“You can’t tell anyone this,” she hissed. “Promise me, Dev.”
“I promise.”
“I’m serious.”
Something in his voice darkened. “So am I.”
“The woman who took him is his mother.” She glanced up and down the street, but there was only a hawker a few yards down near the turnoff for Maxi’s pawn shop, pushing a cart with fried flatbread and ringing his bell with the sluggishness of a summer afternoon, his broad, youthful face shining in the sweat of the sun. She kept her voice low, partially covering her mouth and the phone with one hand. “She’d been gone since he was just a few months old, but she came back for him and…” She thunked her forehead against her bent knee. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. Mr. van Zandt told me to watch her, but I let her go. I deliberately looked away and let her go, and I’m supposed to feel guilty for it but I can’t.”
“Wil…why? Why would you do something so fucking stupid?” He cursed under his breath. “Since when does Miss Goody Two Shoes risk five to ten for aiding and abetting? You’re lucky you didn’t go to jail.”
“Could’ve spent some quality time with Roan.” She laughed, a hissing sound that made her uncomfortable when it didn’t sound like her. Her nose was too full, too thick, clotted and threatening to turn into sniffles. She rubbed at it, easing its prickle. “I don’t know. I want to say it’s because Mr. van Zandt was abusive. I think…I think he raped her. And that’s part of it, but…I think part of it, too, is that she came back for him. She came back for her son. She’d left him, and then she came back.” She stared up at the clear cloudless sky, the sun so bright the blue had a strange yellow cast; electrical wires crisscrossed overhead while crows shuffled their black, hooked feet along the lines, their feathers drooping in the heat. She stared at them, counted them, four-five-six, not quite enough to be called a murder.
A murder of crows, she thought dreamily, and wondered as she’d wondered since she was a little girl why the flock of iridescent, sharp-eyed black ghostlings was so very murderous.
“Do you know how many times I wished Mom would come back for me?” she asked.
“Yeah?” Dev snarled, the rough sound of an animal in pain. “Well, I haven’t. I wasn’t good enough to stay for. I don’t want to know what is. She wanted to be gone, so she’s gone. She can stay that way.”
“Dev—”
“Don’t. She’s as much a stranger to me as she is to you. She threw us both away the same.”
Willow sighed and rubbed her temples. “…you miss her, don’t you.”
His harsh, derisive bark sounded like the start of an argument—but trailed into silence. Trembling, painful silence, before he murmured, “…I say I don’t.”
She smiled faintly. “You’re a really bad liar, Dev.”
“That’s why I said I say I don’t.”
“Yeah.” Willow chuckled. God, her brother was such a mess of thorns. A cactus who needed a hug, but couldn’t stop stabbing in every direction. “Listen…I’d better go. Need to revamp my resume for the tenth time.”
“Sure thing. I’ll have a check sent by courier. Should be there by morning. Same address?”
“Same hole in the wall,” she said. “And Dev?”
“Yeah?”
“I…” She wet her lips. “I miss you.”
“You know what I miss?”
“Hm?”
“What we could have had.”
“Yeah,” Willow said, and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Me too.”
She dropped her phone into her pocket, then sighed and sagged down the wall, pressing the heels of her palms against her forehead. She’d done the right thing, she told herself. She had. For Leigh, and for Elijah.
For everyone except herself.
The door of the bar opened with a faint jingle. Maxi stumped out, then draped herself against the wall next to Willow, her ragged jeans catching on the shoulder of Willow’s shirt. They lingered in silence for a time, watching the crows land on the wires and take off again, and Willow wondered if the metal and rubber were too hot. If it was like landing on a string of molten lava, and trying to get a grip.
That’s what my life feels like, right now.
Molten lava, and trying to get a grip.
Maxi heaved a sigh, deep as a bellows. “You could’ve asked me for help.”
“I know.” Willow draped her arms over her knees and leaned in hard. “It’s just easier to ask family.”