by W. J. May
He stiffened just hearing the words, then nodded.
Aria let out a silent breath, staring blankly into the trees. All she knew about Jason’s heritage was that he was being raised by a single father—who died in a burned-up flat. That’s all she knew, because that’s all Jason knew. She was sure the idea of inheritance had never occurred to him.
Then something else clicked. Something that made it even worse.
“We were all gearing up to go on that big family camping trip...” She trailed off, staring at him in horror.
He flashed a tight smile, then averted his eyes.
“Family being the operative word,” he replied shortly. “I didn’t want to go. The second I got back from Guilder, I asked my dad if we could go backpacking instead.”
At that point in the conversation most people would have asked the inevitable, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ But it was the farthest thing from Aria’s mind. She and Benji were the extroverts, Lily was shy, and Jason was...private. He shared things when he was ready. If he was ready.
Of course, there was one person in his life exempt to such rules.
“Did you tell your dad about the call?”
Jason shook his head, his eyes straying involuntarily to the house.
“I wanted to,” he said softly. “I almost did a bunch of times. There was this night we both got drunk in Switzerland...I almost did it right then.”
She tilted her head, trying to catch his eye. “So why didn’t you?”
His shoulders slumped with a silent sigh as his eyes fell to the leaves. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
Aria fought back a tender smile.
Of course you didn’t.
In the most astronomical of ironies, Jason actually felt protective of his dad. A man who was arguably the most capable person on the planet when it came to taking care of himself.
A silence fell over them as they watched the postman make a wide detour around Julian and Angel’s house, knowing all too well there was a vicious wolf waiting inside.
Finally, after a few minutes, she summoned the courage to speak.
“Then why not ask Gabriel about the property?” she pressed gently. “You wouldn’t have to mention the phone call. And I’m sure he wouldn’t mind—”
“That’s the problem,” Jason interrupted suddenly. “He wouldn’t mind. He’d tell me anything I wanted to know.”
Gabriel’s parenting style wasn’t exactly like the others. She supposed it had something to do with the way he was raised. Gabriel’s childhood wasn’t exactly like the others’ either.
“When I ask about my father—he tells me everything,” Jason continued, freezing a cluster of leaves absentmindedly with his hand. “The good, the bad. All of it. He tells me about their missions together, about the time they worked for Cromfield, growing up in London...”
She gave him a moment, watching the leaves slowly thaw in the sun.
“So, what if you asked about the property?” she asked quietly. “What if you asked about the night of the fire?”
The two of them had broached the subject only twice before. Once over juice boxes in the playground, and again over a stolen flask of whiskey in her parents’ garage. Both times had been equally vague and painful. Both had brought up a sea of hazy memories he’d rather forget.
“He couldn’t know about the property—he would have told me.” He pulled in a sharp breath before forcing himself to continue. “And if I asked about that night, he’d tell me what he always tells me. That there was this big battle, and men were sent to kill my father while everyone else was away. They burned the flat when they were finished. That’s where he found me. In the wreckage.”
Aria turned away with a flinch, trying not to imagine it. She’d once overheard their parents talking about it. He had been hiding under the bed as the house burned down around him. Soot on his face, hands clamped over his mouth. Trying with all his might not to scream.
She scrambled silently for a moment, searching for the right thing to say.
“Well, maybe you could—”
“It just feels like something’s missing, you know?” He leapt to his feet, manically pacing in the grass. “Why did my dad go back to the flat that night? They’d just finished a major battle. They were hurt. What in the world made him walk away from the rest of them and drive to the burnt-out remains of my father’s house? It doesn’t make any sense!”
On the rare occasions he spoke of such things, parental designations were always clear.
Wyatt was father. Gabriel was dad.
Clear...yet things had never been more confusing.
“Well, the whole city was in chaos,” Aria ventured tentatively. “Building collapses, fire raining down from the sky. Maybe your dad was just making sure he was okay—”
“One part of the city was in chaos,” Jason corrected insistently. “My father lived clear on the other side of town. And he was one of the only people not involved in the fight.” He knelt in front of her, staring deep into her eyes. “I’m telling you, Arie, there was no reason for my dad to go over there. Let alone race over straight from the fight. Something doesn’t add up.”
She stared at him a moment, then paled in amazement.
“You want to go over there.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question. A single look at his face, and she already knew the answer.
His eyes danced with anticipation as he slowly nodded.
Oh crap.
“Jase...it was thirteen years ago,” she tried to temper him. “Nothing’s going to be there.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He offered a hand, eyes twinkling as he cocked his head towards the open road. “But there’s only one way to find out.”
FIVE MINUTES LATER, they were in a taxi.
“...can’t believe we’re doing this,” Aria muttered, glaring out the window as the city scenery flashed by. “I cannot believe we’re going this.”
