Nova (The Renegades #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

  An older woman with graying hair answered. She was a little shorter than I was, but not by much, but that didn’t affect the authoritarian way she held herself. She looked at us expectantly.

  “Um. Hi. Do you speak English?” I asked.

  She scoffed. “Do you speak Korean?”

  My mouth snapped shut. “If I spoke Korean, I would have,” I said softly.

  “You look Korean.”

  “I’m American.” The moment it left my mouth, I realized the significance—the difference. Though I might physically resemble this woman and those girls, my culture, my language, my habits were from a world away.

  Her sigh was loud and exasperated. “Then it is a good thing I speak English.”

  I nodded, and Landon wrapped his arm around my waist. It was only then that I realized I’d been shaking. “I know this sounds crazy, but is this an orphanage?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  My stomach sank, and a bitter taste filled my mouth. All of this effort, and now…nothing. “Oh.” Landon’s grip on me tightened, and I leaned on him. I forced a smile to my lips. “Well, thank you. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  We turned and heard her shift behind us.

  “But it used to be. It was converted into a girls’ school in late 2000.”

  I spun back to her. “Were you here when it was an orphanage?”

  She nodded. “I am headmistress now, but I have been here through every incarnation.”

  I smiled, a laugh bubbling up with the hope that filled me. “I know this is a long shot, but my mother was born in this town, and I was adopted. I was hoping maybe you could tell me if it was from here.”

  Her eyes narrowed, darting from Landon to me. “What is your name?”

  “I don’t know the name I had when I was here.”

  She sighed again with the same exasperation. I would have bet a million dollars that she was tough as nails as a headmistress. “What is it now, American girl?”

  “Rachel. Rachel Dawson.”

  Her eyes widened, and she reached for the doorframe to steady herself. “Rachel?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” A feeling bigger than myself crept in, invading every cell until I knew I stood on the edge of something I could not yet comprehend.

  “You should come in,” she said softly.

  I looked up at Landon, and he nodded.

  “You know who I am,” I said to the older woman.

  She nodded. “You’re Seo-yun’s girl.”

  The tea in front of me was cooling quickly.

  Landon sat across from me at the small kitchen table. It was scratched from years of use but still in usable condition and well cared for, which accurately described everything in the building around us.

  He watched me carefully but didn’t push. He knew me well enough to leave me alone with my thoughts. I knew him well enough to know he needed to be let in.

  “I can’t believe she lived here,” I said quietly. Had she done dishes at that sink? Sat at this table? In this chair? Had she worn the same uniforms as the girls outside?

  “You lived here,” he added, sipping his tea from a handleless cup.

  “I lived here.”

  “You did,” Mrs. Rhee said as she came in the door with a file box in her arms. Landon rushed to take the box from her, and she nodded her thanks as he put it on the small table next to the door. “That’s all I have left of Seo-yun’s things,” she told me as she took the seat next to me. “She would want you to have them.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, prying my eyes away from the box. “It’s more than I ever could have asked for.”

  She nodded, openly studying me. “You have her eyes, the set of her chin. Do you have her sharp tongue?”

  A smile played at my lips. “Yes. I think I do.”

  “Good. I don’t remember every baby, you know. Not from those days.”

  “How did you know I was her daughter?” I asked, trying my best to be patient. I felt like I’d found a well of information, but I didn’t want it a bucket at a time—I wanted to drink from the waterfall.

  “Your mother,” she said, looking out the window at the girls who still sat on the bench outside. “She was an orphan. Never adopted, though. She came when I began working here. I was only twenty-five.” She smiled, lost in her memory. “She was a bright child, hated rules—hated anyone smothering her spirit. By the time she was eighteen, she had moved to Seoul. I was happy for her, to see her success. But she came home less than a year later, in labor with you.”

  Mrs. Rhee tilted her head, and her forehead puckered as she remembered. “It was raining, and her time was so close that we could not get her to the hospital. We called for a doctor and delivered you in a bedroom upstairs. It was…long. Difficult.” She looked back at me like she was searching my face for signs of my mother. “You were small for a baby. Early, I think.”

  “And then she went back to Seoul?” I asked, then cursed myself silently. Maybe it was best that I didn’t know. But I was here. I had to ask every question I could think of, because I would never get this chance again.

  Mrs. Rhee shook her head sadly. “She died two weeks later. Blood poisoning, they said.”

  “Sepsis,” Landon said softly.

  Mrs. Rhee nodded. “Yes. But she loved you.”

  My gaze went back to the box on the floor. She was dead. Not that I’d ever been on a mission to find her, but now that mission would never be possible. It felt as though someone had opened a window in a room I thought previously solid, only to find the view was of a brick wall.

  The conflicting emotions gave me whiplash.

  My mother hadn’t given me up because she was too young, or unwed—though she’d been both. It hadn’t been a cultural dictate, or a personal choice. She’d never been given the option to raise me.

  Something about that both killed me—knowing that I would never know more—and yet gave me a sense of peace. I wasn’t unwanted. I’d been loved from the moment I was born, and when my mother could no longer love me, Mom and Dad stepped in and carried through.

