Shadow & Soul (The Night Horde SoCal Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Yeah.” The sound of that simple word was surprisingly close, and he turned to see that she had come right up to him. She was smiling up at him, her eyes understanding, like she wanted him to know it was okay he didn’t like her art. He still felt bad about that, though.

  He put his hand on her waist. When they’d gotten out of bed, she’d pulled her weird t-shirt back on. It was sleeveless and almost as long as a dress, black with a big white skull on the front. But the skull was made of flowers. She really liked things to be made out of parts of things they weren’t.

  He’d been surprised by the way she’d been dressed when she’d come up to her door. The Faith he’d known had been a jeans-and-t-shirts girl, sweaters and hoodies in the winter, the same pair of scuffed-up engineer boots no matter what. In Madrone, she’d been wearing baggy sweats. The Faith who’d come up those stairs, though, had been dressed all in black, in that t-shirt, a leather biker jacket, and the kind of tight, stretchy pants that women called leggings—but these had laced up the front, showing a swath of her legs all the way to the bottom of that shirt.

  And her boots—like combat boots but covered in metal studs. Her makeup was dark, too. She was almost punk. Or Goth. One of those. She looked good, really good. Gorgeous. Just different, in a way that disquieted him. Like she was dressed for battle.

  It was like her art, he thought. He didn’t like to think that she was angry or defensive. Faith at seventeen had been open and confident. She’d been happy, despite her frustrations with her life. If she wasn’t now, Demon felt pretty sure it was because of him.

  “What are we gonna do, Faith?” he asked, because he couldn’t say those thoughts, and he’d been quietly staring down at her for too long, and creases had formed on her brow.

  She slid her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest. “Be together.”

  “How?” He kissed the top of her head.

  “Do you know why I was in Madrone?”

  “Hooj said something was going on with your mom.”

  “Yeah. She’s in the hospital. She had some kind of episode and got hit by a car.”

  “Fuck!” He leaned back and tilted her head up to look at him. “She okay?”

  Margot Fordham was someone who’d remained on the edges of his life. She’d moved to Madrone with the club, and she made occasional appearances at the clubhouse or at Hoosier and Bibi’s, or at Bart and Riley’s. He did all he could to avoid her. His sentiment toward Faith’s mother would have been hate if his own guilt would have cleared enough of a path for it to get through, but he didn’t exactly wish her ill. Not exactly.

  “They think she has Alzheimer’s. I think it’s pretty bad already. She didn’t tell anybody she was having trouble.”

  “Jesus, Faith.” The woman he knew was vibrant and put together. He didn’t think of her as old, certainly not old enough for that. He thought of the burden that could mean for Faith, and his arm tightened around her waist.

  “Yeah. I don’t think Sera’s going to come home at all. I’m going to have to take care of her. I was struggling with all that, leaving this life to take care of her when she doesn’t even like me. But if I have you, I think it’ll be okay. If we’re good, I can work the rest out.”

  Demon’s heart felt tight. “What are you saying?”

  She looked up at him. “I came home to figure out what to do. I think I know. I’m going to pack up some things and go back to Madrone. I’ll take care of my mom. And I’ll have you. I’ll really have you.”

  He lifted her off her feet and held her close, the way he always had, and she fitted against him the way she always had. “Yeah, you will.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Faith stared at the thick stack of pamphlets Dr. Tomiko had handed to her, one by one, as she’d talked. Information about the medications she’d prescribed. Information about occupational and physical therapy regimens and programs. Information about how to make a home safe. About in-home nursing and assistance. About adult daycare programs. And long-term residential programs.

  The doctor had sat with Faith and Bibi for a long time, describing the diagnosis and prognosis with conscientious care. She’d answered Bibi’s questions. Faith hadn’t had any; she was too dazed, even though she’d expected the diagnosis, to think of any question except one: Why?

  Stage Four Alzheimer’s. There were only seven stages. Her mother had likely been declining, and compensating, for years. Maybe since Faith’s father had been killed. Not even Bibi had known.

  How could Bibi not have known? Faith turned to her mother’s best friend. “You saw nothing before now?” She tried to keep accusation out of her voice because she didn’t feel accusatory. Curious, but not accusatory.

  But Bibi’s eyes narrowed a little. “It’s been different for us the past few years. Since Blue died, and everythin’ changed for the club right after. You were gone, and she lost Blue, and Sera went off to New York. It was a lot of loss for your mama in just a few years. She pulled back. We didn’t see each other as often, and when we got together, there was just somethin’ in our way. Not keepin’ us apart, just not lettin’ us as close. She wouldn’t talk it out, and I thought she was mad about the club. I guess, thinkin’ about it now, after hearin’ all this, maybe there was shit I missed. Shit I thought was nothin’, just Margot bein’ pissy, or distracted, or I don’t know. Maybe it was signs that she needed help.” Bibi dropped her head into her hands and sobbed, “Hell, Faithy. You’re right. How didn’t I know?”

  Faith put her arms around Bibi. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to sound like I blame you for anything. I just can’t get my brain around all this.”

