• • •
“Have you seen the man I was here with the other night?” Maggie asked one of the bartenders at the hotel when he walked over to speak with her. He’d served her and Aiden often enough she hoped he remembered them.
It was almost seven, she was beyond late, but by the time she’d gotten showered, changed, and felt emotionally capable of handling the T to make the trip here, it had been after six. Now, she was one of the few patrons in the bar, and she was acutely aware Aiden wasn’t one of them. Fresh tears pricked her eyes, but she fought them back. If she started crying again now, she would never stop.
“He left a couple of hours ago,” the bartender replied.
“But he was here?” she asked.
“He was.”
“Okay, good.”
She sat and bought a drink in the hope Aiden would return soon. At ten, she gave up hope. When the bartender returned to her, she paid him. “If he happens to return, could you let him know I went home?”
“Will do,” the man replied, but he barely acknowledged her, and she doubted he would remember to tell Aiden if he came back.
On her way home, Maggie stopped at a store to buy a new phone. She called Aiden again and left a voice mail with her new number, but by the time she returned to her apartment building, he hadn’t called, and he wasn’t waiting outside for her.
Holding her breath, she turned into her hallway with the hope of finding Aiden there, waiting outside her door, but her hallway was empty. He didn’t know the code to the building, but she knew that wouldn’t stop a vampire from entering the building, and especially not him. Besides, Mrs. Mackey would probably let him in and bake him an entire batch of cookies.
Maggie unlocked her door and entered her apartment. Slumping onto her couch, she gazed around the small space that no longer felt like her home. Her grief for Roger swelled within her and tears slid down her cheeks as she waited for Aiden to come.
• • •
The ringing of his phone roused Stefan from sleep. He glanced at Isabelle to make sure she hadn’t been disturbed. Then, he threw back his blankets and rose from the bed. He padded out to where he’d left his phone charging in the living room.
A chill of foreboding slid down his spine when he saw Brian’s number on the caller ID. Things were still a little strained between them, but they’d been working on establishing a new friendship. However, it was too late at night for this to be a friendly call. Answering the phone, he brought it to his ear.
“What happened?” he asked as he walked over to pull back the edge of a curtain. He scanned the snow-covered field and the other homes, but nothing unusual stirred and none of the alarms were sounding.
“Aiden,” Brian said.
Stefan’s hand clenched on the curtain. “Is he dead?”
Brian hesitated before replying, “No, but he might be better off if he was.”
CHAPTER 44
Maggie tossed her rose onto Roger’s grave and stepped away as the first shovelful of dirt hit the coffin. She cringed. It made no sense, but somehow, the thud of that dirt made Roger’s death more final. She recalled feeling the same way at A.J.’s funeral too.
Turning, she strode through the headstones with the rest of the mourners as she made her way to Pablo’s car and climbed into the back seat. She’d rode to the cemetery with him and his wife. Despite the fact she’d given her notice yesterday, Pablo had offered her a ride, but she should have known he would understand her decision to leave her position.
Aiden had never arrived at her apartment, never answered her messages, and she’d given up expecting him to do so, but she couldn’t stay here anymore. She’d lived in Boston her entire life; she’d never considered leaving. Now, she couldn’t wait to get away.
She’d anticipated jumping into life and starting to live it with Aiden. Now, she would jump in and start living it without him. She’d travel the country and do things she’d never dreamed of doing. She’d been so determined to have security, she’d never realized she’d put herself in a little box. It was time to get out of that box. When she was done exploring, maybe she’d come back to Boston, but she wasn’t making any long-term plans, at least not for a while. And she wouldn’t look for Aiden anymore.
The idea of never seeing Aiden again caused her to scratch at her skin. She felt torn between her grief for Roger and her burgeoning hatred toward the vampire who had walked into her life and tossed it upside down.
Why had he said those things to her about matehood and being with her forever if it had all been lies? Why had he played such a game with her? Was he somewhere watching her now and taking pleasure in her suffering? Did Roger’s death bring him more joy over her misery?
Those thoughts ran through her mind, but none of them felt right to her. She didn’t think he’d been lying to her or playing with her, but she didn’t know why he hadn’t contacted her or answered her messages.
She didn’t think something had happened to him. A part of her believed she would have known if he’d died. Had he somehow broken his phone too and wasn’t getting her calls and messages?
She’d tried calling him a couple more times, but she’d only received his voice mail. Even if he had broken his phone and never received her texts or calls, he knew where she lived. At least he knew where she lived for now. She would be moving soon. She hadn’t given her notice to Mrs. Mackey yet, but she would soon.
“Are you coming to the bar with us, Maggie?” Pablo inquired.
She lifted her head and blinked when she realized he’d already driven out of the cemetery and was in Brookline. “Ah, yes, yes, of course.”
The idea of sitting alone in her apartment again wasn’t something she could face. She’d been so entrenched in her melancholy she hadn’t taken the time to celebrate Roger’s life, to laugh and drink and reminisce with others about him. She intended to do that today.
Straightening her shoulders, she scratched at her arms as she determined not to let memories of Aiden intrude. Today was about Roger. She’d wasted enough time grieving a relationship that never was.
