your center. Do what you need to do and go where you need to go. Whatever it is that makes you feel better—do that. ‘Cause you’re in no state to fix anything right now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Julian it’s that you’re the glue that holds this group together.”
Rae pulled in a shaky breath. “Jules said that?”
“It must be true.” Angel shrugged indifferently, but Rae could have sworn she shot her a fleeting smile. “So what’s it going to be, Kerrigan? You getting up?”
The tears didn’t stop. It seemed there was nothing Rae could do about that. But a sudden force propelled her to her feet as she pulled herself together.
Angel might be a bit crazy but she was right about one thing.
There was someone Rae needed to see…
Chapter 15
“Hi, Mom.”
Beth, who had been standing in what used to be the garden, probably taking stock of what was left, whirled around in a cloud of smoke. “Rae?” she asked incredulously, lowering her smoldering hands.
Rae watched her mother’s reaction with a faint smile. Not too many other members of the PTA would throw fire from their hands at the first sign of trouble. She could hardly blame her mom for having skittish instincts. Her run-in with Cromfield had taken a toll.
“How many other people call you ‘Mom’?” Rae asked cheekily, diverting the point of the question to give herself more time.
In the taxi, in the terminal, in the plane, and then in the other taxi, Rae had been trying her best to figure out what to say. Why was she here? What was so bad it had made her literally run away to Scotland? Each time she’d come up blank. And now again.
Blank.
Beth wasn’t fooled for an instant. She threw down the rake she’d been holding at once, stomping through the mounds of dirt to take Rae by the hands. “What is it, honey?” she asked, scanning her daughter’s eyes. “What’s wrong?” When Rae still couldn’t say anything, her eyes scanned the driveway behind them. “Is Devon here?”
It was Devon’s name that snapped Rae out of it.
The second she heard it she broke down into sudden tears for the millionth time, falling to pieces right there on the front stoop.
“Mom…I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
* * *
With the unconditional love of a mother, Beth gathered Rae up in her arms and helped her inside. Once she’d settled her down on the living room sofa, she covered her up with an unnecessary blanket and plied her with hot chocolate and bits of candy until she finally started to come around.
At first Rae had been almost embarrassed. Yes, Beth was her mother, and when a girl went out and lost the love of her life, it was natural to come running home. The thing was that Beth had only technically been her mother for a small amount of time. Rae thought of her as mom, but also thought of her as Beth. It was like she was two different people to her. And just as Beth’s instincts were to whirl around with fire, Rae’s were most certainly not to go running home.
She wouldn’t have even considered it if it hadn’t been for Angel’s unconventional prodding, but the second she had said, ‘Whatever it is that makes you feel better—do that,’ there was only one face that had popped into her mind. Beth’s. Her mom’s.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled, smoothing back her hair and trying not to appear as the broken-hearted teenager she most decidedly was. “I didn’t mean to just drop in on you like this.”
Beth settled herself down on the sofa beside her with a look of surprise. “Drop in on me like this?” she repeated incredulously. “Rae, this is your house. I’m your mother.”
Rae shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, but still. I don’t want to just—”
“Honey,” Beth interrupted gently, taking her once again by the hands, “what happened?”
The worst thing that could happen, Rae thought to herself. The worst thing that could ever happen.
“I kissed Gabriel,” she whispered.
Beth closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Ah. I see.”
“And then Devon broke up with me.”
This time Beth looked a bit more surprised, but she pressed her lips tight, holding her tongue to let Rae talk.
It was a good thing too, because considering how long Rae had been keeping the rant to herself it suddenly came tumbling out of her.
“And it was a HUGE mistake!” she wailed, sobbing once more. “I don’t know what made me do it! I don’t know what I was thinking! Ugh! Except that I do know what I was thinking, and what I was thinking was all wrong! Of course Devon figures us out before I do! He always has to be such a perfect, insufferable, over-achiever. But I can’t even make those jokes about him anymore because he…because I don’t have him anymore!” Her face scrunched up for another long rant as she paused to take her first breath. This must be how Molly felt all the time, this sort of no-oxygen-needed storytelling.
Her mother watched her with sympathetic eyes, which only encouraged Rae to continue her rant.
“And now everything’s a mess! Julian broke Gabriel, Gabriel wants to take off with Angel, Molly and Luke vanished, and I don’t know if they’re mad at me too! And Devon…” She covered her face in her hands and wept. “Mom, nothing matters anymore. It was only him. That was the only thing I ever…and now he’s gone.” She broke down completely, unable to speak.
