“I turned the ringers off.”
“Fuck.” His brother sounded weird. Broken.
Severin held the phone away from his ear, letting his index finger hover over the end call button. Whatever Church had to say it was bad, and he didn’t want to fucking hear it. This was what happened when you let yourself care about people.
He swore and put the phone back to his ear.
“Did you hear me?”
“No.”
“I’m flying in to see you tonight.”
“No.”
“Sev – we need to talk.”
“Just tell me who.”
Church’s silence said everything that needed to be said.
“When?”
“Last night. Late.”
Of course. He’d probably been balls-deep in a woman while his mother lay dying.
“I don’t want to see you.” He punched the end call button.
The ground shifted strangely under his boots and he sat abruptly. He rose and walked a few feet. Sat again. His legs refused to obey him. Nerve endings all over his body prickled, numbing his legs, his face. His vision wavered. He got his legs under him again and staggered into the forge. He put his phone on one of his anvils and smashed it with a hammer, then stared at the pieces for so long his eyes hurt.
After all the promises she’d made, she’d left him.
Church’s mom, Church, and now Sutton. Gone.
What was wrong with him?
Why did everyone leave?
He’d known he’d pay the price for what he had with Minnow, but he’d thought she’d be the one who would go.
Now he had her and Rodrigo. That was his whole world because he’d gotten greedy. Now he had no family left. Again. Gone.
One of the memories came of The Man with the big fingers and stinking breath fighting to pry open his mouth. Telling him to stop acting like a baby.
Suffocating.
Mother being angry. Telling him he was bad.
The tall servant and the black car.
The dream that came again and again, but hadn’t begun as one.
He shoved those thoughts back behind the gate he never unlocked.
People went through worse and never complained.
He was walking in the woods, not sure how he’d ended up there. His legs shook, but if he stopped he’d never get up again. Deeper he went into the woods. Deeper. Cold permeated his flesh, got into his bones. They felt as hollow as the rest of him. People kept trying to convince him they could be trusted, but reality always intervened to make them liars, even if it had never been their intention.
Maybe if she’d come back when she was supposed to, she wouldn’t have overtaxed herself. Maybe he would have noticed something was wrong and got her to the hospital on time. Although he didn’t know the story – didn’t want to know. It could have been an accident rather than illness.
Either way, she was gone.
She’d told him she loved him so many times, but if she’d really loved him she would have figured out how not to die. She’d let it happen because she was tired of living with his bullshit.
Thoughts flew through his mind, stupid, disjointed.
He’d trusted her more than anyone in the world, but in the end even her best intentions hadn’t been worth much. Empty promises. He was alone, had always been alone, would die alone. Getting close to a woman who’d been old when he’d met her had been stupid, but she’d loved him like a son. She’d been his mother. The third mother who hadn’t thought he was worth sticking around for. The third mother he’d exhausted.
He was too needy – too impossible – but he didn’t know how to be different. It was too late now anyway.
How was he supposed to function without her?
Had she known she didn’t have long left? Had she been hiding things?
Is that why she’d insisted on Minnow?
Frozen fingers gripping craggy rock, he climbed the cliff that overlooked the lake. Once on the precipice, the wind tore at his clothes and hair, but he needed to punish his body to keep himself from slipping into the weird numbness that wanted to shield him against the ugly emotions. When was denial supposed to happen? Shouldn’t he have questioned whether this was real – how Church was sure?
No. He’d known this was coming from the day he’d met her.
Now, if Minnow left him, he might as well disappear.
The water beckoned, cold and unforgiving. It would punish his body more than walking or climbing. More than the tattoos and piercings. He could throw himself in. He might die if he hit wrong. He might die of hypothermia.
But then, that wasn’t what Sutton wanted for him. She would smack him for thinking it – especially because of her. There had been enough of that thinking not long after she’d become his mother. He couldn’t do that to her even if she wasn’t around to have to deal with the aftermath.
And Minnow. He had to take care of Minnow.
He had to keep her close.
*
Church came, of course. He’d always been a man of his word, even as a boy. Like Sutton, he never left Severin alone no matter what he did or said. Until they both had, one after the other.
His brother’s eyes were red, his dark skin blotchy from grieving, like Minnow’s was. The two of them had found him in the woods and forced him to come back even though the whole house whispered with the spirits of dead mothers.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Church said, his voice thick. “I can’t even think about going through her things tonight, but I can’t leave it for you, Sev, and I can only stay until the night of the cremation.”
“You can leave it. It will stay like that until you have time to come and take what you want.” Severin shrugged, ignoring the hot meal in front of him and nursing his beer instead.
“No. I know you. I’m not leaving it all for you to deal with, or the next time I come everything will be gone.”
Severin inclined his head. True. Sentimental things made him uncomfortable and he rushed to get them over with. When Church’s mother had died, Church had lingered over every little thing, reminiscing. It had made Severin profoundly uncomfortable, like picking and picking at a scab. Dwelling on unpleasant feelings only made them worse.
