Page 44 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
She winces. “Yeah.”
I have walked every inch of that clearing in every possible weather, mood, and time of day, and I’ve never, ever seen a door behind the altar. So why does the idea of it raise goosebumps along my arms?
“Hmm.” But I don’t say anything else about it and neither does she.
I set down the book and we walk downstairs together, Sir James running ahead of us, and then wheeling back, and then running ahead again.
“Also I didn’t mean to pressure you about the gala,” Poe says as we reach the door. “If seeing Auden is too painful, then I understand. I just—surely there is some way you can stay close to each other? Even if it looks different than you thought it would?”
I kiss her.
I kiss her because I love her, and I love her hope, and I can’t bear to snuff it out.
But I know the truth, and the truth is that there is no staying close to Auden Guest.
You either fall at his feet or flee into the hills. That’s it.
I walk home.
The walk itself is very easy—a mile of barely used country lane, lined by ancient hedges and frowned over by enormous, creaking trees. There’s some hills—but where aren’t there in Dartmoor, honestly—and there’s the occasional walker using the lane to jump onto the next section of public footpath, but other than that, it’s an easy, lonely heaven. When I was a boy, I liked to pretend that I was on my way to the Prancing Pony; when I got older, I used to put on my headphones and listen to all sorts of sad and wistful music and imagine myself in a sad and wistful music video. Now I see it as Dr. Davidson might see it—a lane following the route of an ancient road, which follows the line of an even older path. An artery running from the valley’s heart out to the village, a thread connecting the sacred to the profane.
How did Poe’s mother see it, I wonder, the lane which ribboned through the trees to her eventual death? Did she know? Did she have an inkling the last time she came here? Was there a part of her that knew as she walked over the bridge and into the world of Thornchapel that she’d never see another dawn?
And my own mother? How many times must she have walked down this road?
?a tiny me skipping or sulking by her side—and had to pass the turn for the estate, had to listen to the whisper of the little streamlet guarding the old house from the rest of the world?
Was I conceived after a walk down this lane? Did she walk back to the village afterward feeling happy? Ashamed? Hopeful? Ralph was a monster, and my mom was perfect, and so how did they come together? How could it ever have happened?
There’s some halfhearted drizzle by the time I get to the house, enough to make all the rooms gloomy and gray, and by the time I take off my jacket, kick off my boots, and hunt down an apple to eat, I feel that dull ache in my chest again. Those blunt scissors around my heart.
Snip snip snip.
I poke around my mom’s office for a minute or two, not sure what I even want to find, and then I spend an embarrassing amount of time looking at the picture of Richard Davey on my mother’s desk, too shy to actually pick it up. He’s gingery and red-cheeked and grinning. If I concentrate very hard, I can remember clambering over him, hugging him, pulling on his beard. I can remember the sharp, painty scent of him; I can remember how he used to draw me robots and mermaids whenever I asked, which was often.
He loved me.
And I know, in an abstract sort of way, that Richard is still my father. That Ralph’s DNA can mean as little as I want it to—at least when it comes to how I think of my family and who raised me.
But it still feels like something’s been ripped out of my hands, something I didn’t even know I was supposed to hold onto, and now I can never get it back.
Suddenly I’m backing away from the picture, I’m pressed against the wall, I’m sliding down to the floor and staring at the half-eaten apple in my hands like it holds all the answers. Like it can reassure me that I was loved and that I deserved it, and that those robots and mermaids and cuddles were given out of anything other than pity.
I wanted to do this, but later, because it’s too early, it’s still so early in the morning in Mexico City. But I can’t stop myself from finding my phone and pulling up Ana María’s number. She’s a vampire, though, so maybe she hasn’t even gone to bed yet. Maybe she’s still awake, curled up on her couch with her latest paranormal romance and a cigarette.
I press call and then feel hope and dread both as I hear her pick up.
“St. Sebastian, if your mother were alive to see how you neglect your family, you know what she’d say.”
“Ana María,” I say in Spanish, trying to sound normal and soothing and not at all like I’ve been in hell the past two days. “I’ve been busy. I work for my uncle here—”
“I know all about you working for your uncle,” she interrupts. Ana María is the kind of relative that knows everything—even when you’d rather that she not. “And I know you call your grandmother and grandfather almost every week,” she goes on, “but you can’t call me once in an entire year?”
I could point out that my grandparents helped raise me and also that Ana María is only a cousin—my mom’s cousin at that, which makes her like a second cousin. Or a cousin once removed or something. I could point out that I’m calling her now, so it makes very little sense to scold me about not doing the thing she wants me to do while I’m actually doing it.
But I want her help, and also I can’t help but like her. She may be bossy, she may mail me selenite wands and abalone shells and smudge sticks, but she’s also funny and generous and loves all the same books I do.
Also I’ve spent the last three months doing breathlessly filthy things out in the woods, so I’m the last person who should judge about abalone shells.