Beth gathered her up in her arms, rocking her slowly as she whispered soft words that didn’t mean anything specific but helped nonetheless. They stayed that way for a long time, long enough that the short noontime shadows lengthened as the afternoon slowly dragged on. Finally, when Rae was able to catch her breath, she gingerly pulled herself away. Except what she saw almost made her start crying all over again.
“Mom?” she demanded. “You’re…smiling?!”
“I’m sorry, sweetie!” Beth said quickly, clearing her face into the required, sympathetic frown. But try as she might a hint of a smile kept leaking through. “It’s just…and don’t take this the wrong way…but a part of me is so happy to hear you say that!”
Rae stiffened angrily and dropped their joined hands. “Don’t worry
. I won’t take that the wrong way.”
Beth chuckled. “Oh, honey, that’s not what I meant. But you have to understand, when you showed up unannounced at my door, crying like the whole world was about to end…well, with your history there was a legitimate chance that might actually have been about to happen. And when you showed up without any of your friends, looking like someone had torn your heart out, I thought…”
“You thought they were dead.”
Beth nodded with a wistful grin. “It’s just so…nice that you’re actually having some normal teenager problems. As a mother I really couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Rae shook her head with a reluctant grin of her own.
How completely and utterly bizarre her life had become.
She flashed back for a random moment to the girl on the train, a younger version of Rae, racing through the city and across the rolling green hills to see the gates of Guilder for the first time. The girl who marveled out her window at an eagle that was flying with them so close, not knowing at the time that the eagle was actually a boy with whom she would soon share a study group.
How would that girl have reacted to this day?
Would she have been ashamed with the way Rae had handled things? Would she have fallen just as easily into the same common pitfalls of teenage romance? Would she have believed on any level that she would be sitting here, having this conversation with her mother?
But even then, as Rae was soaking in the nostalgia, another thought came to mind. A rather obvious one she was surprised she hadn’t considered before.
Follow that same girl just an hour later. She’d just met Molly, she was walking out of Aumbry House—her new home—when a scream from the construction men working above caught her attention. She looked up to see a plank falling in slow motion towards her. Yes, even on her very first day at Guilder, she’d been about to die.
Then she was in his arms.
Devon Wardell.
The boy who would go on to become her mentor. The boy she would continue to pine after for the next year of her life. The boy who, unfortunately at the time, had another girlfriend.
And in that moment it was as clear to her as it had ever been. The answer she’d been searching for. The intangible reassurance that she was doing the right thing.
Rae had fallen in love with Devon that very day.
That girl had fallen in love with that boy. Before there were masked villains. Before there were sinister agendas and hidden plots. Before any of that—they had loved each other.
There was no weight to it. It was the simplest thing in the world. As easy as breathing.
Devon Wardell was her one true love.
Just thinking the words brought a radiant smile to her face.
And she was going to get him back.
“Mom, I need to use your phone…”
* * *
There was just one problem with Rae’s brilliant phone idea, no matter how flushed with sudden illumination she might be: She and her mom were still in the middle of rural Scotland.
“But how do you live like this?” she demanded, pacing around the kitchen in little circles as she waved her phone above her head. “I mean, what if I had some kind of emergency? How would people even reach you? What would you have done?”
Beth rolled her eyes, leaning back against the counter with a look of strained patience. She had been watching this little dance for a good long while now. “To be honest, honey, if you had some kind of emergency, I’m sure I would hear about it on the morning news.”
“Very funny,” Rae shot back, still holding the phone above her head as she searched for a signal. “Wait a minute! I think I have a…” Her face fell. “Nope. False alarm.”
Beth sighed in exasperation. “Just call him on the landline.”
“I told you, I don’t have his number.”
“Rae Kerrigan,” Beth folded her arms across her chest, “how the hell could you possibly not know your own boyfriend’s phone number?”
Rae bristled defensively. “It’s a generational thing, Mom. Why would I ever need to know it? It was in my phone. That’s the whole point of a phone.”
“Looks like it’s not a very good point then, huh?”
Rae ignored this. “Well, maybe I should just walk into town—”
“Sweetheart,” Beth said coaxingly, prying the phone out of her daughter’s hands, “the sun’s going down. And despite all your generational know-how, I’m fairly certain you don’t know where town is.”
Rae was about to make a point about there being GPS on her phone, but she wisely held her tongue.
