Page 75 of Where He Ended
- Epilogue -
Laiken
There's a deer in thefield.
It's alone, and I wonder if it's a doe without its foal. Is it childless, alone in this world, waiting to meet the perfect mate? As I lie there in the grass just watching it stand on its elegant legs, I think about my own mother.
I was able to meet with her soon after I spoke to my dad. She'd been waiting for me in a much nicer part of the police station. Her long hair was looped over her shoulder in a loose tail. She'd aged some, but nothing like Dad had.
When she saw me she became even younger—like just seeing me had turned back the hands on father time's clock. Her whole face went pink. Covering her mouth, she waited a split second before she threw her arms around me. Her tears soaked my shoulder. Mine saturated hers. No one came along to tell us to stop hugging, or to calm down. No one would dare. Reuniting is always a tender thing, but to be able to touch your mother, or your daughter, after six whole years?
This was an event that had to run its course at its own speed.
It wasn't until we were spent of all our tears that we realized we were kneeling on the floor. She'd clutched my face, touching it over and over, exploring me with her frantic eyes. She didn't question if I was really me. She knew it in her gut. What she was doing was trying to understand everything I'd been through just by looking at me.
I'd taken her hands gently in mine. “No,” I whispered. “You won't find the damage on my surface. It'll come out through long, agonizing talks. But only if you want that. I won't make you listen, if it's too much.”
Her eyebrows gnarled together over the bridge of her slim nose. “If you're willing to tell me, then I want to know everything.” She'd hugged me again, speaking directly into my ear. “Laiken, I missed you every single minute. I couldn't sleep. I barely ate, and only managed it because of Dean. I became some undead excuse for a mother, stumbling through everything from muscle memory alone.”
The wordundeadtricked something off in my memory. “Dracula,” I said, blinking. “You were the one reading it.”
My mother pulled away an inch. “You went to the Complex?”
“Dominic took me.”
Her eyes glimmered as if she's going to cry again. “I wish you hadn't seen that place. Yes, that was my book. I read it over and over. It gave me a hollow kind of comfort.”
She thought of herself like some cursed vampire.She wasn't rejoicing in her new life with just Dean and Joseph. Knowing that eased away the last of my bitterness that had formed when I thought she and Dad had tried to erase me.
“I never meant to take it with me when we escaped,” she said, “But I wish I had. In my rush, I forgot about the photo I kept inside the pages. It was of you and your sister. I used it as a bookmark. Seeing you both gave me hope.”
“Actually, I took that picture. It's in a frame back at the cabin with . . . Kara.” My mouth went slack. Grabbing her shoulders, I squinted into her face. “Mom, did anyone come and talk to you about her yet? No one's told me where she is. If she's still tied up—”
“Tied up?” she asked, her voice rising. “What are you saying? One of the officers came by a little while ago to tell me they'd found her and taken her to the nearest hospital to check her out, but she seemed in good health.”
I breathed out in relief. “If she's okay, then that's all that matters.”
“No, I want to know about this tied up bit.”
Cupping her elbows, I helped her to her feet. “It's long, and I don't want to freak you out.”
Her hands circled mine. “Please, give me the short version. My mind is going wild right now.”
Seeing how desperate she was, I filled my chest with a quick breath. “Dominic's uncle Vahn came after me. Kara tried to stop him, but in the end, he won. He tied her up and left her in the cabin so she couldn't give chase or warn anyone.”
I regretted telling her this when her mouth trembled at the corners. Amazingly, she'd pulled herself together, tightening her grip on me. My presence calmed her. I expected it to be the other way around, but I don't mind. “Vahn. Annie's brother?”
“Yeah, him.”
My mom crinkled her nose in thought. “I'm so sorry that the mistakes of your father's past, as well as my own, put you and your sister in so much danger.”
That reminded me of a burning question. “Mom, did you know about Annie and . . . and Dad?”
Her features smoothed out. She’d let go of me so she could cross her arms into a knot. “Of course I knew. But how did you?”
“She told me.” A finger of cold rolled down my spine. The chill transformed into a full body shiver. Thinking about Annie brought back a parade of conflicting emotions. “She sacrificed herself to save her son. She's dead,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
She closed her eyes and stayed that way for a long minute. “As much pain as she brought our family, I never wanted to hear those words. I didn't know she'd fallen for Joseph when he began seeing me. I only learned when she started spying on us. Your father was especially concerned about her sabotaging us or threatening him with going to the police to reveal what he was doing at the company. She was ready to destroy everything to keep him at her side.” Finally, her eyes opened, their centers tiny pin pricks. She's reliving something terrible. “I thought we'd gotten away. Thirteen years of peace in our little cabin. And then she rolled up in that damn car.”
