by Holly Rayner
There was an easy way to end this, and put away her growing, irrational panic.
She dialed his phone.
Nothing. No answer. Straight to voicemail.
Strange. But then, it wasn’t like they’d gotten a chance to plug in their phones the night before. She herself had had to borrow a charger and plug her phone in at work before it ran out of power. Kehlan was probably looking for somewhere to plug it in back at the guesthouse.
She called the bed and breakfast, and Mrs. Haase picked up after a few rings.
“Hey, Mrs. Haase. I’m trying to get a hold of Kehlan. Is he around?”
There was hesitation on the line. Too long a moment of hesitation. And, when Mrs. Haase answered, there was pity in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Paige, but he just checked out this morning. He was in a hurry. Said he needed to go home. Something about responsibilities.”
Paige couldn’t answer. Her heart wasn’t beating. Was she even alive if her heart wasn’t beating? It felt like it was taking too long to start again.
“Paige?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Haase. Thank you.”
She defaulted to polite and chipper, but she didn’t feel like that voice belonged to her. It was some other being, covering for the wreck she was inside. She hung up the phone, and then she was on the ground, not sure how she’d even gotten there.
What was it she had said to him about responsibilities? Why had she said it? What had possessed her?
Paige sobbed there on the floor by the kitchen table. Without thinking, she had talked herself out of the best relationship she’d ever had.
Chapter 20
Kehlan
The flight felt longer than usual, and the plane less comfortable. Everything felt familiar, but wrong somehow. Like the world he was traveling through was only the reflection of the real world in a dark surface. He went through the motions, getting into the airport in the dark of the night, and allowing the one of the family’s chauffeurs to speed them towards the family home. He was certainly in no state to drive himself.
Good, he thought. At the very least, she will die at home. She deserves that comfort. She deserves so much better than what she got.
When they got to palace, Kehlan practically ran through the foyer, stopping to ask a staff member where he’d find his mother.
“She’s in the morning suite, isn’t she? By the garden?”
The servant nodded, and gave a slight bow.
“Yes, sir.”
Kehlan walked solemnly toward the morning suite, his legs leaden and his mouth dry. The hallway was dark and shadowy. The lights had been dimmed. Kehlan couldn’t remember if this was usual or not, but it felt right.
When he got to the suite and stepped in through the door, the first thing he heard was the beeping of the machines. He could have screamed at them. It felt like an insult—these things that were a part of the career he had chosen and that had driven a wedge between them, here are the end. Necessary, sure, but out of place. This was not the dignity in death that his elegant mother should have.
He heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, and it brought him back to the room before him, clearing his eyes. A few of his female cousins were there, by the Sheikha’s bedside. Kehlan didn’t know what to say to them, but was spared the need to figure it out. He must have looked as lost and angry as he felt, for they disappeared wordlessly back down the endless hallway from which he had just come.
And then, it was him and his mother, and the beeping, blinking, offensive machines. Alone together for the last time.
She was sleeping. She didn’t look peaceful. He knew that sometimes dying people didn’t. There was a lot of pain involved, and sometimes that pain couldn’t fully be managed. Not if they were trying to preserve life, so that they could last just a little bit longer.
So that, say, a disrespectful, prodigal son could return.
He sat next to his mother and took her hand in his. The chair was still warm from his cousin, as was his mother’s hand, but the room around them felt cold. Dawn was breaking, and the morning garden would soon be beautiful, positioned as it was to make the most of the early light. But for now, it was only barely lit by the first, weak rays.
He hoped that his mother would get to see the garden in its glory before she went. He hoped she would get to see him before she went.
He was sorry. He needed to tell her he was sorry.
He’d been fighting off thoughts the whole flight over. All the time over the States and over the ocean and over Europe, he’d been telling himself that it was complicated, and that things were complicated between them. He’d told himself that there were many families that were complicated like theirs, and that hopefully he would find the words to speak to her, that were what she needed to hear, in spite of it.
But now, sitting here, looking at her wrinkled hand, he realized that he had been wrong. It was all so very, very simple.
Kehlan didn’t know how long he sat there before his mother woke. The line between waking and sleeping seemed to be a thin one for her, here at the end. But eventually, he realized his mother was looking at him, her eyes open.
“I’m here, Mother,” he said. “I’m here, and I’m sorry.”
She winced, and Kehlan didn’t know if it was the pain, or if it was from the memory of their fight, and what he had to apologize for. He couldn’t do anything about the former, but he could about the latter.
“You were right, and I was wrong,” he went on. “I was so focused on what I wanted to do, I wasn’t thinking about my responsibilities. I will come back. I will do what I always should have done. I will be a good son. I will be the son you deserved. The son you raised me to be.”
The Sheikha shook her head weakly. And then, as if the effort was too much for her, she coughed.
Kehlan leaned forward, supporting her by her shoulders with an arm and trying not to think of how frail she felt. How had she gotten this way without him doing something about it? Without him doing anything more than just suspecting, and being angry that she wouldn’t confirm his suspicions for him?