“What?” Jason replied quickly, his foot bouncing with nervous energy. “That we’re sneaking out so soon after getting caught the last time? Or that we’re travelling to the heart of the city to unravel the burning mystery of my tragic past?”
She shot him a look. “I can’t believe we’re taking a freaking taxi when Lily just got a vintage Jag.”
There was a beat of silence, then they both turned to their separate windows.
The address the woman had given Jason over the phone was in the heart of the industrial district—a place that would have given Rae heart palpitations if she’d known her daughter was going there alone. Over half the crime in the city was centered in that single location. To be honest, Lily’s precious Jaguar probably wouldn’t have lasted long. But it wasn’t the neighborhood that had Aria worried. It was the jittery boy sitting next to her. He was almost as jittery as she was.
“What if they’ve built over it?” she asked suddenly.
There was a hitch in his breathing before it quickly evened out.
“It’s been over a decade,” he answered calmly. “I would imagine they have.”
She bit her lip, considering this. “...but what if it’s a sandwich shop or something?”
The taxi driver’s eyes drifted to the rearview mirror as Jason faced her head-on.
“What?”
“I’m just saying,” she stammered anxiously, “if someone’s built a Subway over your dead father’s house, I feel like it’s really going to hurt your feelings.”
A cold silence fell over the cab.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“I’m just looking out for you—”
“Stop talking.”
THEY DROVE FOR TWENTY minutes longer, twisting their way through streets that neither of the teenagers recognized. It was almost disconcerting, given that they’d lived in the city their entire life. But staring out the window now was like peering into an entirely different world.
Gone were the brownstones, and the charming Victorians, and the lit
tle Tudor replicas that littered the streets where they lived. They’d been replaced with uniform tenement buildings, each as grim as the next. Each in various states of disrepair.
Okay, forget Subway. Maybe it’s been turned into a halfway house.
The cab driver glanced back once again, eyes lingering on the wide-eyed, well-dressed teenagers with their noses pressed to the windows. He shook his head with an amused smile.
“Is this some kind of class project?” he asked conversationally.
Jason glanced towards the front. “What was that?”
The man gestured with one hand to the narrowing roads, to the roving packs of people wandering alongside. “Are you kids volunteering? Do your parents know you’re here?”
Bold words, probably meant to be sweet. But Jason bristled at the implication.
“Actually, I live here,” he said loudly. “We’re going to my father’s house.”
Aria shot him a quick look, but stayed silent. The man asked no further questions.
They kept driving for about five more minutes before Jason shot her a sideways glance. Taking in every detail, then letting out a quiet sigh. “You don’t get why we’re doing this.”
Again—not a question. But a single look at her face was enough.
She answered carefully, trying to be honest at the same time.
“I don’t get why you care. It’s a property. You could have done this over the phone.” Or google mapped it.
He shook his head, glancing impatiently out the window. “It’s not the same for me as it is for you, Arie. You were born into this family. I was—”
“—you were adopted in,” she finished evenly. “Just like Gabriel. Just like Angel. Do you think they’re any less a part of things because they came to it a different way than the rest?”
The cab pulled up to the curb.
“We’re here.”
Both friends whirled around at the same time, then froze when they saw the dilapidated structure in front of them. It hadn’t been paved over. In fact, it hadn’t been disturbed in the slightest. If they didn’t know better, it could have caught fire just the previous night.
The cab driver gestured to a keypad, waiting for payment.
“Your father lives here?” he asked lightly.
Jason just stared at the house, unable to answer.
“Keep the change,” Aria said hastily, ignoring the electronics and shoving a pair of bills into his hand. “And...maybe stay in the neighborhood.”
The man gave her a long look, then peeled away the second their feet hit the curb.
For a few moments, they just stared at it. That was all you could really do. Then a glass bottle broke somewhere in the distance, and the sound brought them back to life.
“You ready to go inside?” she asked with forced enthusiasm.
Jason was still frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, pale as a sheet.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Together, they linked arms and headed inside, ignoring the crumbling rafters above them.
Definitely not a Subway...
Chapter 9
It was like stepping into the past. The rest of the world had moved forward, but the little apartment was still trapped in that fateful night. A skeletal monument that neither the years, the weather, nor the restless Ministry of Housing had been able to wash away.
There weren’t many doors. There weren’t many walls. What little there was had been burnt beyond recognition, and large swatches of the ceiling lay in scattered piles on the ground. But it wasn’t the charred sheetrock or scorched floorboards that made the place so sad. It was that you could tell someone had been living there when it all went up in smoke.
A blackened loveseat was shoved into a corner. A decrepit table was struggling to stand on just three legs. Ironically enough, one of the only things completely untouched by the fire was a stack of games by the mantel. Kids games. The kind Aria had grown up playing.
She cast a sideways look at Jason, unable to read his expression.
“You okay?”
He nodded quickly, but his hands were balled into fists. She considered reaching out for one, but a second later he jammed them into his pockets.
“You were right. There’s not much left.”
