Heartless Hero

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  He was still silent. About a foot of sand separated us. Wind whipped his wild, silky brown hair around his sharp, beautiful face.

  “She’s been looking for you,” I said. “You’re hard to find, since she wasn’t the one to give you your name. Hers is Miranda Lemaire, and she lives in town. You can find her online easily. She’s been here the whole time.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something, and my heart stood on tiptoes. Then his eyes lifted over my shoulder, and he turned from me, walking away without another word.

  I looked to where he had and saw my mother. She had black sunglasses on, but her arms were folded, and she was looking in my direction. Theo left because he was protecting me, but there was only one person who could provide such thick armor he’d leave my side. I stared at my mother, a realization curling in my gut.

  I hadn’t been back at Crowne Hall for even an hour before I went to my sister’s room, kicking open her door.

  “What did he give you?” I asked, not waiting for her to let me in. The question wouldn’t stop plaguing me. It felt like it was the secret key that would unlock everything.

  “What could Theo Hound possibly have given you to make you trade your dress and kiss him publicly—”

  I stopped short. Grim was in my sister’s room. Grim, the scary head of four guys who used to sit atop lunch tables, smoking and glaring, scaring teachers as much as they had the student body. Now he led them as the Horsemen gang, controlling any and all crime in Crowne Point.

  Seeing me, Gemma startled. “Abby!”

  Grim, on the other hand, barely reacted to my presence. His dark eyes glanced in my direction, then he moved to leave, brushing past me without a word.

  “I…” I trailed off, noting the item in his hand.

  Theo’s mom’s diary.

  I snatched it without thinking. Keyword: without thought.

  Grim was scary in high school; he was scarier now.

  He was tall, tattoos decorated tan skin spiraling up his neck. Wild, inky black hair fell over his eyes. He reminded me a little of the grim reaper, which was fitting.

  But this was the last piece of Theo’s mom. An item Theo rarely let me see, let alone touch, was in a stranger’s hands.

  “Abigail, stop!” Gemma ripped it out of my hands, shoving it into Grim’s. “Theo gave this to me.”

  Grim turned it over in his hand, then gave me another one of those barely interested looks from down his nose.

  I had to watch helplessly as he disappeared with Theo’s mom’s diary.

  “See you soon, rich girl.” Grim’s smooth, amused voice trickled back. It lingered like smoke.

  Gemma stared after him, lips parted, as if caught in a spell.

  “What the fuck? Was that who I think it was?”

  She looked away. “I don’t know.”

  “Why does he have Theo’s mom’s diary? Why did you?”

  “I told you, it’s what he gave me, and I was trying to pay off my massive, Abigail’s muffin-top-sized debt.”

  Her insult had my Gemma Defenses rising so quick, I nearly didn’t catch the most important part of what she’d said.

  Why would Theo trade the one thing left of his mother so he could lie to me and ruin us?

  “Did he really?”

  Neither Gemma nor I had moved since Grim left, feet planted in her plush rug near the door. I stared in her blue eyes, willing her to be honest with me, trying to trust her despite the rusty beams propping up our sisterhood.

  She slowly nodded.

  Fuck.

  I officially welcomed myself to her room for the second time in as many years, going to her bed.

  “Why did the Horsemen want it?”

  She shrugged. “They don’t tell you that.”

  Gemma had her hair cut cleaned up, and now it sat just above her shoulders. It was all at once chic and grunge, totally in style. I tried not to be jealous, because we were trying to be better about that.

  I fell to my back, head landing flat on her comfy sheets. “The more truth I learn, the more I don’t understand. The lie was easier. It made sense.”

  Gemma had a pretty ceiling with gilded molding and a crystal chandelier. The crystal drops refracted soft, yellow light. I wanted to know everything that led Grim to be in our house, but I knew Gemma wouldn’t tell me anything.

  Of all the people to have it, he was the worst. The one person that couldn’t be bribed. The one person neither beholden to law nor above it, but below it, untouchable in its seedy underbelly.

  “You’re not really going to end up dead? Right?”

  “No.” She laughed. “That would be too easy. I’ll be fine…”

  The way she trailed off had me staring at her.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m Gemma Crowne. There is no one scarier than me.”

  “I’ve kicked your ass a couple times.”

  “You wish.”

  My phone buzzed with a notification, a new email.

  Dear Abigail, we are pleased to inform you you’ve been accepted…

  An acceptance letter to the college of my dreams, for this fall semester. Except, I’d never applied to college. I didn’t know what to do with this information, or how to process it.

  When my mother had thrown all the pamphlets in the trash, a part of me accepted my dream had gone with it.

  There was only one person who knew enough to apply for me, and would do something like this for me. My heart cracked with the knowledge.

  I left Gemma, my head swirling too much to continue talking. I kept thinking why? I was sandwiched between Theo’s cruel deeds and sweet actions, jagged on one side and pillowy soft on the other.

  I went to my room and dragged my box out from its spot. I had one secret left, one neither Mother nor Theo knew about. Inside were pastel beads, beads I should’ve left abandoned like he’d abandoned me. Instead, in my ruined dress, I climbed on the floor, grasping into the shadows, until I’d recovered every last one… well, except for one. I couldn’t find the F for forever.

