Page 98 of Baking and Angels

Looking up at her savior, her eyes narrowed. “Whoare you?”

“It’s… it’s me, Maman,” he said, his eyes blurring with tears.

Her narrowed eyes narrowed further. “No. No, you can’t be him,” she said, even as her fingers lifted up to cuphis cheek.

“Maman, please,” Rafferty begged, even as she pulled away. “Please, I…” The tears escaped from his eyes as he dropped down to his knees beside the bed. “I’m so, so sorry, Maman.”

Honey set her own hand on hisshoulder.

“You can’t be my son. My son is dead,” his maman said, leaning against the wall so she could look out the small window beside her bed. There was nothing beyond it but void. She didn’t seem to notice. “I failed both my children. I am a wretch of a mother. Count yourself blessed you are not my son.”

Rafferty furrowed his brows as he knuckled the tears away. “I don’t understand,” he said to Honey. “She died before I did. Her illness took her. What is she talking about?”

“Your son is alive, madame,” Honey said, raising her voice to cut through the continued murmurings of the sick woman.

“No, no, he’s not. He’s dead somewhere. And I’ll never know what happened to him. I always feared it. That the gangs would take him away, or the army, or he’d just be killed in the streets for pocket money he doesn’t have, and I would never know. They would just drop his body in some common grave, and I would never see him again.”

Her words shocked him. “I never realized,” he said softly.

“Realized what?” Honey encouraged.

“That my mother was so… afraid for me.” His throat thickened with regrets. “All she ever said to me was where was the money I had earned and that I needed to go out and get a job. I was the man of the house.”

His maman continued to mutter her regrets, and he listened to each one, seeing and hearing her in a new way. “Oh, his toes. I loved his little toes. He was so lively and wiggled so. Oh, my baby son!” Her face melted into tears and wails again.

The world around them seemed darker, but Honey noted it without becoming alarmed. Rafferty could feel the cold despair itching at his skin. It wanted to sink into him, to feast on his energy. And he was tempted to let it, to do anything to ease his mother’ssuffering.

“No, you do not have to do that. Stay present or you will be pushed out, but you are not obligated to give of yourself for her. She will not disappear just yet and it is a drop compared to what she needs. It will not help her to sacrifice yourself like that,” Honey said, as if she could hear his thoughts. Maybeshe could.

“Then what can I do?” His question came out like a plea, filled with his self-contempt at his failure.

“Like I said, stay present with her. Hold space. We can only hope that she will hear our call and open up to us, but it must be her choice, or it meansnothing.”

Then she turned once more to the frail being writhing in her hell. “Madame, I have news ofyour son.”

Rafferty’s maman perked at that statement. “You know of my son? You haveseen him?”

“Yes, madame. He sends you amessage.”

The sickly woman sat up in the bed, like she intended to leap from it. It was the most lively she had seemed yet. “What is it? Tell me!” she ordered with that sharp voice he remembered most clearly, as if she had the authority of a queen. He had found that tone grating in his youth, and he realized that it was another reason he had made the deal with Vassago. To get away from that harsh tone.

Again, Honey was not offended. She only smiled serenely and sweetly, much like her name, and curtsied to the lost soul. “He is a cook in the king’s kitchen, madame.”

His maman’s mouth opened and closed several times, the news something too fantastical to automatically deny it. Then her eyes snapped to him, still kneeling beside her onthe floor.

Rafferty laid a hand against his chest, gripping at his livery. He had been so proud to wear the king’s colors. It should have been impossible for someone like him to have the honor to be one of the king’s cooks. An honor only made possible, again, by his deal with Vassago.

As his mother’s eyes roamed over him, she seemed to finally see him. Really see him.

Then her hand leapt to his cheek as quick as a slap, cradling it. “Mon cœur,” she said, her voice cracking with warmth, sadness, and hope, all wrapped into that one term of endearment. Her other hand joined the first, holding his face, pulling him closer. “It is you?”

“Oui, Maman,” he answered, holding one of her hands, so much smaller than his own. He had been barely thirteen, maybe fourteen, when he had run away from home. His hands had been the same size ashers then.

She examined his livery closer. “And it is true? You are a cook in the king’s kitchen? The king’s?”

“Oui, Maman.I… I am.”

“Oh, my baby. My baby!” She kissed his nose and his cheeks, making him blush even as he hungered for the familiar ritual. How had he forgotten that his mother used to do this to him even when he had gotten older.

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