• • •
Maggie spent the next two weeks packing her things and planning her trip. Every spare minute she had, she devoted to searching for her mother’s real identity. She’d told Aiden the past was best left to the past, and at the time she’d meant it, but that had been then, and now she wanted answers to something. She had no answers for what happened to Aiden, but she had a small chance of finding answers for this.
Never before had she considered learning her mother’s story. She’d assumed, if the police hadn’t been able to uncover her family, she’d never be able to do it. And honestly, she hadn’t wanted to know.
What if knowing made things worse? What if her mother had fled a situation almost as bad as what she’d stumbled into while in Boston? Learning her heritage had always seemed like a pointless waste of time, but it had become the best distraction she had from memories of Aiden.
Inevitably, he would creep in again, and a sense of loss so extreme would fill her that some days she had to force herself out of bed. Going to work didn’t help. It was only a constant reminder Roger was also gone.
Before, she’d thought she would miss working on the ambulance, but she was glad to be done. Yesterday, her coworkers bought her a cake for her last shift, and they took her out last night to celebrate. Next week, the day after she ran the marathon, she would leave Boston. She had too many people counting on her not to participate in the race, but she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
She slid the packing tape over her last box and set the roll on top of it. Glancing around her tiny apartment, she expected to feel a sense of loss, but she felt none. She had no more room in her for more losses.
Most of her things would go to the Salvation Army, and she’d already scheduled for them to come the Saturday before the marathon to pick up those things. She’d have to sleep on an air mattress for a couple of days afterward, but she was all right with that. Sh
e’d experienced worse sleeping accommodations in her life.
She could have held off packing everything so soon, but she crammed doing as many things as she could into her every waking minute. She was certain she would sink into a pit of despair if she stopped for even a second. At the very least, she’d scratch at herself like a flea-infested cat if something didn’t occupy her hands.
The scratching thing was getting on her last frayed nerve, but she couldn’t stop it. The second she wasn’t doing something, she found herself unconsciously scratching.
That was why she had to keep moving now. She removed her coat from the hook by the door. With her packing done, she couldn’t put it off anymore; she had to go.
• • •
Once she decided to travel, Maggie cashed in her small retirement plan at work. She’d taken a hit on it, but she’d had no other choice. The two hundred dollars in her savings account wouldn’t take her far out of Boston, especially since she hadn’t owned a car.
With the retirement money, she’d bought herself a decent used car and still had eight thousand left for her trip. She planned to travel the country, see the redwoods, the deserts, the Pacific Ocean, and any other thing that caught her attention. It would be her, Blue, her plants—though she’d given many of them to her neighbor—and the open road.
It didn’t make her feel as happy or free as she’d hoped, but she was looking forward to it.
Maggie pulled her car onto a dirt road. The springs and struts creaked as she eased it over the ruts and icy puddles. All around her, the jagged peaks of the White Mountains rose high into the air. The lonely, stark appearance of the snow caps matched her mood.
After half a mile, she spotted a small white trailer set on a large expanse of open land. Maggie pulled in behind a rusting pickup and parked the car. Her heart raced, and sweat coated her palms as she stared at the trailer.
Yesterday, she’d stumbled across a recent article from a New Hampshire newspaper. The report announced plans for a twenty-fifth high school reunion. With the article was a picture of the celebrating class on the first day of their senior year. Maggie glanced over the eager, teenage faces in the photo and froze when her gaze fell on one of the women.
If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she was staring at a photo of herself. The names listed below the teens revealed she was instead looking at a picture of Mindy Shea. Maggie searched the internet for more about Mindy Shea, but there’d been nothing beyond that photo. So, she’d started looking for Sheas in the newspaper’s distribution area and came across a Marsha Shea. She’d uncovered this address for Marsha in Ossipee, New Hampshire.
Shea. It could be her mother’s last name and possibly hers. She could have a last name beyond the Doe given to her at birth.
She probably should have called Marsha before showing up on her doorstep. It would have been the sensible, polite thing to do, but something more than her car had driven her here. If she’d called and been told to stay away, she didn’t know if she would have been able to. She wanted some answers to something in her life, and Marsha may have them.
This may have been the first impulsive thing she’d ever done, and she didn’t care if it blew up in her face. Nothing could be worse than these last couple of weeks. She’d played it safe for more years than she could count, afraid of getting her heart trampled, but playing it safe hadn’t kept her protected from loss. Plus, she’d decided that playing it safe was boring.
“Strap on your helmet. It’s time to start living, Maggie,” she said aloud.
Shutting the car off, she opened the door and climbed out. The crispness of the air robbed her breath from her, and she pulled her coat closer as she walked toward the trailer. Most of the bushes and plants surrounding the sun porch didn’t have leaves, but they were all neatly trimmed.
A fenced-in area blocked off a patch of land to the left of the trailer. Maggie suspected it became a garden in the spring. Behind the garden was a chicken coop, with a dozen or so chickens huddled together for warmth. Surrounded by woods, Maggie couldn’t see any neighbors nearby.