  “Did she ever mention my father?” I asked.

  Mrs. Rhee’s eyebrows rose. “She described him as someone who was never meant to stay.”

  My hands cupped the now chilly teacup. “And then my parents came? Adopted me? I know I was really young.”

  “You were. It was the fastest I have ever handed a child over—yet another reason I remembered you. But I placed a call the day after your mother died, and you were gone soon after.”

  “And now you’re a girls’ school, not an orphanage?”

  “Now we educate young women, some of whom are orphans, but we no longer care for babies here.” She glanced up at the clock and gave me a tight smile. Our time was limited.

  My brain scrambled, trying to think of anything to ask. A thousand questions went through my mind, but they all seemed trivial, and everything about this woman told me she didn’t have time for trivial.

  “How is your funding?” Landon asked.

  Her brows lifted in surprise. “We can always use more.”

  “I’ll see that you get it,” he promised.

  She inclined her head but made no other response.

  “What was she like, my mother?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Her features softened, and she reached for my hand. “A lot like you. But something tells me you are a lot stronger. She would be proud of your courage in coming here, happy that your parents have cared for you so well.” Her eyes dropped to the table and then back to mine. “Your mother—your American mother—was so overjoyed to hold you. Scared, but I remember thinking that you would be okay.”

  I swallowed, emotion clogging my throat. “I am. I’m okay. I have a wonderful family.” That’s currently falling apart.

  “Good. She never would have done that to her hair, though.” She motioned to my highlights, and I smiled.

  A young girl came through the door speaking rapid-fire Korean, which Mrs. R
hee answered.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Rhee told us. “I am needed with the girls. Have you gotten what you came for?”

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes flickering back to the box. “More, really.”

  We said our good-byes, and I tried to memorize every detail about the house, the yard, even the street as Landon loaded the box into the back of the SUV. I grabbed my camera from the front seat and started snapping dozens of pictures.

  “Do you want to stay for the night?” he offered as I photographed the house.

  “No,” I said quietly, lowering the camera. “I don’t think there’s anything more here for me. Do you think we can make it back to the Athena?”

  He glanced at his watch. “It will be late, but we can make it.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking one last look at my birthplace. He kissed my forehead and helped me into my seat. With my nerves scraped raw, it made me feel cared for, cherished.

  I was quiet on the drive, and Landon filled the silence with music, occasionally lifting my hand to kiss the back of it. He gave me the quiet and the space I needed while my mind spun in circles.

  He took care of everything—made every arrangement as we returned the SUV and headed to the plane. No security. No TSA. Just Landon, me, and the box that carried the ghost of the woman who gave me life but whom I would never know.

  I buckled my belt and held his hand as we took off, the plane lurching into the sky to carry us back to the Athena.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, finally breaking the silence once we’d reached cruising altitude.

  “Like me,” I said, meeting his worried gaze. “Like me, but somehow more.”

  He brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead tenderly. “What can I do?”

  “Can you grab the box?” I asked. “I kind of want to go through it now. If not, it might sit there until I think I’m brave enough to open it, and that will have made the trip feel like a waste.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, unbuckling. “Why don’t you come back here? There’s more room.”

  I unbuckled and followed him, sitting on the floor in front of the small couch.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded and rose up on my knees to undo the folded sides that kept the box closed. A quick pull and it was open.

  I filled my lungs with a deep breath and dived in. There were a handful of CDs, mostly Korean pop that I didn’t recognize, but some American Top 40, too. A few items of clothing that told me my mother had been shorter than I was, a bracelet and a colorful blanket laid on top of two smaller boxes. I took out one of the boxes and removed the stuffing to reveal its ceramic treasure.

  My throat closed, and my hands shook as I examined the small, smooth porcelain.

  “It’s beautiful,” Landon said.

  “It’s a teapot.” I laughed. It couldn’t have been more perfect in its simplicity, with its long, straight handle and light green shine.

  “I guess you’re more alike than Mrs. Rhee realized.” He took it from me, and I reached for the last box.

  It held only a small envelope with a handful of pictures. My birth mother stared back at me with a smile and my eyes, happiness emanating from her as she leaned against a bridge that overlooked what I assumed was Seoul. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

  By my age, she’d already died.

  There were a few more just like it in different places in the city, and she looked equally happy in all of them. “She was beautiful,” I whispered.

  “Just like her daughter,” Landon answered, sitting closer to look at the pictures with me.

  I flipped to the last one and my breath abandoned me.

  She was held in the arms of a soldier—an American soldier. He wasn’t meant to stay. Mrs. Rhee’s words were on repeat in my head as I stared at her face—and his. They looked so happy, wrapped in each other—it was so right and so wrong all in the same picture.

  “Rach…” Landon said, peering closer. “Oh my God. Isn’t that…?”

  Eyes I knew as well as my own stared back at me, and I was immediately thankful we’d skipped dinner, because I knew it all would have come back up. My finger brushed across the Dawson name tag just above my birth mother’s hand on the army uniform.

