Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2)

by Allie Juliette Mousseau

  I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d feel it and know it when I touched it. Now that I’m here, the thing I was most afraid of—that dark endless abyss that threatens me every morning when I wake up and every night before I close my eyes to sleep—is all around me.

  For a decade, I’ve tried to outrun it. I’ve done the psychotherapy to vanquish it, until it’s nothing but a memory. Truth is, it created who I am, who I was. It’s the chiseling force that has dug a crevice so deep inside my soul I can’t climb back out into the light.

  The boys are behind me. They stand uncomfortably inside the doorway. I know they’d pull me up if they could—maybe, if they could find the rope, but there isn’t one. I cut my safety line ten years ago.

  As I walk down the hall to the kitchen, I hold out my hand and let my fingers trail along the wall. The old paper feels tacky from age and cigarette smoke. The ceilings are stained yellow. But the real stains this place holds are only visible to me. Maybe they’re painted in my eyes.

  Quinn, what are you doing here?

  Trying to find the piece of me I lost.

  You don’t restore those things by going back, only forward.

  It’s a lie. It’s a lie I tell myself to comfort myself, so I don’t really have to face my pain or my demons … the monsters that swallow me during the darkest nights.

  I can’t go forward until I … I don’t know.

  It’s all the same inside this house. Exactly the same as the last night I was ever here … and the months before that.

  I try to conjure a good memory, something happy, something I can take with me, but I can’t remember clearly, I can only feel. And what I feel is fear and hurt.

  The dining room table still sits, stately, in the middle of the room. Six chairs of smooth dark wood and velvet cloth stare at each other, empty and wordless. The matching wood hutch with glass cabinets is still filled with my mother’s favorite displays—the things that made her feel wealthy and affluent. That’s all she ever really cared about—things. If she ever cared about a person, I never saw it.

  She never loved me.

  And isn’t that the hardest and heaviest memory you have, Quinn?

  “Did she have a will?” Ryder asks.

  “If she did, I wasn’t in it,” I reply.

  Truth is, I don’t even know if me being in her house is legal.

  What do I have to lose? I’ve already lost everything.

  I walk through to the living room. Two large, red leather sofas flank each wall; glamorous photographs of my mom line the mantle over the fireplace—her ice blue eyes stare back at me coldly—beside them are a cuckoo clock and crystal knickknacks. A hanging lamp with three women standing back-to-back in a garden is suspended in the doorway. There are thin cable lines that run down around it, and when it’s turned on, oil drips down the cables to mimic rain. It’s sort of pretty, really, but I hate it. I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I see one.

  I wonder if other people do that—see some benign object from their haunted pasts and associate it with an unwell, malaise feeling that’s too hard to describe.

  My eyes spy the bookshelf.

  The old photo album is still there. I stare at it as if it were alive, like maybe it was being guarded by a demon that I’d have to battle and kill just so I could touch it.

  “Fuck this,” I hear Liam curse. He says it softly, as if he doesn’t want me to hear.

  A moment later he’s beside me.

  “You want that book.” It’s not a question.

  My throat constricts, and I fight the tears that rush to my eyes.

  How well he knows me.

  I nod.

  Liam leans forward and grabs the album. He tucks it up under his arm.

  I feel him watching me.

  “Is this all you want downstairs?” he asks softly.

  I nod again.

  The tears spill over my face, but I’m not sure if they fall because of my mom or because of Liam.

  “You want to go up to your old room?” Liam places his hand tenderly on the small of my back.

  The hurt and loss bubble up through me and make me cry. I try to do it as silently as possible, swallowing each sob.

  “Come on, I’ll go with you.”

  Why is he being so nice to me?

  He’s become yet another person I’m a massive disappointment to.

  I nod anyway, and together we silently walk towards the staircase. We begin climbing each stair slowly, following the blue carpet up to the landing. But I freeze. I’m only a few steps away from my room.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I whisper.

