So instead of digging into my possible half-sister’s tragic past, I find myself in downtown Blackmoor with my mom on a crisp October afternoon, walking through antique shops and small businesses filled with tchotchkes and local art and soaps and other nonsense that tourists love. My mom, admittedly, loves some of it too, scooping up some rosemary-scented goat’s milk soap and a handful of herbal bath bombs.
We visit the small bookstore, where my mother pointedly ignores the romance section until I tell her to give it up already, and just go buy what she wants, and then go have lunch in a small bistro with absurdly expensive, fancy French food.
“I never have anything to spend my wages on,” my mother explains, when I tell her that it’s way too expensive of a lunch and try to pay with my unlimited credit card the boys gave me—although I let her assume it’s my own, andnotunlimited. I don’t know how on earth I’d explain that. “I have room and board, and Mr. St. Vincent pays me pretty well, considering that my rent is part of my salary. So a lot of it is just—accumulating. I can take my daughter out to a nice lunch, at least. Make up for all of the privations when you were younger.”
“I never knew we wanted for anything,” I tell her firmly, and it’s mostly true. As I’d gotten older, I’d been aware of some of the things, of course. But I’d never felt deprived, really. A lot of the other kids at the public high school were in similar circumstances, and the ones who did look down on me for it I just didn’t give a shit about. I hadn’t cared that we were poor. If anything, I think I was happier then than I have been for a lot of the time that I’ve spent these past years in private academies, without a care in the world for money, eating the best food, and sleeping on five-star hotel-quality sheets.
“I’m glad you feel like you had a good childhood,” my mother says wistfully as we leave, heading back to the house. “I always worried you didn’t have enough. I tried. I feel bad that now I have more than I ever did when we were raising you.”
“You and dad loved me, and that was enough,” I tell her firmly. “You were the best parents.”Except for the part where dad ratted on someone and got himself killed, and our house burnt down. Oh, and the part where I maybe have an illegitimate half-sister who also got killed. We still need to talk about that, by the way—
We pick up dessert from a bakery on the walk back, and with every step, I consider more and more just leaving it buried, so to speak. I could do that, after all. I could leave the past in the past—but I know it will eat at me. And more than that even, I need to know everything I can that might be helpful in putting an end to all of this. Understanding the connection between Natalie Browning and me, Jaxon’s ex, will be a piece of that puzzle. I just know it.
The rest of the night is eating our leftovers and our cheesecake from the bakery and watching more cheesy spooky movies, with the fireplace lit and the smell of my mother’s apple cider candles filling the room. I can’t make the words form on my lips or force my feet to go and pull the article out of my backpack.
I just can’t do it.
But the next morning, I know I have no choice. I’m supposed to go back to campus this evening, and I can’t go back without the answers I came here for. I need to know. Mia needs to know. We have to come up with a plan, and for that, we need all the information we can get.
So when I sit down at the table, I spread out the article in front of me so that my mom can see it when she sits down too with her plate.
“I came to see you this weekend,” I tell her gently. “But I also came because I found this. And I have questions.”
She looks at me blankly. “An article about a girl who died? Why would I know anything about that, Athena?”
Her voice is calm and steady. I’d almost believe she knew nothing about it, if not for the carefully blank expression and the way she says my name. I know in that instant that I’m onto something, and I haven’t just come up with all of this in my head.
“Mom,” I say quietly, my breakfast cooling next to me. “I know there’s something to this, and I know you must have at least some answers. This girl, Natalie Browning, has my father’s last name. And she looks so much like me. You can’t tell me both of those things are coincidences.” I take a deep breath. “I know she’s close to my age—or was. So I know there must be something painful here. But I need to know. Please, I know you don’t like talking about these things, but if I had a half-sister who died, shouldn’t I know the truth.”
My mom bites her lower lip, sitting back in her chair. Something hard and brittle crosses her face, and for a moment, I think she might actually refuse to tell me anything about it—about Natalie. But then her face crumples a little, going soft and looking older than her age again, and she lets out a long sigh.