“More importantly,” Beth cautioned, “you told me Devon said he was giving you space, right?”
Rae nodded nervously. “Yeah?”
“Well, no matter what he says I’m sure he needs some space himself. You did break his trust with Gabriel, honey. Now, what’s done is done and I understand that, but it sounds like Devon does too. Just trust me; you want to give him a little time.”
Rae nodded automatically before her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wait a minute, what does that mean? Trust you? Did you have some kind of—”
“Let me tell you about another little generation gap, sweetie,” Beth began with a cautious smile. “My generation doesn’t feel the need to share every little detail of their lives like yours does.”
Rae crossed her arms over her chest with a grin. “So you’re not going to tell me?”
“We also don’t post pictures online of our morning toast.”
* * *
Dinner that night was a rather subdued affair. Rae was too nervous to eat much of anything, too busy planning out exactly what she was going to say to win Devon back. Beth was too nervous watching Rae not eat to eat much of anything herself.
All in all, it was probably one of the quietest family dinners they’d ever had. No one revealed any dark government secrets or spontaneously lit themselves on fire or anything. It was one for the books!
Beth went to bed early that night, having agreed to drive Rae to the airport the next morning, but no matter how long Rae lay atop her queen-sized bed she couldn’t seem to close her eyes. There was too much rocketing around in her brain for sleep to even be considered. So at around midnight, moving as quietly as she could so as not to wake her mother, she crept once more out her window and headed down to the barn.
She couldn’t tell you exactly what made her decide to go there. Truth be told, the barn had always given her a weird, creepy vibe, and on most days she hated going in there alone.
But tonight was different.
The longer she’d lain in bed, the more she’d thought about it, picturing the tall oak rafters and imagining the smell of hay. Once her feet touched the ground outside the house, they simply started walking towards it as if a force larger than herself was driving her forward.
She pushed open the heavy oak doors and conjured a candle the moment she was inside. A host of long, frightening shadows sprang up from nowhere out of the dark the second the little flame began to flicker. Rae held it bravely out in front of her as she crept silently beneath the high ceilings, reminding herself with every step that, should ‘monsters’ arise, she had super powers.
When she got to her mother’s bench, she paused.
She blamed this bench for a lot, as silly as that might be. It was the very spot where her mother and father had fallen in love, and thus she owed it a rather lot as well.
For the first time, she knelt down to examine it up close, running her fingers up and down the grained wood. There was nothing remarkable about it. Nothing that indicated it was the location of some massive hybrid upheaval that was still rocking the tatùed world today.
With a little sigh she sat herself down in the center, placing the candle beside her as she lowered her head into her hands. What had she expected to find out here anyway? A secret cell phone with magical reception that would allow her to call Devon despite her mother’s warnings?
She actual
ly laughed out loud, a quiet sound that echoed back softly in the still night.
Just a bench, Rae. Get a grip and go back inside. You have a boyfriend to reclaim tomorrow.
As she was pushing to her feet, her fingers touched something hard. She looked down in surprise, following the groove as it twirled its way into a pattern.
“What the—?” She grabbed her candle and overturned the little bench with a gasp, staring in wonder at the ornate tree carved into the bottom planks. There was something about the arching shape of it that was familiar. Something about its fragile branches and lethal-looking leaves she had seen before.
She must have stared for a good five minutes before it suddenly clicked.
It was a Japanese Maple. Although the wood carving couldn’t depict it properly, she knew that each one of those leaves was a blazing crimson red. It was a shade that made the whole tree look like it had gone up in flames. Her fingers reached out again and traced it gently.
There had been one in her backyard when she was a child. She remembered it because her mother hated the damn thing. It was always dropping leaves in the garden and either she or little Rae would be forced to rake them up. But her father had insisted they keep it. ‘An ode to her mother,’ he’d always called it. At the time, Rae had thought the whole thing was a big joke—an ode to her mother when her mother despised the tree? But now she saw it differently.
The flaming branches and fire-soaked leaves were a testament to her mother’s powerful tatù.
So wait a minute… Rae frowned as she traced the design once more. If her mother hated the tree, she wouldn’t have carved it here. That meant it would have to have been—
“What were you up to, Mr. Simon Kerrigan?” she murmured softly as she pressed her fingers upon the trunk.
But as she did the strangest thing happened. Her finger sank into the trunk.
“Oh shit—”
Before she could call her help, the bench split in half with a loud groan, falling to the ground in two large pieces that rolled to the side.