by B. N. Toler
I close my eyes as anger and disgust feud within me.
“Sarah’s ability to disconnect served her well or she would have had an emotional breakdown, and you wouldn’t have had any inkling of a real life. Your life has had difficulties, Aldo, but it’s been way better than what it could’ve been.” He looks at me intensely, as if he needs me to understand this point. I can see he, too, justifies Sarah’s behavior and I wonder momentarily if it’s his way of warning me to be careful when judging his sister. I think of my mother and understand why Lucy became so upset if ever she was mentioned. She rarely spoke of our mother, but now I know why. It was too painful. My poor beautiful mother. A tear slides down my cheek, as I mourn the mother I always thought died a tragic, but simple death.
“After deliveries, the babies are taken to a complex of apartments owned by the nest, and placed with their guardians, who are trained and ordered to raise them with one idea in mind.”
“To reproduce?” I whisper.
“To obey.”
As Rhett continues to speak, his words become muffled and drown out. Distance grows between us as a large, deep, black hole begins to form. I stare at it, mesmerized as it calls to me. I know what’s down there. Nothingness. That’s all I want to feel is nothing. A strong wind begins to blow and howl as I continue to stare down into the hole. I step towards it, feeling more confident in my decision to fall into it. This is where I wanted to stay the day Lucy died, but something stopped me and dragged me back. The darkness was where I wanted to stay, forever, but my subconscious fought me, trying to make me return to the real world, and when I refused we found common ground—my dreams, where I lived out a fake existence.
Now, I know the truth.
I’m weak.
The tragedy of my mother’s death is overwhelming. All I want is that darkness. The darkness means not coming back, and I’m okay with that because it also means not feeling pain.
I step towards the hole again, when I hear the wind speak to me as my hair whips wildly.
“I’ll go, too.”
I look up and see Rhett on the other side of the black pit, yelling at me, but his voice only echoes in the wind, almost a whisper.
I shake my head at him. He won’t jump, but I will. Our eyes are locked as I step closer and my heart seizes as he, too, takes another step towards the hole. There is nothing, but a gray haze surrounding us and the sound of the wind howling, and the massive black hole between us. I shake my head at him again.
“No,” I mouth at him.
“If you jump, so do I.” Again, his words are a whisper in the wind.
Tears well in my eyes as my hair whips my face, stinging my skin. I step closer, calling his bluff, but he takes another step as well.
“Stop it! Just go away and leave me!” I scream, furious he’s making me second guess my decision. “This is what I want!”
“No it’s not.” His expression is soft, his eyes pleading with me.
I take a final step towards the hole, this time, my toes are on the edge, and I look up and watch as Rhett, too, reaches the edge. “Please leave me,” I plead softly, tears streaming down my face.
I hear Sarah’s voice echo in the wind. “You are going to get trapped here if you don’t figure this shit out.” I overheard her say that to Rhett the day I eavesdropped on them while they were in the kitchen.
Is this what she meant? I could suck Rhett into the big black hole of nothingness with me where neither of us would ever escape? He’d be trapped here with me forever?
I stare at him, and his eyes speak louder than any words could. He will jump if I do. His hair whips wildly in the wind, but he stands steady, ready to move when I do. I tear my eyes away from him and stare down. Anger pumps through me. I want to punch him for doing this, for making me choose. But in the end, I could never do it to him. Not to Rhett. I cover my mouth as sobs escape me, and I back away from the black pit. As I fall to my knees, the hole begins to shrink and the wind dies down. Before I know it, Rhett is holding me to his chest, much like the night in the den when I almost fell into the darkness.
“Damn you, woman,” he growls through clenched teeth.
I push away from him and hit his chest, screaming through sobs, until he pulls me to him again.
“Let it all out, baby.” He strokes my hair, and I cry until it feels as though every spare drop of moisture has left my body. When I’ve calmed down he pulls back and runs his thumbs across my cheeks.
I lean back into him and close my eyes.
He holds me for what feels like hours.
Time seems to stand still while I try to comprehend all of this information. Among the wrenching ache that echoes through my body with every heartbeat, something else boils within me. Something strong, that tastes bitter, but I can’t identify the feeling. It nags at me, scratching with tiny claws, but I will it away.
We finally get up and continue to walk along the fence line heading straight for the lake. Silence looms, but neither of us speaks. When we finally reach the lake, I plop down and Rhett sits beside me.
I struggle to find words, to form them. My mouth wants to shut down, but finally I manage to ask, “Would you really have jumped?”
“I won’t leave here without you.” I can feel the sincerity in his words surge through me. He really would have jumped.
“So what happened to us?”
“Are you sure you want to know anymore?”
“Yes.” I nod numbly.
He exhales loudly and tosses a blade of grass he held in his hand. “Sarah and the blood healer who delivered you were sent to drop you with your guardians, but Sarah killed him before they got there. When she showed up at my door with the three of you, I could have spit fire. Helping a pregnant woman escape was dangerous enough, but stealing three infant healers was an entire new level of troubles. I knew they would be after her, but saving the three of you was the only way she could forgive herself.”
“Forgive herself for what?” I ask confused.