  Bibi sniffed and sat up, wiping her tears away, careful not to smudge her mascara. “Okay, darlin’. How do we handle this? We need a plan.”

  “This is for me to handle, Bibi. You do enough. I’ll…I guess I’ll move into Mom’s house.” The thought of living in that dreary box with a woman who was losing her mind made Faith’s stomach hurt, but she didn’t see another choice. She’d convert the garage into a studio, maybe. That could work. She’d contact the home nursing service and get some help. That could work.

  Bibi grabbed Faith’s chin and gave it a shake. “Don’t you be a martyr, Faith Anne. This is family. Margot and you are family. You are not in this alone. We take care of each other. So, we’ll make a plan.”

  Liking the thought of having a support system, one she knew and understood, people who knew her mother and could understand Faith’s worries and frustrations, Faith swallowed back the lump in her throat and nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Don’t you thank me for doin’ what I should do, baby. I love you. You’re back home now. We’ll make your mama’s life as good as we can. We’re gonna make it through this and be okay. Okay?”

  She nodded again. She even believed Bibi. Because she wasn’t alone. She had her family, and she had Michael, too. With Michael, she could almost imagine a future in which living in Madrone was her best-case scenario.

  “We should go in and see her.” Bibi’s voice didn’t project a lot of enthusiasm for that idea. Faith’s mother was lucid today and had talked to Dr. Tomiko already. There was approximately zero chance that she would be glad to have visitors. And, Faith thought, even less chance that she would be glad to hear the plan.

  “Yeah. Together.”

  Bibi stood and held her hand out to Faith. “You know it, darlin’. Together is how we go.”

  Margot was lying with her eyes closed when they came into her room. What Faith noticed next was that the arrangement of flowers she’d picked up that morning from the gift shop downstairs—nothing fancy, just a dozen daffodils in a green glass vase, but daffodils were her mother’s favorite flower—were gone. It had been a random impulse to buy them, a half-considered attempt to start a détente, but Faith was still hurt that they had been discarded already. When she moved toward the chair nearest the bed, she saw a small wedge of broken green glass on the floor next to the bedside table. She
had an image of her mother, no longer restrained, sweeping the flowers off the table.

  That hurt more.

  But she shook it off, and she and Bibi sat side by side.

  Margot sighed. “What do you want?” she asked, without opening her eyes.

  Bibi answered. “Dr. Tomiko talked to Faith and me. I’m so sorry, baby.”

  “Not your problem. Or hers, either.” She hadn’t yet opened her eyes.

  “Mom, I’m here.”

  “I know. I don’t know why.”

  Bibi reached over and squeezed Faith’s hand, and then she did something that Faith would cherish until she died. She stood up and leaned over the bed, getting right in her mother’s face. “You listen here, Margot. This is me. I know you. We have been friends for almost forty years, and I know everything there is to know about you. I know what you hate, what you love, what you regret. I know what you’re afraid of. So you can lie there and be a cold bitch all you want. But you are losin’ your mind, baby, honest and true. Bein’ a bitch ain’t gonna change that truth. You have this one chance to settle things up before it really leaves you. I love you too much to let you fuck that up. So here’s how it’s gonna be. Faith, because she is the good girl you raised, is here to move in with you and help you. I’m not sure you deserve that, but you’re gettin’ it. Hooj and me, and Connor, and the whole club family, we are here to help you.”

  Now she opened her eyes. Faith, still seated at the side of the bed, couldn’t see into those eyes, but she could see the rage on her mother’s face as she glared at Bibi. “Help me? You mean watch me drool and piss myself. I don’t think so. I don’t need help to do that. I damn sure don’t need hers.”

  Bibi smiled and brushed her friend’s blonde hair back. Margot knocked her hand away. “That’s a good show, baby. But I know you know you need Faith’s help. I also know you don’t think you deserve it. Good thing no one here gives a damn what you think.”

  “What about…where’s…” Margot stopped, and everything about her attitude changed with a blink. Her expression went slack and then became worried. “Where’s…the other one?”

  Tears pricked at Faith’s eyes when she realized what her mother had forgotten. Her welling eyes met Bibi’s—she was just as saddened.

  “Sera, Mom. You want to know where Sera is?”

  For the first time since she’d come into the room, Faith had her mother’s attention. Margot turned and looked at her, without recognition, her brow furrowed. “Sera? No, that’s not right. My daughter.”

  Daughter, in the singular. “Serenity?” Faith guessed, using her sister’s full name.

  Her mother smiled, relieved. “Yes! What about Serenity? Is she here? Who’s picking her up? I need to call Blue.”

  Dr. Tomiko had said that stress could trigger lapses. Faith hadn’t expected it to happen so abruptly, in the middle of a sentence like that.

  Looking plenty stressed herself, Bibi patted Faith’s mother’s hand. “I’ll handle it, baby. You just rest.”

  “Thanks, Bibi. I don’t know what I do without you. This damn leg is really cramping my style.” She patted her cast absently and closed her eyes.