“I really hoped you’d never find out about her,” she says softly. “At least not until you were both adults. And then, of course, she passed away, and I thought you might never find out. That she might just stay your father’s dirty little secret forever.”
That sounds like a cruel thing to say about a girl that’s dead now,I think to myself, but I don’t say it aloud. I can tell from my mother’s expression that there’s something about this that’s hurt her deeply, and I can’t blame her for feeling the way she does, at least not until I know everything.
“Just tell me, mom. Please? I can take it.”
She nods. “Okay. I guess you were always going to find out somehow, eventually.”
And so, with our breakfast forgotten, she starts to explain.
“There’s a reason your father and I weren’t married when you were born,” my mother says slowly. “While we were still dating, when he was first initiated into the Devil’s Sons, he wound up making what he called amistake. I called it what it was—cheating on me. He had excuses, of course. They’d gone on a run to a sister chapter, and the guys had pressured him into sleeping with one of the girls who hung around. He said he couldn’t really say no, that they’d have thought he was a ‘pussy’—” my mother’s lip curls up at the word, a pained, disgusted expression crossing her face at the memory all these years later. It makes me feel bad for dragging it out of her, and I wish that I didn’t need to know, that I could pretend that none of this mattered.
“—and so, he couldn’tnotsleep with her. Of course, the idea of taking her off to some room and pretending and then bribing her to keep her mouth shut never occurred to him. Anyway, when he came back, he was so guilty that he admitted it to me. We didn’t break up, exactly, but we separated for a little while. I stayed at this extended-stay motel in town, and he begged me to come home, over and over. I think I always knew I’d go back to him, but I wanted him to grovel. And grovel he did. Over and over, until finally, one night, he groveled his way into my hotel room, and we—well, we made up. Several times.”
“Ew, mom.” I glare at her. “You were embarrassed that I saw your romance novels, and now you’re telling me this!”
“It’s about yourfather,” she says as if that makes it somehow better. “Anyway. A couple of weeks later, when I’d moved back in, this woman shows up on our doorstep with a positive pregnancy test. Turns out, your father knocked her up. I was really ready to leave him then, but it was too late.Iwas pregnant too.”
Shit.I stare at my mother, speechless. I’d expected something bad, but nothing quite as dramatic as this. I hate hearing this side of my father, and at the same time, I feel suddenly, deeply sad. I’d had a sister, and I’d never known. I hadn’t really been an only child.
“Your father begged for me to stay. He told me that he wouldn’t have anything to do with her, that I, and you, were the only things that mattered to him. I told him no, of course, that he couldn’t ignore his other child too. After a lot of fighting and a lot of tears, I told him we’d find a way to make it work. Your father was panicking—over me, over having two children on the way, over how to pay for it all. But as it turns out, Crystal—the woman he knocked up—had other plans.”
“What do you mean?” My heart is pounding in my chest. We haven’t even gotten to the part about the accident yet, and this story is already insane. “What did she do?”
“She seduced one of the rich guys in town. It didn’t take long—” my mother sighs, looking annoyed. “She was gorgeous, which somehow made it all so much worse. She got with Bryce St. Vincent, some third cousin to Philip. Got him in bed so fast that she could try to pass off the pregnancy as his. She’d gotten someone to doctor her ID and everything, making her name Sara instead, and she made up a whole past for herself that he believed, hook line and sinker.”
My mother takes a deep breath. “Crystal came to visit your father one more time to make it very clear that she’d set up a life forherdaughter, and that he wasn’t welcome. That if he said anything, if he tried to be a part of the girl’s life or blew Crystal’s cover story, she’d ruin his life and ours. It broke your father’s heart because while he didn’t care about Crystal, he did care about his kid. Both of you. But he knew she wouldn’t want for anything, born into the St. Vincent family. He had to protect us. So he agreed to let it lie, and Crystal went off to her pretend life.”