Page 42 of The Light Within

Had his mother’s voice changed, or was it simply that he didn’t remember it properly?

“It’s so good to see you,” she said softly, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You look… well. All grown up. Are you doing alright?” Before Cinn could respond, she continued, “I tried to contact you, you know.”

“What?” This was news to Cinn. “When?”

“It was also around Christmas time. You must have been seventeen.”

He’d spent that Christmas behind bars, but if she didn’t know that part, he wasn’t going to tell her.

“But that stupid social worker! She just made everything so difficult. So you didn’t get my letter, then? I gave it to her to forward to you.”

“No,” Cinn whispered, his eyes falling to his drink. The room went fuzzy at the edges of his consciousness. The lump in his throat came back with a vengeance.

He’d thought about his mother every day at Feltham Young Offenders. Sometimes, he became melancholic, missing her warm laugh and the way they’d dance around the kitchen, remembering their life together through an idealised lens.Other times, he’d worked himself up to fucking furious, angry enough he’d punched walls. Because if she’d had her shit together, he’d never have gotten involved with the crowd one of his foster brothers introduced him to. He’d never have been on that forged-banknotes job. He’d never have been hiding with them in a garden shed, with the police knocking on the door.

Yes, it had been far easier to blame her for his landing in jail than to accept responsibility.

To hear now that she hadn’t completely abandoned him, erased him from her mind like he’d never existed, and had even tried to contact him? It was too much.

The walls of the café closed in further. His breath grew shallow. The coffee cup blurred as the world tilted.

The gold band around his wrist heated, almost to the point of pain.

Calm the fuck down.

His mother carried on talking, but the words were just noise. He pointedly focussed on the bubbles, slowly dissipating within the foam in his coffee. Then, his mother’s reaction be damned, his hand slipped off the table, fingers reaching out for Julien’s. He needed an anchor.

Julien’s hand clamped around his like a vise. Within a heartbeat, he was grounded. The chaos in his mind settled, replaced by a soothing calmness radiating from Julien all the way through him. Every stroke of Julien’s thumb over the back of his hand had his pulse falling steadier and steadier.

“I actually came to talk to you about something,” he spat out, interrupting her. He couldn’t bear any more conversation that skirted too close to his battle wounds. Not today, not this time.

“Oh?” His mum blinked in surprise. “What is it?”

Without any fanfare, he got straight to the point. “My dad.”

“Oh?” she said again, face falling like a house of cards. “Oh.”

“So…” Cinn began. He really should have prepared for this bit. “I sort of live in Switzerland now. In this”—oh, God—“special place. And I found out that my dad was there, too? Just before he died?”

For a moment he held his breath, fearing that he’d got it wrong and she didn’t know his father was dead. But his mother only looked confused.

“Switzerland…” She rolled the word around on her tongue. “What on earth was he doing there?”

“I also found out that we’ve got something in common. That we share the same… ability.”

His mother’s face revealed nothing. In fact, her eyebrows knitted even tighter together.

“You know…” Cinn shifted uncomfortably.Didshe know? “I don’t know what he would have called it back then. How he would have explained it. He wouldn’t have had the right words for it until he got to Auri, just like me. But sometimes I… leave this world, and visit another. And sometimes, I see dead people there.”

There. The words were out. Now he only had to deal with the consequences. Maybe she’d march him up to the psych ward and lock him up.

“Remember after that car crash? When you thought I’d passed out from shock?”

Very slowly, his mother shook her head. “This has always happened to you?”

“Falling in the river set it off. After that, it only happened a few times before I… moved out.”

The loaded silence sat between them.

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