  Bibi smiled down at Faith, her mouth trembling. “C’mon, honey. Let’s start working all this out.”

  ~oOo~

  Bibi and Faith sat in the hospital cafeteria for a couple of hours and pored over the pamphlets the doctor had provided. Then they both had whipped out notepads—Faith’s on her phone, and Bibi’s a little spiral-bound journal from her purse—and divided up the tasks. They had a few days before Margot would be released. In that time, they’d have to get a lot of things set up for a new life.

  The first item on Faith’s to-do list was to call her sister. So, after Bibi left to head home and take over Tucker so Michael could go to the clubhouse for their Keep meeting, Faith sat in the cafeteria, which was starting to fill up with dinner-seekers, and dialed her sister’s number.

  She expected to leave a voicemail, but Sera answered. “Faith? Hey, what’s up?”

  Faith and Sera got along, but they had never been the kind of sisters who were good friends. They were much too different in personality and interest for that. They were so different that they had barely competed. They hadn’t even had much of a rivalry about their parents’ affections. Their mother had preferred Sera, and their father had preferred Faith, and everybody had just sort of accepted that as the way it was supposed to be. Until Sera, three years older, left home. That was when things had gotten really dicey between Faith and Margot.

  When Faith left home, she and Sera began keeping up a casual correspondence, talking maybe four or six times a year. As far as Faith knew, her sister had never told their parents where she could be reached. They had that much trust between them, anyway. And after they’d both gotten out on their own, Faith had come to know that Sera’s feelings toward Margot were less than completely devoted. Their mother’s demanding kind of love had been its own burden. Until the end, Faith had had the better deal. She and their father had been legitimately close. They’d understood each other.

  Faith would never say it to her sister, because there was nothing productive in the observation, but she thought the same was true between her mother and sister. Though that relationship had been fractious, Sera was, in fact, quite a lot like their mother, despite being an up-and-coming international finance executive instead of a retired porn star—and, in general, a much nicer person.

  “I have a diagnosis. It’s Alzheimer’s.”

  “Fuck,” her executive sister muttered. “How advanced?”

  “Stage Four, which is the first stage of real impairment, if I understand everything right. Her doctor talked to me and Bibi for a long time. It’s a lot of information.”

  “I’ve done some research, too, and that’s how I understand it. What about her leg?”

  “It’s setting well. They’ll release her after the weekend. Sera, I need you to come home. I need help with this.” Faith knew when she said it what Sera’s answer would be. It had to be said, but she and Bibi had started planning with the understanding that Sera would not be around.

  “I can’t, sis. You know I can’t. I can’t just walk away from this job, and I asked for this transfer. I can’t even take time off right now. I’m working on a huge project, and I’m closing on a house, and things are just crazy here.” She paused, and Faith could almost literally hear her dragging the next words out. “But I can cover the cost of a facility. I did a little looking online already. There’s an excellent place right there in Madrone. The San Gabriel Rehabilitation and Care Center. They have a wing specifically for patients with dementia. It’s first-rate.”

  That, Faith had not been expecting. “Sera, she’s still lucid sometimes—maybe even most of the time. We can’t put her in a place like that while she’s still Mom. It’ll kill her.”

  “And you care because…”

  “Fuck you, Serenity. You’re the one she asks for, you know. She doesn’t even want me here.”

  “Then leave. Let her deal with this on her own. Don’t play the martyr with me, Faith. You bailed on the family a long time ago, and I don’t blame you. Maybe I don’t miss her much, either, but don’t think you can slide in now and make me feel like I’m not pulling my weight. Mom made her bed. With both of us. I have a life, and I’m not giving it up. If you decide to be there, then that’s your call. I won’t hold it against you if you go back to Venice Beach and weld trash together.”

  Angry and hurt, Faith just wanted off the call. “Fine. I’ll call you if we need money.”

  “Do that—really, sis. Do that. I’ll help that way. And I can help a lot.”

  “Great. Bye.”

  “Faith, wait. What I said was bitchy, but really think about keeping your life. We owe her nothing.”

  “It’s not about owing, Sera. It’s about…I don’t even know. But I can’t know that this is happening and just go on like I don’t.”

  Sera sighed. “Okay. Then do
what you need to do. Send me the bills.”

  ~oOo~

  That night, Faith went to the Night Horde SoCal clubhouse for the first time. Feeling raw and edgy after dealing with her mother’s news and talking to her sister, she wasn’t much in the mood for a party at all, much less a party at an MC she didn’t even know. She wanted quiet. She wanted to curl up in Michael’s arms and tell him about everything, so she could sort it all out and let him make her feel better.

  They had taken Sly back to her mother’s house and then spent the night together, in his room at Bibi and Hoosier’s. They were both up and dressed before Tucker was awake, so they hadn’t had anything to explain yet to that little guy. Faith wasn’t sure how things would go for them now. She would have to move in with her mom. Michael couldn’t very well move there with her, even if not for Tucker. Margot and Michael would make even worse roommates than Faith and Margot would be.