  “You can do anything, Quinn.” His tone is infused with admiration.

  He holds his hand out to me.

  But I can’t move. I just stand there, looking at it, remembering the strength of it, the love that used to be attached to it, the incredible rush of feelings I’d get every time I touched it.

  I think of how badly I really need it right now.

  How badly I need him right now. But I might crumble if I take it. I might turn to dust and blow away. Or maybe a miracle will happen, and I’ll wake up and the past ten years will have all been a dream, a terrible nightmare. And I’ll be able to avoid the series of events that further destroyed me and sent me reeling so deep inside of myself I couldn’t even let Liam in.

  I hold my breath and, like a child, wish beyond all probability that the latter might actually happen.

  “You don’t have to do this alone.” He takes my hand, laces my fingers between his.

  Oh, the feel of his hand, the firmness of his grip, the security.

  I can’t stop the tears. He smiles down reassuringly at me before he leads the way up the stairs, promising to take on the waiting monsters.

  I want to kiss each of his fingers then lay his palm over my cheek to catch every cold and bitter tear I’ve cried without him.

  Before I know it, we’re standing at the threshold of my room. The one she told people she kept for me in case I ever came home. As long as she looked good for the people outside looking in, what really happened didn’t matter. She didn’t take any responsibility, hadn’t even worried about me, and never said she was sorry—she never thought she did anything wrong. She had no sin to atone for.

  “You want to go in?” he asks.

  I shrug. Not a thing is out of place from when I left here at fourteen years old. The antique-looking brown and white flowered lace bedspread still lays over the twin sized canopy bed, as if it had been freshly made this morning. The white desk and bookshelf still sit against the wall. A paint-by-numbers picture I did when I was ten is still displayed, exactly where I set it, next to my pink and white Hello Kitty pencil sharpener.

  “They don’t seem real,” I say. “I thought maybe I’d remember one good thing, something—a bedtime story, a kiss goodnight—but I don’t. I thought coming and looking would make a difference.”

  The sorrow is momentarily pushed to the side by a blistering anger. “I know what it was … what I was looking for … some shred of evidence that maybe, at the end, she loved me or that, at the very least, she was sorry.”

  I walk over to my desk and open the drawer, rummaging through it. The contents have been untouched for years. I push aside erasers and cartoon covered pencils; I finger through pink paperclips and old magazine cuttings. I come to my own folded notes, the ones I had written to her. Letters from a little girl and, later, a teenager that declared how much I loved her and missed her when she was away at work. Me asking her to spend time with me and my ideas for things I thought we could do together.

  I used to leave them all around the house for her. But she never answered them, or even moved them, so I’d fold them back up and bury them in my drawer—like the bones of skeletons I couldn’t let go of.

  I fish them out now. They’re all folded into tight squares and have MOM scrawled in my very neatest handwriting.

  I gather them into my open hands, which I�
�ve shaped like a bowl, and offer them to Liam. He gives me a sympathetic look and takes them from me.

  They’re paper that weighs a ton.

  All of a sudden, I’ve had enough of this room that’s frozen in time.

  I stalk out of my room and into her room.

  I hate being inside this house, but I loathe being in her bedroom.

  Chills run down my spine, and it takes every bit of courage I have not to run out.

  I won’t leave here until I’m satisfied, either way.

  When I received the call from her co-worker Louise, whom I had never met, telling me that my mom had died, my first response was, How did you find me?

  Not exactly proper etiquette.

  Behind me, Liam clears his throat. He’s not rushing me; it looks like he’s dealing with his own emotions.

  “She died of Leukemia,” I say out loud. “I found out after the fact. She was buried in Grove Cemetery, you know, the one closest to the city’s mansions. That old woman she worked for left her a nice inheritance when she passed away.”

  I dig through her desk drawers, her chest of drawers, her jewelry box, under her bed, between the mattresses, everyplace intimate I can think of, but see nothing with my name on it, no personal notes, no diary or journal, nothing that said she loved me.