  “My dad.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Landon

  Los Angeles

  I rubbed my scratchy eyes. Jet lag was fucking killing me. I glanced at my watch and then blinked. I’d forgotten to set it back to L.A. time, and it was still reading like we were in Japan. We’d only been gone three weeks—just long enough to finish out the term and all but one final a week early. Our Civ papers were turned in, but we had to do a Skype presentation for our final grade.

  It was the only way the Study at Sea faculty would agree to the time off we needed for the X Games. We’d asked for ten days. They’d agreed to seven. Like I was in any shape for the Games. I’d counted on the Nepal trip to keep my physical edge, but I would never regret the trip I’d taken with Rachel in its place.

  It had been the last time I’d seen her seminormal.

  The moment she’d put the pieces together—that her dad was hers biologically—she’d withdrawn. She wasn’t sad, or angry, or sarcastic—she was simply gone. Even sitting in the car next to her now as we drove toward her parents’ house, she was lost in her own thoughts.

  I couldn’t blame or push her. It wasn’t like I knew the appropriate time to let her process a bombshell that big, but two weeks seemed about right. And since I knew she’d asked for both of her parents to meet her at their house, I figured the shit was about to hit the fan.

  So I did what had become my usual these last two weeks—picked up her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “Want to talk about anything before we get there?”

  She shook her head.

  “I wish you would. It’s killing me to watch you go through this and not lean on anyone. Leah says you haven’t talked to her, and Penna says the same. I feel like you’re this bottled-up stick of dynamite that’s going to blow at any minute, and I wish you would talk to me.”

  Even if she blew up on me, it was better than the silence, than being locked out of her head. I had zero clue of what she was thinking. Was she still pissed at me? Still doubting me? Was she just biding her time so she could walk away from me for good? Was all the progress we’d made just in my own head?

  She looked over and forced a flat smile, but her eyes softened. How was it possible to miss someone so much when they sat right next to you? Fear ran down my spine, cold and unwelcome. What if this was her way of walking away?

  “I don’t know what to say to them,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve gone over so many options, and none of them seem to fit. I’m not mad. Okay, maybe a little mad about the lie, but I’m mostly sad that there’s this whole history that I didn’t know, that they didn’t think I was capable of hearing.”

  “Have you ever kept a secret?” I asked as we turned into her neighborhood.

  “Sure,” she answered. “More than my fair share of secrets involved you,” she added with an arched eyebrow.

  My heart leaped at the show of spirit—of my Rachel shining through. “Okay, we’re a great example. At first, we kept us a secret because it would hurt Pax, right?”

  “Right.”

  My gaze dropped to her lips as I remembered those days, the stolen moments, the times I kissed her while my best friend was waiting for her in the next room. Now I had her, but it felt like she had one foot out the door…as usual, and that fucking terrified me. Add that to the fact that I was delivering her to the lion’s den, where her father had successfully ripped us apart not just once, but twice, and I was ready to vomit.

  “Eventually the biggest problem with keeping the secret was that we’d kept it for so long. It was no longer about the fact that we were in love, that I’d craved you since the first time I saw you standing with your dad at the Gremlin booth at the Tahoe Open. The issue was that every day we did
n’t tell added to our sins until they compounded and gained interest.”

  “You think they didn’t tell me because they’d kept the secret for too long already?”

  “I think that it’s worth the thought.” We pulled into her driveway, and the car rocked to a stop. Too soon. I haven’t had enough time with her. I wanted to pull her into my arms and kiss away the confusion on her face, the uncertainty that clouded her eyes, but we hadn’t crossed any sexual lines since Fiji, and I knew she had to be the one to make the first move.

  Maybe it was wrong, or selfish, but I needed her to need me, too. Needed her to depend on me, rely on me, to trust that I would be her safe place if the world went to shit. Trust. Ha. That’s funny. I even sounded sarcastic to myself.

  “When does your flight leave for Aspen?” she asked.

  “When you’re ready,” I answered.

  “What? You can’t wait on me. I have no idea how long it will take to feel like I can leave.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not going without you.”

  She downright glared at me, and I wanted to sing with the joy of it. “And what happens when you miss your events? When you don’t win the prize money you need because you turned down Gremlin’s terms?”

  Unable to stop my hand, I brushed my knuckles against the soft skin of her cheek, savoring the contact. “You’re not a term.”

  “Landon, I’m being serious.”

  “I am, too. What happens if you need me and I’m not here? I promised you that you are my priority, and I meant it. I’m here while you deal with this. I’ll be here when you need me, and I’ll be standing here when you swear you don’t, anyway. If you’re ready to go, we’ll go. If not, then I won’t.”

  She glanced to the open door, where both of her parents stood, looking just as nervous as they should.

  “What time is the flight?” she repeated.

  “I have tickets on a commercial flight at noon tomorrow,” I answered.

  “Commercial?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Slumming it with us normal people?”

  I laughed. “All my extra money went to a private plane overseas. Now I’m on a budget until we figure out how to swing the circuit, since Pax’s dad confirmed that he’s only funding the documentary. You’re worth it,” I promised softly.