“No,” she said, when the coughing had abated.
“I will,” Kehlan insisted. But the Sheikha again shook her head, this time without setting off a coughing fit. As she had so many times before, Kehlan saw her dig down, and find strength. The strength to do what she needed to do.
“You already are a good son. You always were.”
Kehlan stared at her, his mind not absorbing the words.
“But I—”
“You stood up for what you believed was right. The way a good son should. The way a good royal should. You were always like your father that way. Like your father, before you were born, when I first met him. Before all this got to him.”
She weakly motioned around them.
“I always wanted this life. These things. To serve in this way. I chose it. But you didn’t.”
He leaned in yet further, as though he could will the woman he’d known back into existence, rather than this woman who was giving up on everything she’d always wanted.
“But I will. I’m trying to tell you, I—”
“You will do no such thing.”
Even in his mounting dismay, and the seriousness of the situation, Kehlan could almost laugh. She was his mother, right to the end. All fire and command, even as she was granting him a pass.
“You will live the life that you want to live. Your cousins have no choice, but you do. And you will be a better ambassador to the world if you are happy. This I believe.”
She reached up, and put her hand on the side of his face.
“My boy. My only boy. My miracle boy.”
He shot her a look of confusion.
“Miracle?”
“Yes, did no one ever tell you? No, of course we didn’t. We never talk of such things. It was a shameful thing, I thought, after I married into the royal family and then could not get pregnant. For years we tried, and nothing. I felt I was a wast
e. I felt that I had let my husband down, that I had let his family down. And they told me so.”
Kehlan had a hard time imagining his extended family saying such a thing. And it must have shown on his face, for the Sheikha smiled and shook her head, leaning back down.
“It was a long time ago. Things were different, then. But when I had you, I thought, ‘Ah! Now I am able to give the family the prince they want!’ And I put that on you. I wish I had not.”
It wasn’t an apology. The Sheikha didn’t really do apologies, and to grant her forgiveness in so many words wouldn’t have been right. Instead, he squeezed her hand in silent gratitude for her explanation. It was understood between them. All was understood.
With her confession complete, the strength she had summoned for it left her. She seemed barely able to turn her head to look out the wide-open doors to the garden, which was now lighting up with the sunrise in full swing.
For a long while she lay, Kehlan’s hand in hers, looking at the garden. She was fading even as the sunlight was growing stronger. It felt like a trade. It wasn’t a welcome one.
“Tell me about Washington,” his mother said, after a while, the English word sounding unmistakably foreign on her tongue. “They told me you went back to Washington, even though the conference was called off. What is there for you? What did you find?”
Kehlan felt his heart warm at the opportunity to tell him mother everything.
“A woman,” he said softly.
“What sort of a woman? A serious woman?”
Kehlan smiled at the thought of Paige being serious, in the many ways she often was.
“A woman I am serious about, yes. Very serious.”
With marked difficulty, the Sheikha raised her eyebrows.
“Well, I have lived long enough to see the end of days, then.”
Kehlan laughed, and happy as he was that his mother would hear his laugh one last time, the sound still felt profane bouncing off the walls of the morning suite.
“All these years, I was only ever so…unserious because I hadn’t met her. She’s who I want, mother. For the rest of my life. I’m only sorry you won’t get to meet her.”
If the Sheikha was saddened by this, she didn’t show it.
“You are all the best parts of me. So, the best parts of me have met her. That is enough. Anything else would only be disappointment. And, Washington. You like it? The people there, you like them?”
Kehlan nodded, though he realized that his mother’s gaze was fixed in a way that felt final on the garden outside. He searched around for every detail of Stockton he could tell her, and realized he hadn’t mentioned Dylan.
“He reminds me of me, when I was younger,” he told his mother. “The way he cares for animals. He wants to be a vet, the way I once did. And sometimes, he reminds me of Father, with the connections he makes.”
“Children are a blessing,” his mother said. “I am glad you will be blessed as I was with you.”
He told his mother of the lakes and the way the mountains always felt like a protective crown around the town. He told her about the town’s inhabitants and every little thing he loved about Paige. And, slowly, while she listened to the voice of her son and felt his hand in hers, the Sheikha fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter 21
Paige
One Week Later
At first, Paige had been crushed. She had sobbed until the moment when she had to leave the house to go get Dylan, unable to bear the thought of going out into the world to collect her son from school.
They had all met him. They’d seen what she had quite obviously just lost, and so quickly. Just the night before, they’d been singing together on stage. They’d spent the whole evening folded up together at their table and then kissed in front of the crowd. To their applause.
Maybe not every single person in the town had witnessed it, sure. But enough of them had. Their displays of affection had been public enough that it was common knowledge that she and Kehlan had been together.
And if she went out like this, she’d thought, it would be just as common knowledge that they no longer were. Eventually, people would find out. But they couldn’t find out today. She couldn’t handle it today.