  And it still ate at me.

  I carried my box to the balcony, swinging my legs over the edge, looking at the pastel pieces. They were all broken apart, but they were still there. That was how I felt. Broken apart, but impossibly in love with him.

  AC + TH

  I traced the letters. I was pretty sure I knew what happened. Theo did what he always did—he protected me. He protected me in the only way he knew how, like the time he tried to get Gemma to tell him he wasn’t good enough for me.

  Theo sacrificed himself.

  When would he trust that he was more than good enough for me? That he didn’t need to keep leaving me? I was the one who didn’t deserve someone like Theo.

  I still didn’t know how he’d protected me, and what made him leave me… again. I pushed the beads around, and they rolled to the unevenly weighted corners.

  There was something that’s been bugging me, something Theo said that has been sticking like a thorn in my side. He said I abandoned him. I would never do that…

  But I knew somebody who would, and seeing her at the beach pushed the thorn deeper. I still wanted to believe my mom loved me, and that love meant she wanted me to be happy.

  Another bead rolled, and I caught it in the middle, holding the square pastel piece between my fingers.

  Of all the things that hadn’t made sense—Theo sleeping with Gemma, Theo stabbing a knife in my open wound, Theo leaving, Theo lying about it all—my mom being the cause fit perfectly.

  Mom was sitting in her favorite room, in a chaise against the now-dark window.

  “Why did Theo leave?” I asked. “All those years ago, why did he go work for Papa?”

  I’d never asked her. I’d never thought to ask her. I saw him with Gemma, and I assumed he didn’t want to be around me anymore.

  “I was protecting you,” she said simply, without looking up from her book.

  I was getting real fucking sick of people protecting me.

&n
bsp; I barely whispered my question. “Is that why he left again? Did you make some kind of deal?”

  She looked up, eyes slowly finding mine. “You were never going to marry Theo, Abigail.”

  I had to swallow every emotion. Rage, betrayal, anger at myself for being so foolish.

  “You were protecting you.” The truth was charcoal on my tongue. “You let me believe Gemma was better than me. You let me believe Theo loved her. No… you made it impossible for me to believe anything else.”

  The pain came out of me jagged and rough, and I stumbled, grasped the back of one of the two wingback chairs between us to keep from falling over.

  “All this time it’s been about you, your insecurity, your need. I wanted your approval so badly it kept me up at night. It destroyed my chance at love, but you never wanted me to win. You just wanted to keep watching me lose.”

  I gripped the wingback until the fibers groaned against my nails.

  “Why?” I probed. “Because I was happy? Because I still had my Theo?”

  Mom looked away. In all my life I’d never witnessed my mother avert her eyes or show any kind of weakness. Her jaw was tight, and she swallowed roughly. For a brief, blinding second, I thought I would see some of my mother’s humanity.

  Real humanity.

  But as quickly as it came, it vanished.

  “That’s quite the story you wove,” she said coolly.

  Uneasy is the girl who wears the name Crowne.

  This fight has never been with Ned. If it were just about that, it would’ve been over already.

  We were all chess pieces fighting to be queen.

  Ned was a pawn.

  It’s a good thing I’ve been warring with the best queen since the day she gave birth to me.

  “I’m not you. I’m not going to let the love of my life go because I was too afraid.”

  She looked up, eyes slowly finding mine. “You don’t get to stay a princess and marry a pauper, Abigail.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be a princess,” I said.

  “You will always be a Crowne, Abigail,” my mother said. “Unfortunately.”

  To be a Crowne was more than a name, it’s blood, it’s the insidious connections laid root centuries before you were ever born. I could change my last name to Squarepants and still be a Crowne.

  “You underestimate me. You always underestimate me. The next time we meet, I will be just Abigail.”

  Her brows furrowed, but I walked out, not giving her a chance to respond.

  I was Abigail Crowne, fire starter, attention seeker, scandal maker. The Reject Princess. Unloved, uncared for, unwanted. There was only one way to dethrone a princess. As my mom said, you don’t get to stay a princess and marry a pauper, and a Crowne without a castle is just a hunk of metal.

  Thirty-Three

  THEO

  The house was inland of Crowne Point, up on a hill so you could still see a brief glimmer of the ocean, like a sapphire line coating the horizon. It was a sprawling mansion, one of the newer ones built in the last few years. When I was a teenager first living with Abigail, this land used to be grass.

  We used to come up here and smoke weed, watching the sunset.

  I was certain I had the wrong name and number, but I’d double and triple checked. This was the home of Miranda Lemaire, my mother.

  I knocked on the door and waited. It wasn’t long before the door opened. I don’t know who I’d expected to open it, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t be my mother. A useless hope borne from the pounding in my blood, a reminder I wasn’t ready.

  Maybe I never would be.

  Just a moment later, the door opened. She was pretty, with pale green eyes and long, brown hair. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I wrote it off as nerves.

  Her lips parted when she saw me.

  A stretched, stiff silence passed.

  Say hi, idiot.

  “You might not know me,” I started.

  She stared at me like I was a ghost. “Theo?”