He inhales a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. “Sarah was able to get pregnant. In fact, she successfully conceived three times, but she terminated all three pregnancies by absorbing their energy.” Rhett clears his throat and stares down at his hands.
Surely, there is nothing else he can say that will render me more shocked. His story goes beyond all comprehension. I close my eyes as my head feels heavy, but the ground shakes and I open them.
“What’s happening?”
“Your subconscious is trying to break. Just breathe.” He touches my hand and the shaking stops.
“Why did she terminate them?”
“She thought her children would be used, raised by liars. If they were females…” His voice trails off and the muscles in his jaw flex. The words are too much for him to convey. “She decided it was the only thing she could do.” He pauses and looks at me, his eyes soft. “Saving the three of you was her last chance to hold on to her humanity, righting her wrongs. We aren’t meant to take life, Aldo,” he reiterates to me once again as he did just a few days ago.
“I can’t believe this,” I sigh, unsure of what I would rather do: cry, scream, or hide away.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“So how did you find Lucy?”
“Your mother trusted Sarah and shared with her that she had a twin sister named Lucy. Sarah was able to see things about Lucy, places she had been with Lisa. We started there and kept trying to track her. You were two months old before we found Lucy because once your mother was taken she refused to be found; she moved a lot. You guys pretty much lived in the back of our car while we chased her down. When we left you with her, we had been calling the three of you A, B, and C. You were A, of course.” He smiles softly, staring into some distant place. “I remember holding you in my arms, tiny and frail.” He cradles his arms as if he’s holding a baby, and his mouth curves slightly. “I still can’t believe that sweet little baby girl is sitting here in front of me, a beautifu
l young woman.
“Seeing the three of you so many years later makes me realize that once again, I’m indebted to my sister. I never thought I would be able to feel for someone again, because I shut myself off to it. She saved you and because she did, I found you.” He inhales deeply. My heart beat increases with his words. “It’s like it was fate, Aldo.”
When he looks at me again, I’m lost in his eyes. Fate had tethered us together long ago, with time being the only thing to keep us apart. Time for me to grow and mature, while he stood still, frozen, waiting for me, neither of us knowing it.
I pull up on my knees; the grass is soft and plush under me and I stare out over the water. “So how are you here with me?”
“Sarah and I have informants in the nest where she had been held. We try to stop any healer from being taken. No one deserves what happened to her. Word of three sibling healers came through, and once she heard they were triplets, she knew it was the three of you. It took her days to locate Lucy, so she could warn her, but she was too late.
“She arrived only moments before you and your brothers showed up to find your house burning down. She watched Whit try to pull your energy to stop you from entering the house. It took Whit and Hudson tackling you before Whit could pull you unconscious. When you didn’t wake up, she knew you were all in danger, so she helped your brothers get power of attorney and guardianship over you, and she moved the three of you.
“Your brothers were very skeptical at first, but I think they were desperate for help. Sarah asked me to come to Florida where they had taken you, to assist when you wouldn’t wake up. I walked your dreams for months, blending into your scenes unnoticed. I was trying to figure out what was keeping you here. I wanted to see if you would work things out on your own without my interference and wake up. I brought Sarah in to watch when I wasn’t.”
“You brought her here?”
“Sarah can dream walk, but only if I connect to her subconscious and then move her to another’s. Lucky I did because we wouldn’t have figured out we weren’t the only ones walking here.”
“You weren’t?”
“The scene in the gas station was our clue. Sarah realized it right away.”
“What?”
“Thomas was there.”
“In the gas station?”
“This is just our theory, but we think he created that scene, hoping it would send you in a panic and put you on the move.”
No wonder I felt like I recognized the gunman. Could it have been Thomas? “What would that matter if I was in my subconscious?”
“Because he thought it would possibly lead him to where you were physically. Then he would have found you and your brothers. With you unconscious, it would have been easy to take you.”
I fight the urge to cry, allowing anger to wash over me instead. Rhett continues as I fume. “Of course, when you didn’t run to them, he had to be more drastic, so he shifted as the vampire that was so nasty to you at the club, but that didn’t send you running either.” He pauses to allow me to react, but I can’t seem to form words.
The vampire wore sunglasses that night. Maybe he wore sunglasses as the vampire to make sure I didn’t recognize him again. I remember how I thought I saw a tattoo while I was giving the vampire a lap dance and when I looked again it was gone.
“His last attempt was to appear to you and tell you he would never be with you again. Again, you slipped through his fingers when you snuck out of the bus depot. We knew at that point we had to intervene, so we pretended to kidnap you to play into your scene.”
“My scene?”
“You thought you had been found, so we played it out by kidnapping you. I made you lock Thomas out because he was a danger to you and your brothers.”
“He killed Lucy?” I fight tears.
“I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely.”
“He was going to sell me for breeding?” My mouth can barely speak the words.
“That’s what we believe.”
The lake is still, smooth as glass. I find a pebble and toss it, interrupting the flat surface.
I try to step back and view my history with Thomas from my current point of view, not the lovesick teenager I was. Rhett’s story seems logical, but certain things don’t fit. “We knew Thomas for seven months before anything happened. Why would he have waited so long to sell us out?”