No, there wasn’t much left. And no, she had no idea what he’d been hoping to find. But the look on his face was more than she could bear, and all at once she was overwhelmed with the desire to fix it. To fix all of it. To do anything she could to make him smile again.
“That’s not true—there are a few things.” She walked briskly across what used to be the living room to grab one of the games from the pile. “I had this one, too.” She lifted the lid and pulled out one of the little figurines. “You know these things are handcrafted? My mom told me you can’t buy it online. You can only get it from this one little shop in London.”
At first, Jason just stared at her like she was crazy. Then his eyes drifted to the toy.
“That’s the only place?”
She nodded casually, watching him from the corner of her eye. “Your father must have gone there. It’s a toy shop. He probably took you with him.”
A subtle shift came over the room. This time Jason’s gaze was absolutely riveted as she walked in a slow circle, looking at all those things he couldn’t bring himself to look at.
“Someone made this.” She held up the tattered remains of a quilt, resisting the urge to wipe off her hand. “And there are height lines on that wall. Looks like you were always tall for your age.”
His eyes tightened but he stayed right where he was, watching as she continued her study.
“Terrible taste in furniture.” She gestured to the hollowed-out loveseat with disdain. “So you guys have at least that in common.”
He let out a hoarse bark of laughter, catching himself off guard. “It’s not terrible taste, Arie. It’s just burned.”
She shrugged as if the distinction hardly mattered. “You say potato...”
She continued circling the room, trailing her fingers along the wall like it was the most casual thing in the world, hyperaware that his eyes were following every move. Since there weren’t too many tangible things to discuss, she speculated about intangible things instead. Wondering out loud if there had been a picture above the mantel, imagining what kinds of plants had grown outside.
With each new pass, she added another layer to the story. Building a fanciful world, where the real one had been stolen. Creating makeshift memories from the ashes and dust. Drawing his attention away from the devastation to the little glimmers of humanity buried underneath.
A broken wash bin beneath the sink became a tub his father used to fill with the hose on the front lawn so that he could play. A dent in the floorboards was from a time he’d been running and hit his head. The chair had always had three legs—they’d rescued it from a garage sale—and the quilt was from a well-wishing neighbor. Not exactly their style, but they felt too guilty to throw it away.
By the time she was finished, Jason was barely breathing. His eyes were closed and he was standing perfectly motionless, waiting for the next line.
But that next line would be up to him...
“So how about it, Alden?” She watched as his eyes snapped open, extending her hand with a tiny smile. “Aren’t you going to give me the grand tour?”
He blinked just once, like he’d surfaced too suddenly from a dream, then a very peculiar expression flashed across his face. There was a suspended moment, where he simply stared into her eyes. Then he took her hand and started walking down the hall.
Aria silently followed behind him, slipping into her fox tatù just to match his pace. He might have been frozen back in the living room, but he more than made up for it now—striding briskly down the hall like he knew exactly where he was going. Not even bothering to glance to the left or right. It wasn’t until he got to the very end that he stopped suddenly, staring at a closed door.
Ironically enough, it was one of
the only doors left in the house. fact that seemed to add to the suspense as they stared at it in silence, both instinctively knowing where it led.
“My name,” he breathed after a long silence. “It used to be painted above the door.”
There was nothing there now. Not unless you counted the rather vulgar graffiti swirled along the sides. He slowly lifted a hand, pressing it open with just the tips of his fingers.
Oh my...
Aria didn’t know how it was possible, she didn’t know how the place hadn’t been picked clean by vagrants and delinquent teens, but it was the only room in the house that had remained untouched by the horrors of that night. There were some scorch marks beneath the door—she could easily imagine how the place must have filled with smoke—but the room itself was unharmed.
Jason slowly walked forward, trailing his fingers along the wall.
The shelves were empty. The drawers in the dresser were bare. It seemed there had been some unwanted visitors after all. But, strangely enough, Jason didn’t seem to mind any of that. He just continued walking in a quiet circle, memorizing every infinitesimal detail with his eyes.
Then he got to the bed.
Aria watched almost nervously as he knelt beside it, looking not at the mattress itself but at the place beneath it. Just big enough for a child to slip underneath and hide.
“Do you remember any of it?” Aria asked quietly. “When Gabriel came in and found you?”
He straightened up quickly, retracting his hand.
“Not really. Sort of.” His hands dug into his pockets. “I had my mom show me once. It was a little hard to watch.”
Yeah, I would imagine...
He’d gone to therapy a few times, not long after the fire. But when your new mother was an expert in memory and your father had been through fires of his own, you were in good hands.
A little shiver ran through him as he took a step back to the door.
“...I think this was a mistake.”
“I don’t,” Aria replied softly, linking her arm through his. “I did when we were driving over here, but I don’t now. I think you needed to come see it for yourself.”
His eyes met hers ever so briefly before drifting to the window.