Thousands

by Pepper Winters

  The fact she’d survived more abuse than anyone and instead of needing to be hospitalized for a broken mind sat there demanding parental admiration undid me.

  Who the fuck cared if her mother approved?

  I’d never been so goddamn proud. So humbled. So traumatized by another’s cravings.

  Fuck me.

  I couldn’t...I can’t...

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  My mind exploded with noise and shame and humiliation and utter self-disgust.

  Her mother dropped her head in her hands and cried deep, ugly tears that dripped onto the floor.

  My own eyes pricked to think how similar I must’ve seemed to Pim. How my commandments to know her mind must’ve petrified her. How my demands she speak and give me everything must’ve overridden so many terrible memories of Alrik demanding the same fucking thing.

  I’d done exactly what that rapist had done.

  I’d saved her and delivered her to yet another battle of wills.

  I might not have physically hurt her, but I was just as bad.

  Just as cruel.

  Just as fucking evil.

  Christ!

  I wanted to punch something.

  I wanted to throw my chair across the room and tear myself apart.

  I wanted to get on my knees and put a gun to my head for ever thinking I had a right to Pim’s innermost thoughts.

  Who the fuck was I to demand her secrets for safe passage on my yacht?

  Who the fuck was I to expect her innermost thoughts in return for taking her from that disgusting white torture chamber?

  I was nothing.

  I was no one.

  I’d already earned everything she’d kept from others by reading her letters like the thief I was.

  Once a thief, always a thief.

  And Pim had stolen my humanity.

  I struggled to breathe, spiralling in on myself, drowning in regret as Pim’s mother said through her sobs, “I couldn’t be more proud of you, Tasmin. Never. Not a day went by that I didn’t beg for your forgiveness for how I treated you. Not an hour ticked past when I wished I could rewind and hug you instead of berate you. Kiss you instead of scold you. And show you just how much I cared.”

  She scrambled on her knees to her daughter’s side, clutching Pim’s hands. “I loved you so much it scared me. Me—the woman who spent her entire career manipulating humans as if they were bugs under a microscope—was petrified of you. I thought love was weak. I believed if I let myself show how much you meant to me, I would be just like the people who came to me broken and begging for answers.” She shook her head, tangled hair flying. “I was wrong. And I found that out far too late.”

  Her face turned black with memories. “I need you to know I hunted the same people I tried to help. I tortured people to find you, Minnie Mouse. I wanted so much to kill Kewet the moment I found him, but I held back just in case he knew more than what he said. I ransacked his apartment. I found the Disney watch Daddy gave you. I still have it—wishing I could give it back to you—even knowing how many times I badgered you to stop wearing such a juvenile thing. So many things I did, but when that killer tried to run, and I visualized you dead or worse, I snapped.”

  Her tears slowly stopped as her breathing evened out. “I will never apologise for what I did to him. For taking his life. I’d do it all over again. I would do it for you. I don’t care if it means I’ll rot in here. I have no remorse. I feel no regret.” She squeezed Pim’s fingers. “I would kill an army if it meant you were never taken and never had to live the life you did.”

  She brought Pim’s fingers to her mouth. “I’m so damn proud of you. So heartbroken that I made it harder on you. I hope one day you can forgive me. I hope one day your father can forgive me. If you never come visit me again, this is enough. I will happily serve my time knowing in some small way, I showed you how much I care. How deeply sorry I am. For everything.”

  Pim sniffed, her own tears evaporating into salty tracks, leaving her skin white and limbs shaky. “I do forgive you, Mum.” Her voice was achingly soft. “But after everything...do you forgive me?”

  Her mother sucked in a wet sob. “Oh, Min, do you even need to ask?”

  Pim collapsed, bending in her chair to fall into her mother’s embrace. The two women clutched each other, and fuck, I couldn’t stay here anymore.

  I shouldn’t have witnessed any of this.

  I wasn’t worthy after everything I’d demanded of Pim.

  I would never be worthy or have enough breath in my body to apologise for being the same as the monsters she’d endured.

  Her mother should kill me too for how cruel I’d been. How callous and motherfucking selfish.

  I wanted everything about her but not at the expense of her happiness.

  Not anymore.

  My eyes fell on Pim’s form still wrapped in her mother’s arms.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  My legs bunched, hurling me upright from my chair.

  I had to run.

  Before I exploded.

  The ticking in my brain was obsessing.

  I was regressing.

  I would snap soon and take my misery out on the woman I loved.

  My legs forgot how to work as I moved on painful instruction to run. As I stepped toward the two on the floor, my eyes locking on the door and escape, Pim’s fingers lashed around my wrist, injecting me with yet more self-loathing.

  “Elder?” The way she looked up, glossy-eyed and trusting, hair spilling over her shoulders, and such fucking love glowing, I couldn’t do it.

  My voice cracked as I jerked my arm away. “I’m so fucking sorry, Pimlico.”

  Her mother jolted at the name. The name I knew I shouldn’t keep calling her. It was a name linked to slavery and pain, but to me, she wasn’t Tasmin.

  She was Pim.

  She was Mouse.