Rhett stands and brushes the grass off of him. “I think he cared for you, and I think he tried to fight what he was taught to do. Your family provided him with a taste of what a real family is like. You guys felt like he added something special to your lives, but it was the other way around. You added to his.”
The image of Thomas holding the baby, the first night he walked my dreams, ricochets through my mind like a bullet. Was it his baby he held or… My breath hitches. Was it the woman’s baby that lay covered in blood, lifeless before the vampire? Was Thomas protecting the baby or was he helping the vampire? “I saw him holding a baby in my dreams the first night I met him. I ignored it because it didn’t make any sense.” I shake my head. “I should’ve told Lucy. She would’ve known what it meant.”
“My gut says he was involved in Lucy’s death, but I can’t be sure. I do, truly believe he struggled with what to do, Aldo.” Rhett picks a rock up and tosses it.
“But he betrayed us anyway?”
“I think he tried to disconnect from you, but when you showed up at his house that day, you forced his hand.”
“How so?” I stand and face him.
“I don’t think Lucas knew Thomas had found a female healer.”
I remember the day I went to Thomas’s house and Lucas’s odd greeting when I introduced myself. “Maybe he played a role in all of this.” My mind struggles to wrap around the idea that Thomas, the man I fell so deeply in love with, could ever do anything to hurt me or my family. Maybe it was Lucas. “But Thomas came back into my dreams trying to trick me into revealing where I was physically?”
“Yes.” He nods.
I sit back down and run my hand across the soft blades of grass. Neither of us speaks for what seems like hours, but I know it’s only been minutes. Tears stream down my face as I sob quietly.
Rhett sits beside me and rubs my back gently, allowing me to get it all out.
My sorrow seems to be aimed at the loss of Lucy more than at Thomas. In the time since Thomas left me at the bus depot I have accepted that he and I would never be together. As much as I wanted to blame Rhett for that initially, I know it wasn’t his fault. I glance up at Rhett, who is watching me lost in my thoughts.
Things are falling into place now. The day Lucy died, I fought to stay in my subconscious, and then there was the snap. That must have been the moment this all began. This crazy, yearlong coma. “Do you think I’m crazy?” I ask afraid he may say yes.
“No. I think you were hurt and you had the ability to hide here, away from that hurt.”
“Yeah, but even here I’ve been sad. I could never find Thomas, I’ve been away from my brothers and…” I pause. “What about Beau?” I whisper, cringing at the thought. Am I a mother or did I make that up too?
“Well, as you know, Hudson and your best friend Lila dated. She got pregnant. Congratulations, you’re an aunt.” Rhett grins.
Sobs erupt from my body like a damn bursting. I’m not a mother who couldn’t take care of her baby. It always felt wrong, off, and now I know why. He wasn’t mine.
“Hey, it’s okay. I know you thought you had a son and it’s hard to hear you don’t—”
“No. It’s a relief,” I sob. “I couldn’t love him like a mother loves their child. I thought something was wrong with me, like I was—”
“A monster?” Rhett interrupts me.
I gaze up at him. The irony isn’t missed on me. I cover my face with my hands. “I made myself believe I had a baby?”
“Aldo, in the real world you were still absorbing information and knew what was going on in your surroundings. You just took t
hat information and manipulated it to fit in your world.” He pauses to allow me to speak, but I can’t. For the first time since he began this story, I feel relief. My body relaxes as the hundred pound weight falls off of my shoulders crashing to the ground with a hard thud.
“I didn’t abandon my son,” I cry and laugh at the same time. “I’m not a horrible person.”
“No. The idea that you had a son gave you more motivation to search for Thomas.”
My sobs grow as I let go of my own self-loathing. I don’t have a son, that’s why I couldn’t feel like a mother should about her child. “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where does the rest of it fit?” I take a deep breath and try to calm myself.
“Well, you know you took the job as a stripper because you thought vampires were sleazy.”
It sounds so ridiculous when he says it. Why would I associate those two things together? “I can’t believe I made a world where I became a stripper.” I shake my head.
“I thought you were pretty good at it.” He winks and heat flushes my cheeks.
“Funny. I never pegged you as someone who enjoyed watching natural disasters,” I snort and he laughs at me. “What about Alina?”
“Alina, I think represented your friend Lila, who is now your sister-in-law. She was kind of like your substitute friend while you were in here.”
“Hudson got married?” I question in disbelief.
“Yeah, as soon as they found out she was pregnant.”
“So Lila knows what we are?”
“Apparently.” He shrugs. “The little girl, Ella, I think she represented Heidi. You never let that guilt go, so it played out here just like everything else.” The idea of Ella and the sadness that came with her evaporate from my mind. She wasn’t real. Even knowing Ella never existed, I know I will always carry Heidi’s image and the guilt associated with her as long as I live.
“Can we walk again?” I turn away from the lake.
Sure.” We begin to make our way back up the hill towards the barn. When we enter, Bruno pokes his massive head out of his stall as if he’s waiting for me. I rub his nose, leaning my head on the side of his neck.
