Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  Lily smiled, her eyes bright. She reached for my hand and I let her take it, feeling oddly at ease with her. “You’re remembering things,” she said.

  My smile slipped back for a moment as it occurred to me that I had, in fact, remembered that. And it hadn’t come in the way I thought my memories would. It didn’t suddenly hit me or feel like a profound moment. It was just something I knew to be true. I tried then to see if I could remember their faces—my children, when they were babies—but it seemed it was only one simple memory that had come to light.

  The baby grunted then and arched her back, letting out a shrill scream as she pulled away from the breast. Lily scooped her up and shushed her gently, patting her tiny bottom. “She is a windy baby,” she told me over the noise. “We didn’t have a name for it in my day, but I’m pretty sure Jason said it is colic.”

  I nodded, even though I had no idea if that was right or not. “Can I hold her?”

  “She might spit up on you,” she warned.

  “That’s okay,” I said, sliding forward to take the baby. “I’m used to it.”

  Lily handed her over, carefully supporting her newborn head, and as the weight of the little body rested safely and so trusting against my chest, I drew a deep breath of her. She smelled like love, like what I imagined simple things in life would smell like if they had a smell. There was comfort in it and something familiar in the way she grizzled and wriggled against me, trying to bring up her wind.

  I sat back against the couch, only an inch away from Lily, and laid the baby’s ear against my heart, rubbing her bottom. Lily buttoned up her shirt and switched the knitted bracelet on her right wrist to her left one, coming to lay her head right beside mine after.

  “You have a soothing touch, it would seem,” she said, her long hair tickling my arm a little where it touched, and it felt nice. It felt like things had always been this way between us, even though I didn’t know her.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Elizabeth,” she said. “After Jason’s mother.”

  I nodded, smiling. The little body fit perfectly into the curl of my palm, legs tucked up tightly, her pink knitted cardigan so small under my other hand that I wondered how anything could possibly be more precious—how something so precious could possibly exist. “How old is she now?”

  “Two days.”

  My wide eyes landed on Lily. “And you’re already up and about?”

  “I’m immortal,” she reminded me. “I heal quickly. Although I must confess, immortality does not make the long nights of wakefulness any easier to bear.”

  I laughed. She’d only suffered through two so far.

  “But Jason is a good father,” she added. “He cannot feed her, but he walks the floors while she cries.”

  “Have you thought about expressing your milk?”

  “Expressing my milk?” she said. “I’ve not heard this phrase before.”

  “Didn’t you read books on being a mom?”

  “I didn’t know there were books on being a mother.”

  I had to laugh again, startling the baby. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “I am the queen of an immortal race,” she said, reaching over to lay her hand on Elizabeth. “I’ve had little time to even learn this language, or how to read it. But I guess it just never occurred to me that one would need to learn anything about being a mother.”

  “There’s a lot to learn,” I said, feeling closer to her then in the sense that we were both learning right now how to be mothers again. “And expressing your milk is when you use a special pump thing, or even your hand, and you put the milk in a bottle for the dad to feed the baby.”

  “Like a wet nurse?”

  “Yes, but with your milk.”

  “How does the baby drink from a bottle?”

  “It has a teat thing on the lid that’s kind of like a breast.”

  Lily nodded, exhaling after and resting her head on my shoulder. I felt better now that things were just moving on—that we hadn’t endured a hello, an introduction or a long conversation about who I was. Which made me realize that’s what I’d been dreading. I didn’t want a reunion with these people because I didn’t feel like I’d really gone anywhere all this time, and I didn’t want an introduction, because we weren’t really strangers. I think I just wanted to hug them like people I hadn’t seen in a while, not like people I had forgotten or like people who had lived with my death for over a year, and then get on with it. Enough time had been spent in the past, in the dark, and the arrival of so many old acquaintances felt more like a moving-forward kind of moment, not so much a teary reunion.

  Elizabeth let out a remarkable burp then and I laughed, sitting up a little to look at Lily, but her eyes were closed, her breath falling in gentle, sleepy waves over her baby’s hair. She looked exhausted but also at ease, which was nice—nice that she trusted me enough to leave her daughter in my arms.

  I curled both hands around Elizabeth then and relaxed back, closing my eyes too.

  After a while, when the smell of breakfast moved in from the kitchen and filled up the den, I felt the presence of two people standing in the doorway. My eyes opened and I listened for a moment.

  “Should we wake them?”

  “I’m awake,” I said quietly, and Elizabeth stirred.

  Brett appeared by the arm of the couch then, squatting down. “You want me to take Beth?”

  I shook my head.

  He glanced back at the other person, and when I heard his breath leave his mouth in a small laugh, I instantly recognized it. The fear I had for awkward reunions or introductions fizzled away and I turned my head to look at him. We’d only spoken on the phone, but I felt like I’d known him all my life. My eyes knew exactly where to look on his face to find the emotion he felt when he looked at me, and I realized that the corner of his lip—the same place as David—was his tell. All of his emotion, as much as he would ever try to hide it, was laid bare there.

  “Hi!” I said.