Snow still covered the lawn, but the slate walkway was clear beneath her feet. Maggie pushed her anxiety aside as she climbed the steps to the sunporch and rang the bell beside the storm door. The inner door of the trailer opened, and a woman emerged. The woman took one step before freezing.
“Mindy,” the woman breathed and staggered toward Maggie.
A stab of guilt pierced her. “No, my name is Magdalene. I’m Maggie.”
The woman gawked at her before shaking her head. “You look… like… like… a ghost.” The woman’s eyes continued to survey Maggie as she pushed open the storm door. “Can I help you with something?”
“I… uh… I think I might be your granddaughter.”
Tears spilled down Marsha’s unlined cheeks. Maggie guessed her to be around sixty, yet she barely looked older than forty-five. Her auburn hair had streaks of white running through it, but it remained more red than gray. Unlike Maggie’s eyes, and those of her mother, Marsha’s were the color of the sky, but there were more similarities in their looks than there were differences.
It hit her that her mother might have also chosen to name her Magdalene to continue the M name tradition.
“Looking at you, honey, I think you may be too,” Marsha said, and before Maggie knew what the woman intended, she found herself clasped against a pair of ample breasts as Marsha held her close and sobbed.
CHAPTER 45
Maggie perched on the edge of the green sofa as she took in the trailer. It was small, but warm and homey like her apartment had been before boxes filled it. Pictures lined the wall across from her. They revealed the progression of her mother’s life from a baby, to a pigtailed six-year-old, to a beautiful teen dressed as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Then, Maggie realized a lot of the photos were of her mother dressed as some character in one play or another over the years.
Her mother had been so beautiful and happy. So completely different than the woman who sat in the institute now.
Glass figurines of dragons, fairies, unicorns, and other mythical creatures filled the curio cabinet across from her. A basket of yarn and a half-completed blanket lay on the seat of the green recliner across from her. It was what she’d always pictured a grandmother’s home to be like—those few times she’d allowed herself to dream of such a thing as a child.
A small orange cat leapt into her lap and purred when Maggie ran her hand over its back. A dalmatian slept on the floor by the stove and, judging by the scent filling the home, chocolate chip cookies were baking in the oven.
Maggie didn’t know what she’d expected to find here, but it hadn’t been this. She’d assumed her mother had fled a horrendous home life and that was why no one had reported her missing. She didn’t see any signs of misery here. Instead, she saw pictures of a loved girl whose mother stood hugging her in more than a couple of the photos.
“Here you go, hon.”
Maggie blinked and tore her attention away from the pictures. She accepted the mug of steaming, vanilla-scented coffee Marsha handed her. “Thank you.”
Marsha settled onto the recliner and set her coffee down on the table beside her. Folding her hands, Marsha twisted them in her lap as she leaned forward. “Your mother, is she… is she…?”
“She’s alive,” Maggie said.
“Oh, thank God,” Marsha breathed and dropped her head into her hands.
Maggie couldn’t give this woman any false hope. “She’s not well.”
Marsha lifted her head and folded her hands in her lap again. “Is she dying? Did she send you because she needs a kidney transplant or something? I’ll do it. I’ll give it if I can.”
Maggie almost choked on her tears. Why had her mother left this place? This woman? Was Maggie missing something here? But she didn’t sense anything cruel or manipulative about Marsha. All she sensed was a woman desperate to hear about the daughter she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years.
Marsha took a deep breath. “Go ahead, honey. Tell me what happened.”
Maggie focused on the cat as she told her grandmother about what happened to her mother. She hated being the one to reveal this to her, but she couldn’t not tell her. Marsha had a right to know what became of her daughter. She kept the reality of vampires from her, but she did tell Marsha that Mindy believed a vampire raped her.
Tears streamed down Marsha’s face when Maggie finished speaking. “My poor baby,” Marsha murmured and pressed her hand to her heart. “My poor, beautiful baby.”
Maggie didn’t know what to say, so she continued to pet the cat as Marsha absorbed Maggie’s words.
“And what of you, honey?” Marsha asked after a few minutes. “Who took care of you all these years?”
When the cat jumped from her lap, Maggie felt unreasonably abandoned by the animal. “I was a ward of the state. I mostly took care of myself.”
Fresh tears streamed down Marsha’s cheeks. “That’s not right.”
“That’s life, and it wasn’t bad. I learned a lot.” Maggie lifted her mug to sip at her coffee. “My mother doesn’t want to see me, I bring back too many bad memories, but maybe, she would like to see you.”
“Probably not, but I would like to see her.”
“Why didn’t you report her missing?” Maggie blurted. Perhaps it was a scab better left alone, but she had to know something of what happened here. Something of why no one ever claimed her mother, or her.
Marsha lifted her mug before setting it down again. “I didn’t report her missing because she chose to leave.” More tears pooled in her eyes, and she dabbed them away with a handkerchief. “I was only seventeen when I had your mom. Her father left me a year after she was born; he died a year later in a motorcycle accident. I tried to do my best with Mindy, to give her everything I could, but it wasn’t enough. Mindy always had big dreams.”
Ravaged (Vampire Awakenings, Book 7) Page 27