  That she ever loved me.

  I’m sure I’m missing it. I’m not going deep enough.

  “It has to be here,” I say stubbornly.

  “What are you looking for, Quinn? I can help you look,” Liam offers.

  “Something … something important.” I’m starting to paw through her clothes. To make sure I’m thorough, I start pulling clothes and shit by the fistfuls from her drawers and drop them onto the floor. “You know, a letter. Something that she would have written when she knew she was dying …” To make amends, to say she was sorry. To say she loved me.

  I chance a quick glimpse over at Liam, who wears a worried expression.

  “Fuck it. You know, you can wait downstairs if you want. I’m sure this is a real inconvenience, standing around watching me.” I swing open the double doors to her walk-in closet. “Sorry Cade forced you into babysitting duty.”

  Her closet is smashed full of gorgeous, designer and name-brand clothing and shoes. The things she took care of meticulously for years, so now, not a thread is left out of place.

  I sink my hands into the deep pockets of the full length mink coat she loved more than me.

  “Nothing here.” I rip it from the hanger so it falls, crumpled, to the floor.

  “I wonder if these silk blouses have pockets?” Violently, I wring each shirt, dress and pair of pants, feeling the pockets and then ripping the piece of clothing from its hanger and throwing it onto the floor.

  “Quinn …”

  “She had to have written something. She had to have left a note or a fucking code, a signal, something!”

  When I’m done with the clothing, I move to the hat boxes and other boxes that line the upper shelf. I yank one down, knock off the lid, look through it and then drop it and move on.

  “Her friend, or co-worker, whatever, when she called me, I asked her how she found me,” I explain like a lunatic, throwing anything in arm’s reach to the floor. “I asked her if maybe my mom had talked about me, or expressed a desire to make contact … especially while she was so sick.” I laugh and it sounds frightening to me. “She got real quiet. You know, that uncomfortable silence that happens when you don’t know what to say? She finally told me that their mutual employer had called her and told her she remembered me being claimed on my mom’s old income tax forms and health insurance at one time. They found the files with my name and hired a private investigator to find me.”

  I’ve finished in her closet, so I start again by her bed.

  I pull the paintings from the wall, letting them fall to the floor. “They found … my name … on some decade old tax file! They didn’t even realize she had a daughter.” I rip the bedsheets away from the mattress then shove it off, away from the box spring.

  “She NEVER mentioned me—at all! She effectively made me DISAPPEAR from her very existence! How very convenient for her!”

  I’m screaming and sobbing and trashing everything.

  “Quinn …” I feel Liam’s hands grip my shoulders.

  “DON’T TOUCH ME!” I pull away. “It’s here!”

  “It’s not here, Quinn.” It sounds like he’s crying, or maybe I’m just hearing myself. “Please, let me take you out of here.”

  “I CAN’T GO UNTIL I FIND IT!”

  He wraps both his arms around my shoulders and chest. “You have to stop.”

  “She didn’t even leave anything for me … nothing … because I was nothing!” I break down in his arms.

  He holds my weight. “Quinn, you were everything … you are everything. She was just too blind to see it.”

  I fold in against him and we collapse to the floor in the middle of the mess I created.

  “HOW? I only wanted a letter! I only wanted her to talk to me!” I lurch forward and shout a guttural, wild cry, consumed by the agony I’ve held inside of me all of my life.

  “I’m so sorry.” He holds me tighter, but he’s crying because of my pain.

  “How can I be all grown up and still crave her love so fucking much? Still want her to want me?” I rock back and forth in the safety of his embrace. I know Liam, he won’t let go. “I haven’t grown up at all … not really. I’m still that unwanted, unloved little girl, begging for her mommy to make it all better.”

  “Just because she doesn’t love you,” he tries to whisper calmly in my ear between his own sobs, “doesn’t mean you’re not loved. You’re irreplaceable.”

