Page 8 of Light and Shadow
Chapter Three
Harper
Aaran healed my mother. I’m shaking and have to clasp my hands together behind mom’s back to keep them still while I hug her for the hundredth time in the last hour. I’m overwhelmed with emotions I’m desperately trying to keep inside. I don’t know if the magic will last, but she looks like herself. Hearing my mother’s voice strong and full of wonder makes me want to shout from the rooftop.
Aaran’s eyes are closed still, and he’s slumped in the chair by the window. The sun streams across his golden hair. I want to help him, but have no idea how, so I concentrate on my beautiful kind mother and how her skin is pink instead of gray.
None of this is possible. It’s a miracle to recover from cancer when you’re so close to death. I was prepared for her to leave me. I’ve had a year to get ready. Now everything has changed. My mother is alive, and it’s as if all the suffering and tears never happened. Except they did, and I know how precious life is. I knew before. I lost my father in an instant, but this was different. This was horrifying.
The doctors and nurses all cram into the room, looking at charts and readings. Rather than wait for someone to ask one too many questions, I tell Mom I’ll be back on Sunday. She smiles and waves like it’s a normal day before she got sick.
My heart is so tightly lodged in my throat that I don’t know if I’ll ever get a word out. I want to thank him. I want to rescue him. Instead, I focus on the path to my car and swallow tears.
As he held Mom’s hand, there was a moment when I considered the idea that Aaran might harm her, but my heart told me another story. As he restored my mother’s health, his bright energy faded. I send up a prayer that he’ll recover. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much to me, but it does. “Should I get a doctor for you?”
Aaran’s shoulders slump and his gait drags. “No. The sunshine will be enough to rebuild my strength. It will just take some time.” He gets into my car and closes his eyes.
I sit beside him and start the engine. “Why did you do it, knowing it would make you so weak? You could have died.” I don’t know how I know this, but his sacrifice was greater than he’d like to admit.
Without lifting his head from the headrest, he turns, locking his gaze with mine. His hair falls across half of his handsome face, and the tip of his pointed ear shows between golden locks. I guess the magic he uses to hide them has faltered. His blue eyes are tired, but not as faded as before. “If you cannot help me, Harper, then my world is finished. It will fall into darkness, and everyone I love will die. I will die fighting beside them. I had nothing to lose by giving you your mother back.”
My throat is tight. Rather than face my guilt, I put the car in gear and drive us back to my condo.
At an Italian restaurant and deli a block from home, I stop for food. I don’t imagine there’s much Italian food, if any, whereAaran comes from, but I’m hungry and buy extra in case Mom is up to eating pasta and cheese tomorrow. I pick up soup too.
When I get him inside my condo, the sun is streaming through the slider, so I open it and tell him to sit on one of my lounge chairs. “Do you want chicken soup or to try something different?”
“I want whatever that heavenly scent in the car was.” His smile is a little stronger this time.
My stomach does a little butterfly dance at the sight. I wonder if everyone in his world looks like him or if all the elf women are clamoring for his attention. Once I have the ravioli on plates, I join him on the veranda. “This is called ravioli.”
He takes a long sniff and grins before forking his first bite. A low moan emanates from his throat, and he closes his eyes.
Watching him eat, it’s like I’m experiencing the wonder of pasta, cheese, and sauce for the first time. “You like it?”
“This is magnificent. Do you think they’d show me how to make it?” He practically inhales the rest, and his color starts returning.
Shrugging, I say, “If you ask, Paul will probably show you. He taught me last year.”
Aaran freezes and looks at me as if I’m a goddess. “You make this?”
“I have made it twice to impress dates.” Why that makes me blush, I have no idea. Aaran is not a date. “But since Paul’s is just down the block, I usually let him do the Italian cooking.”
“I would like to make this for my family when I go home.” He takes his plate and mine and goes to the kitchen where he washes the dishes and leaves them in the drying rack. When he returns, his shoulders aren’t so slumped. “Your mother is well liked at that place.”
I nod. “I know you say you saved her because you have nothing to lose, but if you’d sped up her dying instead, wouldn’t that negate my reason for turning you down?”
His full lips pull into a deep frown. “I’m not a monster. Killing your mother would not have gained me what I need, and even if it would, I would have to live with that decision.”
“Maybe you healed her thinking that if my mother was not sick, I would be free to help you.” The sun glistens on the surface of the lake.
“You need her. I care about you more than I should and about her as an extension of that. Why are you looking for some wrongdoing in my actions?”
“Good question.” I close my eyes, and the fireflies behind my lids from staring at reflected light is like fireworks.
“What is the answer?”
“I don’t trust people. In my experience, the ones you can trust die, and the rest use you until they get what they want.” I have no idea why I admitted that to him.