  He smiled before saying, “Hi.”

  “Your baby is lovely.”

  “I thought you’d like her.” He moved into the room then, hands in his pockets. “She looks like her mother, doesn’t she?”

  “I haven’t seen her face yet.” I looked down anyway, but all I could see was a tucked-up little mouth and wisps of fine dark hair.

  “Her eyes are blue.” He sat down on the arm of the couch, Brett standing up to give him room.

  I held her a little closer then, pressing my cheek to her warm, fragile head. Something in me wanted to say that I couldn’t believe he finally had a baby of his own—that I was so happy to see him happy—and I knew that was my old self surfacing. The new me, however, didn’t want to say that in case it hurt him, since my husband had killed what would have been his firstborn child.

  Instead, I decided to chastise him. “Why didn’t you tell Lily there are books on being a mother?”

  “I…” He looked at Lily, asleep on my shoulder. “It never occurred to me. She’s had children before—”

  “But times have changed,” I reminded him. “There’s so much more help nowadays for moms.”

  He nodded. “Everything just happened so fast. We planned to take leave before Beth arrived—spend time holding conversations about all that stuff—but she was early.”

  I nodded, kissing Beth’s head. “Well, make sure you point her toward some mom’s forums or something, okay? Raising kids doesn’t get easier just because you’ve done it before.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He laughed, slipping off the arm of the couch onto the cushion beside me. “Now give me a hug. I haven’t seen you in…”

  “Two years?” I offered, removing one hand from the baby to wrap it around his back as he leaned over us both, housing us in a very warm hug.

  “Longer.” He drew back, softly stroking his baby’s hair after. “We hadn’t spoken much before you died.”

  Wow. Before I died. He just came ri
ght out with it. Most people skipped over those words, but he just threw them out there like a ‘fact of the day’. “Why?”

  “Many reasons.” His eyes moved onto Lily for a second. “But the main one was that I’d seen a vision Elora had when she was a child.”

  “What vision?”

  “As you know, Morgana wanted to reincarnate her mother, using Elora’s body and my sperm, and she had planned for a very long time to drug me and make me rape Elora. I was at her second birthday party when I first saw it, so I kept away to keep it from happening.”

  “And you gotta remember, we didn’t know anything about that potion then,” Brett added, sitting on the armchair by the cold fireplace. “He assumed it was an act of hatred or something.”

  “I knew I wasn’t capable of that sort of thing, but it scared me.”

  “So you stayed out of our lives?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t easy. I adored Lors and…”

  “I know.” I placed my hand on his knee. He was a bit bigger than David, wider I guess, but not fat. Just more filled-out. It shocked me for a second, making me forget what I was going to say. “But we’re all together now, and if you ever have reason to avoid the family again, you need to bring it to us and let us help you.”

  “On my honor,” he said, touching his heart.

  “Now.” Brett stood, clapping both hands together. “Breakfast is ready. Are you coming or not?”

  “Breakfast?” Lily said, popping her head up, her cheek pink where it had been against my shoulder. “I’m starving!”

  “I’ll stay here with Beth,” I offered, expecting them to tell me I was too young or too new to be trusted with something so small and fragile and… royal.

  “That would be wonderful,” Lily said, taking Jason’s hand as she stood up. “I feel like she has been in my arms for the last twenty-six hours.”

  “It was a long flight,” Jason explained.

  “I thought having a private jet would make it easier to travel with an infant, but she did not want to sleep in her bassinet,” Lily said.

  “And she didn’t want her father either,” Jase added.

  “She’s a newborn,” I offered. “For now, just put one of Lily’s shirts over your shoulder—one she’s worn—and she won’t fuss as much.”

  “Really?” Lily said.

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded. “It won’t last long. Pretty soon all she’ll want is her daddy.”

  “And until that day,” a dark, theatrical voice said, “she will never truly understand how badly her father wants to hold her.”

  All heads turned to look at the man in the doorway, his black hair cut shorter than it was in the pictures I’d seen, his kind electric blue eyes evening out the intimidating air of his gait. I couldn’t believe a man in a casual button-up shirt and jeans could look so simultaneously scary and warm-hearted.

  “Was that a double entendre?” I asked.

  The others took his expression as a request to leave, filing out, one behind the other, as he weaved past them and shut the door. I felt alone as that door pressed into place; nervous. But also angry, and the anger outweighed the fear he stirred in me.

  “I know you know why I wasn’t here for you as you recovered,” he said directly, sitting down beside me.

  I turned my chin and placed it on Beth’s head, avoiding eye contact.

  “But you don’t fully understand,” he finished.

  “Don’t I?”

  “From your very first breath, when you entered this world, I was forced to take a backseat to your life in order to protect you. My father raised you as his own—”

  “And even he couldn’t handle the job, so I hear.” I looked at him. “Left me in Australia while he ran off and started a new family.” At this point, I could so easily assume it was me—that I was just unlovable—but I knew better than that. I was angry at Drake for not being a father to me, but just glad I had Brett. He was all I needed.