They cleared the dishes together then Severin went out to the forge, needing to get away from Church’s storytelling and all of the emotion he and Minnow were emitting. It felt as if their emotions were beating at him. Controlling himself all evening and blocking their sorrow had been exhausting.
He had only enough time to kindle the fire in the forge before the outer door swung open. Church came in, stomping and blowing in his hands.
“You can hide out here if you want to, Sev, but sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with this.”
“I’ve dealt with it,” he said coolly. “I’m not the one who keeps crying.”
“The fact that you’ve shut yourself off means you’re not dealing with it.”
His brother sat on one of the stools and leaned his elbows on the work table where he often went down on Minnow when she dared to follow him out – which was pretty much daily. He was starting to think oral sex wasn’t an effective threat.
“This is the third mother I’ve lost. I’m getting efficient.”
“The fuck you are. You haven’t dealt with any of them.”
“People will always leave, Church. It only hurts when you let yourself believe they’ll stay.”
Church drummed his fingers on the table, his forehead creasing. “If I would have known she was going to visit her sister for so long I wouldn’t have left when I did.”
“Oh, please. I don’t need a babysitter.” Severin poked at the fire, stoking it higher and adding bigger logs. “I definitely didn’t need a nanny anymore.” He shrugged, watching the flames lick up a particularly dry log. “People die.”
“Of course people die, but without loving people what the hell is the point of all this?” Church sighed. “You can’t keep yourself detache
d from everyone like you do. It’s not healthy.”
“Oh, and crying like a baby over Sutton is healthy?” Her name came out as a growl, but he pushed away his mental image of her face, and the last words she’d said to him when she’d called the day before. “She was an old woman. We knew she was going to die sooner or later. Shocker. Old woman dies. Someone call CNN.”
Church’s gaze hardened. “Be a dick about Sutton. Be a dick to me, if you want. Just try to be nice to Minnow. Maybe we let you down, but she seems pretty set on sticking around.”
“She should go too. Rodrigo likes her. Maybe he’ll take her.”
“Oh for fuck’s sakes. You can’t hand her off like a pet.”
“She is a pet.”
Church slammed his hand down in frustration. “You’re going to do with her like you do with everyone. The closer she gets, the harder you’ll test her. Eventually you’re going to push everyone away, Severin, and you’ll end up having a lonely fucking life. I’ll always be around for you, but that only does so much good.”
So Church didn’t trust that she’d stay either. Had she been confiding in him? Was she already on the verge of leaving? Maybe she’d been planning to leave when Sutton came home and now felt obligated to stay.
Yes. That made sense.
Anxiety gnawed at him. He didn’t want her to leave, but the feelings he had for her were one-sided, just as he’d suspected. Now Church would leave and Sutton was gone, and Minnow was as good as packing her bags. He’d be alone in his tomb of a house and he’d have to be okay with that.
He was a grown man. Grown men weren’t supposed to need anyone. He’d gone out of his way to find ways to be alone in life, so why did the idea of being completely alone leave him with a vast, bleeding emptiness?
If there was no one to acknowledge his existence, would he disappear? He’d always been out of step with the world. Maybe he’d never been real.
A loud clapping sound drew him back out of his thoughts, and for a moment he was disoriented.
He was staring into flames. He was at the forge. Church was there.
“Severin, stop it!” Church said, his voice sharp. “You need to grieve. You can’t let yourself disassociate after I go because Minnow won’t know how to get you out of it. And so help me – I will call the fucking police to bring you to the hospital if you go too far down the rabbit hole this time.”
“You have a life to get back to and enough people to take care of,” he replied, remembering enough about normal human interactions to give his brother a reassuring half smile. “I’ll be fine.”
“My God, Sev. You’ve never been fine.” Church rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re the only family I have left in the world, and I need you to be okay. Maybe if you just talked to someone –”
The old argument and was still going nowhere.
“Some things become more real when you say them out loud. Poking a wound with a stick doesn’t help it heal.”
“Cleaning it out does. Talking can help with all that shit you carry around. If not me, and not a counselor, why not Minnow? Rodrigo? I don’t know – maybe...”
“If you send me another fucking journal for Christmas we will have words.”
Church chuckled, but it was a sad sound, then his expression sobered. “I can’t believe she’s gone, man. Christmas.” He shook his head.
Sutton loved Christmas – she’d always decorated the hell out of the house and cooked for an army – bought them all the ridiculous things mothers bought their grown sons. New socks, the latest gadgets. She even knitted them ugly scarves.
A lump tried to form in Severin’s throat, but he swallowed it down.
“We’ll figure it out. Unless you’re not coming?”
“Ilse and I both got a week off. If you don’t let us stay here, we’ll camp out on your doorstep.”
Severin nodded, not really believing him. Something would come up. He’d probably never see his brother again. Maybe he’d die as soon as he left to go home. It hurt, but he shut off his feelings about that. If he’d learned anything in life, it was that there was nothing he could do to make people stay.
“No more Christmas scarves,” Church murmured.