  “Uh, yeah—”

  She dragged me into a hug, cutting me off. I could count on one hand the number of people who’d hugged me in my life—one, Abigail. I didn’t know how to respond, so I just stayed put, stiffly accepting this woman hugging me.

  My mother.

  After a minute she pulled back, shaking her head. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. I never thought I would see you again. Will you come in?”

  Another moment of silence.

  Come in? I didn’t have a game plan for this. You prepared for nightmares. You prepared for the worst possible outcome. What do you do when your dreams come true?

  “Uh, yeah.”

  She brought me into a sitting room bathed in warm light, and I awkwardly took a seat, perched on the edge. I felt massive on her furniture.

  She was nervous. Her hands in her lap, then beside her thighs, then back in her lap. She proposed tea, and I wondered if it was so she could have something to do with her hands. I said yes, just so I could say something. She stood, walking out of the room into what looked like a kitchen.

  On the mantel were plenty of pictures—no kids, it appeared—and I hated myself for being grateful. Most were of my mom and another pretty woman with silky dark-chocolate skin and braids that looked like a crown, one on their wedding day, it appeared. I knew the woman. Everyone knew the woman. She was Penelope “Penny” Lemaire, the mayor of Crowne Point.

  I realized then I knew where I’d seen my mother before, at a party. The mayor wasn’t always in attendance—for example, a local politician would never receive a July Fourth invite, but no doubt she’d been at a few. My gut bottomed out, realizing I’d once been feet away from my own mother.

  I should’ve pieced it together earlier. Lemaire wasn’t exactly a common surname, but I just never imagined my own mother would be part of the rich and powerful.

  And I would be a dirty secret.

  Again.

  I worked my thumb, waiting for her to politely kick me out, bribe me to keep my mouth shut.

  She came out with a glazed wooden tray holding steaming porcelain cups.

  “There’s so much I want to say to you,” she said. “I can’t shake the feeling we’ve met before. Probably just the guilt.” She gave me a weak smile.

  “I used to live with the Crownes,” I said.

  Her eyebrows raised, and I saw she was making the same realization as I was.

  “I see it now. You and the youngest…” The tray she was holding shook. She set the tea down next to a stack of magazines, and I saw what was beside them: a bound, red-leather book with a burned tree design. The last time I’d seen it I was handing it to Gemma, for whatever reason I didn’t want to think about.

  Now my mom’s diary—her diary—was beating between us.

  She must have noticed me eyeing it, because she said, “You probably don’t remember, but I gave this to you.”

  “I’ve kept it with me for twenty-three years.” Silence engulfed us. When I dreamed of meeting my mom, it was beautiful and rosy, with no place for anger and rejection.

  In reality, all I could feel were my scars breaking open.

  “Why the fuck do you have it?” I couldn’t look her in the eyes.

  “I…I was looking for you. I only recently learned you never went to a family, Theo,” she explained. “I’ve been looking and looking for you, but everyone who was there when I left you at the station was either dead or a dead end. I got desperate. This was my last hope.”

  She caressed the leather front. “I got the diary… I didn’t get you. They wouldn’t even tell me how they got it, or where they got it.”

  I ground my jaw, fighting the urge to stand up and leave, but at least I found my mother’s eyes. Pale like mine.

  “But you found me anyway. You followed my map.”

  Abigail would say it was fate. In her romantic, starry-eyed view of life, she would look at all these coincidences and say it was fate. I got rid of my mom’s diary. I’d chucked it,
assuming I’d cut it and that part out of my life.

  It led me back to her.

  “Why did you leave me?” My pain came rushing out in a jagged yell. “You abandoned me. You just let me go. Now you’re saying you wanted to be found?”

  Her brows caved. “I thought I was giving you a better life.”

  I looked around at her mansion, her beautiful things and apparently perfect marriage to one of the most powerful people in Crowne Point.

  I scoffed.

  “More like you were burying a dirty fucking secret.”

  “I didn’t used to live like this. I was fifteen and poor, with strict conservative parents who promised you would go to a better family if I just let you go. I believed them. Anyone was better than me. I can’t erase what I did. I can’t take back those years—”

  “Would you do it again?”

  Say no. Say you regret everything you did to me.

  “Yes.”

  I stood up.

  “Have you ever done something awful for the right reasons?” she asked my back.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Well… good. If you had grown up in the house I did, with the parents I had, you would’ve.”

  I spun around. “You should’ve stayed. You should’ve kept me.”

  “I wouldn’t have loved you, not how you should’ve been loved. I wasn’t able to love you. Just being there isn’t enough.”

  I ground my teeth, wanting to argue, not knowing how. I’d watched Abigail with a mother who stayed and who destroyed her with it. Which one of us had it better? It was an impossible question to answer.

  I wanted my mother to regret everything.

  To say she was sorry, that if she could’ve gone back in time and made things perfect for us.

  “Where are you living now?” She sounded choked.

  “The motel.”

  She frowned at that. “Are you happy there? Do you…” She trailed off, more lines growing between her brows. “We have a lot of empty rooms in this house. I mean—this is presumptuous. You don’t even know me. You probably hate me. I should be better at this…”