  *****

  January, 2005

  Quinn

  “Where’s Liam?” I ask Randy as I shuffle into the kitchen.

  “He ran to the store,” he tells me. “Something about the fight tonight and needing protein.

  “That’s right, it’s Saturday,” I say, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

  Liam and I have been hiding out in Randy’s basement off and on for the last couple of months. Liam’s tried to find work all over the city and was able to pick up some temporary odd jobs that paid under the table, but most people won’t hire underage kids without proper identification or school permission papers. It’s almost February and the money he’s made hasn’t been enough to get us someplace warmer, so now he’s going to resort to the illegal street fights to earn funds.

  I don’t like the idea at all, but he thinks it’s the fastest way. Two bus tickets and money for food and lodging, and when we get there, we can figure out the rest—that’s what he says.

  I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at the table, grateful Randy’s mom is at work.

  “Have you been to one? Of the fights, I mean?” I sheepishly ask Randy, who I don’t think will tell me anything. He doesn’t like me much; I think he’s mad that I talk Liam out of fighting as much as I do and because he spends so much time with me.

  “Every one Liam’s been to.” He’s typing on his laptop and keeps his eyes on his task.

  “What are they like?” I peer up over my cup.

  Liam is more than vague when I ask him what goes on, and he’s made it clear I’m not accompanying him there.

  “Imagine the city’s rival gangs and mafia underlings in one seedy place, pushing monster-sized wads of cash back and forth between them and raising their angry fists, yelling at the opponents like their life depends on how they fight,” he says, undistracted.

  “Does it?”

  Now Randy’s gaze lifts over the laptop screen. “Fuck yeah, it does. But I don’t think Liam wants you knowing everything that goes on there.”

  “I won’t tell him.”

  He pushes the laptop out of the way so it’s not between us.

  “Most of the time they hold the fights in the old warehouses near the river, down by the railroad tracks. I’ve seen as many as five h
undred spectators show up at one time. They tape a circle in the center of the floor to suffice as a ring. Some guy stands in the middle and introduces the first set of fighters—there’s usually six sets. After the first six sets are finished, the winners then fight each other—a best of the best,” Randy explains.

  My heart rests a bit in my chest. “That’s not so bad.”

  He laughs. “The spectators are on the ground floor where the fighters are and make a nearly impenetrable human wall. If a fighter tries to get out of the ring, they push him back in, and not without getting a few of their own hits in on the unfortunate bastard. Oh, yeah, and there’s no tapping out. You’re either left standing, which means you won the set, or you’re knocked out, which means you lose, and you’re dragged out of the ring and left to the mercy of the crowd.”

  I’m horrified.

  He continues, “These guys aren’t big on mercy, plus they’re all pumped the fuck up on adrenaline and drugs, and they’d just as soon stab you as push you off to the side.” He shrugs. “Not to mention, if they had money on you and you lost? They’re pissed.”

  “Have … people died?” I stammer.

  “What the fuck do you think?”

  I nod.

  “That’s why I go. If Liam gets knocked out, I make sure my ass is right there, ready to grab him,” he says. “He’s been lucky—he wins a lot—so when he does get the shit pounded out of him, the guys are more lenient. Not that he hasn’t been knife slashed or had his ribs broken by a few angry assholes that put in their shots while I was dragging him.”

  Randy studies my expression. “You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”

  I shake my head but wonder if Liam might have a death wish. Is there really no other way to survive and get out of here? We could hitchhike. Hell, we could walk!

  “You know, Quinn, I like you,” Randy begins, but the nasty glint in his eyes betrays him. “You’re a nice girl. But Liam is seriously bad news. He already almost got you arrested because of the fight at his foster home, and truth is, he runs in dangerous circles. These guys he fights for are heavy fucking hitters. Liam told me about Vince and how he tried recruiting you.”