“You hated those.”
“Well, we both did, but how many women would teach themselves to knit just so they could make hideous scarves for ungrateful teenagers who kept insisting they didn’t need a mom?”
She’d made them new ones every year out of some sort of need to keep them warm and safe. The scarves had taken on a whole new level of jocularity when Ilse had started to come for Christmases. She called their scarf modeling antics Nordic skiing porn. They now had a whole shtick that went along with the scarves, including calling each other Sven and Bjorn, and throwing around skiing-inspired sexual innuendo. Sutton would always roll her eyes, but she laughed as much if not more than the rest of them.
As much as she’d arrived in their life as hired help, Sutton had made them a family again.
If there was one thing Severin could trust, though it was that all good things in his life came to a precipitous end.
Minnow had made him happy. Sutton had been taken in exchange. Some people would argue that those were coincidences, but he knew better.
He’d been stupid to think otherwise.
Chapter Thirteen
Severin stopped talking the day after Sutton’s cremation – pretty much the moment Church left, as though holding things together for his brother had taxed him to the point of exhaustion. Although he hadn’t shown much emotion, she’d thought maybe he was working through things in his own way.
Now, though, he’d sit alone by the hour, staring off into space, his expression grim. At first she’d given him time, taking care of the cooking and the house, fielding phone calls, and sitting quietly with him so he didn’t feel alone. It was hard to know if she was helping, though. He ignored her, never making eye contact, and rarely seeming to notice anything that happened outside of his own head.
Church kept calling – he’d gotten home safe, and was struggling with his grief and the demands of the new job, but he had Ilse there to help him. It was weird how because he was one of the only people she spoke to in a day, he’d gone from stranger to friend, and now almost to family. She missed the daily calls from Sutton too. She always had nuggets of information and wisdom for Minnow to turn over in her head during the quietest times of her day, and now she’d lost that source of insight. Rodrigo had been with them for the ceremony when Sutton’s ashes had been buried, but work was busy, and sometimes a few days would pass before he was able to call.
Two weeks in, she’d almost given up on getting Severin back. Emotionally, he’d walled himself off somewhere she couldn’t get to. It hurt that he wouldn’t even speak to her.
How long could she stand by a man who was this messed up without jeopardizing her own sanity? Living with him now was like solitary confinement. She’d gone into town a few times, just to get out, but every time she left, she felt like a traitor. She was worried about what he might do.
After taking a bath and finishing off a mystery novel, she went looking for Severin. He’d been sitting in his study most of the day, but when she went to check on him, he was gone.
Distant clattering led her downstairs. Clad in only her robe, she followed the sound, calling for Severin. He didn’t answer.
A blast of cold air brought her to the double doors leading to the backyard.
Severin was there, doors propped open, dragging a familiar wooden dresser outside.
She clutched her robe more tightly around herself as the wind whipped at the hem.
“What are you doing?”
He ignored her, hefting one end of the heavy wood, and wrestling it out the door in an impressive display of muscle.
“You’re moving the rest of her things out now? It’s dark.”
When he didn’t respond, she closed the doors behind him and ran back upstairs to get dressed. In jeans, a sweater, her coat and boot
s, she left her room expecting to find him in the driveway, only to meet up with him where the servant’s hallway met the main hallway. This time his arms were full of other things – pictures, books, and a few trailing pieces of clothing.
“Where are you going with that? Don’t throw out pictures!” Horrified, she plucked a few from under his elbow, then an album from the crook of his arm.
He didn’t deign to reply, striding down the stairs and out to the grounds as though he hadn’t noticed her. In the distance she could see a bonfire glowing from the other side of the trees, where the fire pit was. Had he set Sutton’s beautiful wooden dresser on fire?
She trotted after him, grabbing pictures and papers as they fluttered out of his overfull grip, not sure if he’d let her keep the things she thought she was saving from him.
Sure enough, the fire pit now had a lovely wooden dresser over it, fire licking up the sides as though the lacquer was a delicacy. He threw his armfuls onto the smoldering pile. A bottle of perfume smashed on the rock surrounding the pit, and the flames burst with new energy.
“Why?” she asked, grabbing yet another picture that had escaped the blaze. When she looked at it in the firelight two little boys covered in mud were grinning at her. Severin and Church. Her heart clenched.
“You’re burning the pictures of your childhood?” she asked, aghast.
“You saved most of them, but that’s enough now,” he said, his voice rough. The fact that he’d said anything was a relief after the days upon days of strictly observed silence. He stalked past her, back toward the house. She followed him, stashing the pictures under her bed in her room while he was distracted with his mission. It felt strange standing in Sutton’s room, watching Severin go through her things. He wasn’t sorting. He was just dumping random items on the bed and gathering them to take outside.
She looked quickly around the room, but wasn’t sure what was important. No more pictures were visible, but there were other things – children’s art projects Sutton must have saved from Church’s mom’s collection, the apron Sutton wore when she cooked, a handmade quilt.
“She doesn’t have other family who might want some of this?”
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