How she had always sworn she would never be one of those girls who got their hearts broken by passing tourists on vacation! It was an unwritten rule of any tourist town, and Stockton was no exception. All these years with Kyle having abandoned her, she had at least been able to comfort herself with the knowledge that, though she had been left while pregnant, at least it had been by a local. At least she’d had the decency to have just chosen poorly.
But now, she didn’t even have that. No protective shield to put up between her and the world. Just her stupid, stupid mistake on display for everyone to see.
She’d meant to feign sickness with her mother on the phone as she asked her if she could pick Dylan up, but her mother was no fool—she knew what it sounded like when her daughter was in pain. She knew what it sounded like when her daughter was abandoned by a man who she believed loved her.
She’d asked her mother to take Dylan for another night, so that she could put herself back together. She’d envisioned an evening spent with a bottle of wine. Her mother had made all sorts of soft, soothing sounds that Paige assumed were words. She wasn’t really listening. She was crying again, and just trying to keep the sound of it from carrying through the phone
So, she was surprised when, about forty-five minutes later, her mother came in the door with Dylan, Paige’s father, a couple of pizzas, a few DVDs, and an obvious intent to keep Paige company while she went through the worst of it.
And Paige had been grateful. Grateful for everything she had, and guilty for having minimized it in her mind to chase after some man who was never going to stay—some man who she had known, going into it, was never going to stay.
There’s a closeness in sadness. In grief of all kinds. There’s a hushed gentleness that loved ones get when they’re helping one another get over the first sharpness of loss. Dylan didn’t really understand what was happening, and why no one would explain it to him, but he seemed to pick up on the way his grandparents were acting and did his best to emulate it.
It was little kindnesses. It was courtesies above and beyond normal expectations. It was careful attention to her moods and how they shifted. It was the way they both allowed for her to talk about it, if she wanted, but left it for her to decide when and what.
She’d wondered, in that moment, how often they’d done this. They were getting older, now. Grieving with loved ones over a loss or an abandonment was a skill. And Paige couldn’t help but feel a little sad that her parents were so well-practiced in the art.
That evening was the worst of it, and her family got her through. They couldn’t do much about how ashamed of herself she felt for falling for something that she knew was too good to be true. They couldn’t do anything about how much it hurt to lose him. But they could commiserate with her, and let her know that they were still there for her. And that, at first, was enough.
But after the first couple of days, when she had still heard nothing from him, and it became clear that he was just gone from her life without a trace or any explanation whatsoever, all that sadness and shame turned to anger.
She couldn’t bring herself to hate him. Not really. Not when she thought back to what he had been like when he was there. When she did that, it didn’t feel as though it made any sense. It felt like a critical error in her operating system, and everything just came crashing down.
So, she didn’t think about the good times she’d had with him directly. She didn’t think about how he had acted or how she had felt. She didn’t think of all the little honesties that had drawn her in and convinced her that he was worth fighting her insecurities and doubts for.
Instead, she just felt the anger build up about what he had done, in the end, and that kept her out of the pit of sadness that threatened to swallow her up whole if
she’d let it.
She was angry that he had lied. That he had gone above and beyond simply messing with the heart of a small-town girl and had made the promises he’d made. Was it not enough for him to win her heart and to walk away? Why did he have to be so deceitful about it?
She thought, from time to time, about what had directly proceeded him promising to stay. She had said she wasn’t going to invite him in. Was it a calculated lie, then, just so that she would bring him to her bed? Was he that heartless and crude? The possibility stung her. It felt like the most painful explanation, and, when what had felt to be the best had turned out to be wrong, it seemed like the inverse must be true: the harshest possibility was the correct one.
In the morning, when she had been hurrying off to work, blissfully unaware that this was the last time she’d ever see him, he’d called her back to him for a kiss. The way he’d kissed her…that had to be him getting his last drop of sweetness from her. He’d known, then, in a way she hadn’t. He’d known that was the last kiss they would share.
That kiss was a lie, and he was a liar for perpetrating it.
She didn’t think of how he had been with Dylan and how it would hurt her son when she had to tell him that Kehlan would not be coming back. She was putting off the conversation, because she knew that she wouldn’t be able to get the words out without her anger and hurt shining through, and she needed to be calmer about it for Dylan’s sake. She wouldn’t let herself cross that line. She had a feeling that if she did that before she’d had time to process how Kehlan had hurt her, there’d be no getting back from the anger.
The news seeped out. She’d expected that. It was unavoidable, but at least the little delay between the event and the reporting of it throughout the town gave her a head-start to harden herself to the assumptions and sympathies. Eventually, over the next week, she became accustomed to the looks of pity on the faces of the people she passed.
He’d turned her town against her. Not in reality, but in her mind. And sure, maybe in time, she would find a way to get around that, but for now, the whole place felt hostile. All of Stockton felt like it was just reminder after reminder of how stupid and gullible she’d been.