  Once again, hindsight sucker-punched me in the chest.

  No wonder she flinched whenever I called her Mouse. No wonder she grew pissy and pained when I demanded she tell me why that nickname affected her so much.

  A watch.

  A watch from her childhood stolen the night she was murdered.

  Goddammit, I’d been such a heartless fool.

  With a shaking hand, I bent and cupped her cheek. With tortured lips, I kissed her forehead wishing against hope she could feel my agony through my touch. That she could understand how I wished I could undo who I was, who I’d been to her, and every single way I’d treated her.

  How I begged for self-discipline that I’d never touched her. How I wished I could undo the fact I’d manipulated her into talking to me and giving me things she’d wanted to keep private.

  Her embrace by the submarine.

  Her confession of liking clouds over stars and rain over sun.

  How she hated toast—

  They were things I hadn’t earned. Things I’d stolen.

  I had to get out of there.

  Immediately.

  I never spoke in my mixed heritage. I chose English over Japanese as a way to honour my father rather than my mother. But in that moment, English seemed woefully unable to convey just how damn sorry I was.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The English language only had one way of apology.

  Japanese had over twenty.

  I’d use all of them if it meant the heaviness in my chest would ease.

  I would murmur them forever if I could somehow find redemption.

  But for now, all I could offer was one.

  Kissing her again, I breathed into her hair, “Owabi shimasu.”

  The translation: please accept this apology from the bottom of my heart.

  “El...” Pim reached for my neck, but I swooped back, bowed low and sweeping to the woman I loved more than anything, then stalked from the room.

  I didn’t look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ______________________________

  Pimlico

/>   WHO KNEW FIFTEEN minutes had the power to completely change a person, a life, a relationship?

  Stepping into that room, I knew it would be hard and emotional, but I had no idea I’d run the gauntlet, dredge up every agony, and swim through so many historical and present wounds.

  I’d done that.

  No one had forced me.

  But as I touched my mother after a lifetime of shoulder pats and cool nods instead of hugs and kisses, everything I’d been harbouring, everything I didn’t even know fermented deep inside me, gushed forth in noxious honesty.

  I didn’t do it to hurt her.

  I didn’t say such things to be spiteful or cruel.

  In fact, I’d made a promise not to mention a thing about it.

  I just...couldn’t stop.

  My childhood desires rose from nowhere, impulses took over, and I spilled things I never dreamed of spilling, especially to a mother who’d killed for me in front of a man who’d killed for me, too.

  Two people who’d willingly stolen a life so I might live.

  Two people who had a stain upon their souls for eternity.

  I owed them more than I could ever repay.

  I should protect them from unneeded memories and be ever so grateful.

  They didn’t deserve to hear what I’d endured before their sacrifice made my existence better.

  That was my cross to bear—they had far too many others and all because of me.

  I knew all that.

  I hated myself that it hadn’t stopped me.

  And bringing forth such evil, spreading its darkness to the people I loved the most, hadn’t made any of it easier.

  It didn’t make me better. It didn’t cure me. Purging myself in such a way didn’t release the filth still wriggling deep inside me like a snake I couldn’t catch.

  It only made me sad and mad and tired.

  So, so tired.

  And when Elder murmured Japanese into my hair then bowed as if he was a knight laying his sword at my feet, my heart had fallen upon his blade in terror.

  I didn’t understand what he said, but by the anguish on his face, it wasn’t good.

  I’d tried to grab him...to ask him to explain...to introduce him to my mother now that dirty laundry had been aired, washed, and hopefully clean enough to fold away, but he’d kissed me and bolted from the room as if he would die if he stayed another moment.

  If my heart had impaled itself on the hypothetical sword he’d laid at my feet, then it well and truly ran itself through in misery as the door closed on him, shutting us apart.

  My insides curled up as horror splashed through me like sour wine.

  What have I done?

  How had I forgotten that he was listening too? That everything I’d tried to hide from him just vomited into reality and tarnished everyone in the room.

  I wanted to chase after him.

  I wanted to console him.

  I wanted to erase that crucifixion in his beautiful black eyes.

  Unthinkingly, I untangled myself from my mother’s embrace and climbed unsteadily to my feet.

  I took a stumbling step toward the door, my mind consumed with fixing what I’d just broken, but then I looked back at my mother. At the way she drank me in. At the way she kneeled on the prison floor with such love and admiration and awe—three things I’d longed to see on her face since I was born—and no matter what I’d just ruined with Elder, I couldn’t ruin this.

  Not now.

  Not when it was so brand new.

  I slowly sat back down again, nodding at my mother to join me on chairs instead of dirty linoleum.

  She stood with a wince and sat, planting her hands in the middle of the table, her fingers waggling for mine.

  Once again, I glanced at the door.

  Elder...

  Is he okay?

  What happened?

  My loyalties were divided. Indecision kept me stationary.

  “You can go after him.” My mother’s voice wrenched my head up. “I understand.”

  I had her approval.

  My weight shifted from my butt to my toes, ready to launch me from my chair, but once again, I glanced at her face—to the regret and sadness and strange, messy pride—and settled back into position.