  “I love you, Amara,” he said, eyes trying to fix mine in place, but I refused to look at him. “But there is resentment here too.”

  “On whose part?”

  “Both.”

  I scoffed. “Why would you resent me?”

  “You’ve been told about Morgana, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “She is my daughter too. One I had the pleasure of raising from childhood, and while she committed terrible crimes against her queen and her nation, she is still my daughter.”

  “So you’re mad at me because she killed me?”

  “I’m not mad. But, as I said, I do hold some resentment.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “In Hell?” I hoped.

  “She was locked away, and I approved of her suffering the torture she inflicted on you. Once. Until I learned of the full extent. But after being made aware herself, my beloved sister, Morgana’s own aunt, sentenced her to suffer one thousand times over every wound she inflicted on you and David.”

  My eyes widened. From what I knew now, that would be a terrible punishment.

  But she deserved it.

  “I go to see her after each session to dress her wounds—”

  “Why? She deserves everything she gets.”

  “Does she?” he said, staring right at me—through me, into a locked room inside my soul.

  “Yes!” How could he not see that?

  “Then if that is the case, does David not deserve to suffer one thousand times over the pain he caused her?”

  “What pain?”

  “He didn’t tell you what he did to her?”

  “Oh. That.” I shuffled in my seat to make myself a bit taller. “Well, what she did to him, to me, was pretty darn brutal. So I guess they can call it even.”

  Drake shook his head derisively, laughing. “I do not condone what she did to you. Or to David. But if it were in reverse, and you were to suffer her fate, I would be at your side, offering you comfort too—”

  “Yeah, except you weren’t. You left me in the care of someone else because you ‘apparently’ couldn’t bear to see me recover from what Morgana did to me.”

  He nodded, sitting back. “The physical pain, I could bear. But I could not endure the heartbreak of seeing you live your life as another person—perhaps never to be who you were again: my loving, compassionate and empathetic girl.”

  I shook my head, just wishing this conversation would end. He was contradicting himself when, in truth, all he needed to say was that he cared more for Morgana than me.

  “David started this, Amara,” he said. “You might like to think I care more for one of my children than the other, but you are wrong. I care for you both equally, and the fact that this began with the brutal torture of my daughter in the cell the night David learned of the hex makes me sick. What you have done to each other is unforgivable, and yet Morgana is the one to be punished.”

  When he put it that way, it did seem a bit unfair. Made me feel like less of a victim for a moment.

  “Two hundred times,” he said. “She has endured her punishment only two hundred times so far and, already, her mind is lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “She does not respond to me when I come to see her. She is just a shell now.”

  When I thought about what she had done to me, imagining suffering that two hundred more times sent a rod of panic through my chest. I wanted her to suffer, but maybe by being put in prison for life. This did seem a bit extreme. “How much longer will it take to finish the rest of her sentence?”

  “Another four years.”

  My eyes closed. I pressed my lips to Beth’s head and took a deep breath, trying not to imagine the horror. But instead, I only understood Lilith’s anger—why she sentenced her so harshly. That torture left wounds on my soul—Lilith’s soul—and she would now bear those as long as I would. She understood firsthand what I had suffered.

  “So you hate me for what Morgana now suffers?”

  “I do not hate you
, but I am angry with you for always coming out looking like the victim—the saint. You have done unspeakable things in your past, too, Amara, and yet it is your sister whose name is sung in the streets on Halloween, as children retell her horrific ending.”

  “I…” Oh. Damn. I felt kinda bad about that bit. Having a song made up about your suffering would be pretty embarrassing.

  “You don’t need to feel bad, but I wanted you to understand why I couldn’t care for you all this time. I needed to be there for Morgana, who has no one to comfort her, no one to love her. You have everyone. You have the world at your feet, Amara, freedom. You did not need me.”

  “You’re right,” I said, but my chest hurt when I said it. “So I guess I don’t really need an explanation from you either, and I’ll be damned if I’ll carry the weight of your guilt for Morgana—”

  “You will.” He stood. “Because she is your sister and you did love her. She has done heinous things to you, but I implore you to look into the mind of your husband and witness Morgana’s suffering firsthand. You might find that, perhaps, I am not entirely wrong to feel the way I do.”

  I felt my eyes start to roll but got a strong sense that he would slap me if they did.

  “She only wanted to feel loved, safe. She tried to resurrect her mother because she was the one person that would have stepped in to punish David after what he did to her, and when you understand the reasons for her actions as deeply as I do, it is impossible to blame only her.”

  This time, my eyes rolled.

  “If you were children, squabbling over a dolly,” he said, squatting down beside my leg, “you would both be punished. If your aunt then came in and allowed just one of you to go free, do you feel that would be fair?”

  “This isn’t just sibling rivalry—”

  “No,” he said calmly, his eyes going to the baby as if to remind himself to speak quietly, “it was the plight of a lonely girl, who felt she had no true family, just trying to bring her mother back. You would have done the same. There was a time you’d have done almost anything to bring your mother back.”

  “Are you trying to make me understand where you’re coming from, or where she was coming from?”