  I had to accept that Elder was hurting but so was my mother.

  So am I.

  I couldn’t split into two and soothe both. I had to remain here, for now, and give my entire attention to her. I had to do that so I could at least bandage up some of my own pain by curing some of hers.

  Then, once I wasn’t such a wreck, I could find Elder and do the same.

  Knowing I had to cure others before patching myself up added another gruelling tax.

  I’m exhausted.

  Wrung out, mind blank, heart bruised.

  But this was my fault.

  No one wanted that trip down terrible memory lane.

  I had to be the one to fix it.

  Taking my mother’s hands, I sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you by telling you such things.”

  A soft squeeze followed by a motherly scoff. “Min, you could cut out my heart right now, and you couldn’t hurt me any more than I did when I realised I failed to love you.”

  We shared a tangled smile, letting silence fill the holes inside us.

  Finally, she grinned, somehow switching such awful topics and choosing a much easier one. “He seems nice. Strange...but honourable.”

  My bones ached as I looked at the door. “He saved me.”

  “Is he good to you?”

  Speech became thick with tears, so I nodded.

  “In that case, he’s got my undying welcome to the family and thanks.”

  I nodded again, biting my lip to staunch yet more liquid. There was so much to say, so many better things to discuss. Things like Morocco and Monte Carlo and the Phantom and swimming with dolphins. So many magical moments all granted by the man who’d bought me a genie bottle from a dusty, toothless vendor so many weeks ago.

  He was my true genie.

  Better than any guardian angel or lover combined.

  I’m so lucky.

  And I hurt him so terribly.

  A knock sounded on the door, cracking wide to reveal, not Elder as my heart had hoped, but the guard who’d presided over this meeting. “Fifteen minutes is up. Time to say goodbye.”

  So soon?

  So fast?

  Who knew fifteen minutes not only had the power to change a person, a life, a relationship, but also ticked faster than any other time on a clock?

  My mother squeezed my hands again. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me to see you. To see you healthy and alive and with a man you obviously care deeply for.” She sighed. “I wanted so much for you, Tasmin. University, a career, a calling...but I’m wiser now than I was then. Looking back on my life, only two things stand out to have any real importance.”

  “What two things?” I didn’t really want to ask. I feared she’d say her clients and awards she earned in her chosen field, but I wanted to be supportive, so I would plaster on a smile and nod brightly when she admitted it.

  “You and your father,” she whispered.

  I froze, my ears ringing with shock.

  “Nothing else mattered. I see that now, and it’s too late. I loved your father very much, and he was taken from me far too young. And you, my precious girl, I loved too much, and I pushed you away only to lose you, too.” Her shoulders rolled as tears once again filled her gaze. “I’m still your mother, so I’m going to give one more piece of advice...if you’ll let me.”

  I hid my amazement that she’d put family above career and smiled uncertainly. “Of course.”

  Pointing at the door where Elder had run, she said firmly, “If you care for him and he cares for you, then ignore everything else. Forget everything I ever told you. Disregard everything society forces on you. You want kids; you do it. You want cake; you eat it. You want to go to the Olympics,
by God, you have fun kicking ass.” She laughed at the last one, deliberately lightening the mood even though my heart smarted with yet more truth. I couldn’t have children so that point was moot—no matter how terrorizing.

  “Under no circumstances do you let the should-dos dictate and steal your life. It’s too short, Min. It’s too easy to screw up. Be true to yourself and follow your heart. Only then can you look back and have no regrets.” She stood, keeping my hands in hers, pulling me to my feet.

  Moving around the table, she pulled me into her arms.

  Mother to daughter.

  Woman to woman.

  Her wiry frame fit against mine as if it were a mirror image, both of us paying for our choices with different battle scars.

  “I love you, Tasmin.” She kissed my cheek, her dark hair mingling with mine for a second. “Stay in touch...if you want to. But don’t stay in England if it’s not where you want to be. Travel, explore, find where your soul is happiest.”

  “But what about visits—”

  She tapped my nose, stepping away. “Phone calls and Skype. I’m in prison, but they allow liberties for loved ones and family. Up until now, I had no one to put on my register. I’ll fix that today.”

  She blew me a kiss as the guard waited for her to present her wrists to slap the cuffs back on. “I’m so proud of you, Minnie Mouse. So proud.”

  I pressed my fist against my heart to prevent it from cracking under the pressure of such a gift. I couldn’t stop the trickle of tears as she was led away.

  Only, these tears weren’t caustic and burning.

  These tears were fresh and mending.

  I was still exhausted.

  I was still drained and crippled and frazzled from the day.

  But for the first time, I unbuckled a piece of my past and deposited the terrible weight. Discarding one tiny piece of luggage—throwing away a satchel or a duffel filled with screams and silence—and finally had the courage to stroll away without it.

  * * * * *

  I’d expected to find Elder waiting outside the room, but instead, I found a fresh-faced officer who led me silently back the way I’d come.

  I couldn’t argue about being escorted from the prison on my own, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of Elder leaving without me.

  Nervousness pooled in my belly. Anxious heat hissed over my skin.