She was in prison. She didn’t need such terrible thoughts when she already lived in a terrible place.
Elder stepped slowly toward me, remorse painting his handsome face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I know now how that must feel.” He shook his head with a harsh cough. “If anyone spoke to my mother on my behalf...I’d be fucking livid.” Rage burned in his gaze, directed at himself. “I’m truly sorry, Pimlico, but you have my word, not once did I tell her how we met, where you came from, or what we’ve done since finding each other.”
His hand crept out, touching mine with a barely there coax. “She doesn’t know anything more than you’re alive. The rest is up to you to tell her...if and when you’re ready.”
I snatched my fingers back from his. “But the things I thought about her...the hate I held while those things were done to—”
Elder lurched forward, stealing my hand and squeezing it hard. “Stop. You didn’t know. You were alone. You were abandoned to that bastard’s whims. You didn’t know you were loved and searched for. Just like she didn’t know how much she loved you until you were gone. She didn’t show it, and it made you doubt.” He cupped my cheek, beseeching me to understand. His face harsh and wind-bitten but still just as lovely. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I swallowed the ball in my throat. “I did. I blamed her...for all of it.”
I still do even when I shouldn’t.
“Blame is good. You needed someone to blame.”
“I blamed him, too.”
“He deserved it. He deserves to rot on his kitchen floor for eternity.”
“But how can I look at her knowing what she did for me, all while I harboured suspicions that she might’ve been the one to set it up? That I concocted ideas that I was merely an experiment for her to see how her child would react with the same monsters she studied?”
Elder gathered me close, tucking me against his warm moleskin jacket. “Fuck, Pim.”
I trembled, spilling my darkest confessions—even the ones I daren’t write in my notes to No One. “I hated her for not hugging me like other mothers. I despised her for making it feel wrong that I wanted to be a little girl playing with dolls. I told myself I was lucky to be treated as an equal and an adult even when I was young enough to be afraid of the dark. Instead of rocking me back to sleep, she’d give me textbooks to read about the psychology of why children fixate on things that can’t hurt them. That phobias for irrational things can be over-come if one just grows up and faces what they’re truly afraid of.”
Elder’s jacket was warm and heady like the incense flavour he carried on his skin. Its rich scent siphoned up my nose, doing its best to soothe me when I didn’t deserve to be soothed.
My voice turned small. “All I wanted was some small sign she loved me, and a lot of those childish insecurities would’ve gone away.”
“We all love in our own ways, Pim.” His voice was deep and rich, entirely mollifying while, at the same time, not doing anything to mollify my nerves. “You need to forgive yourself for thinking such things, just like you need to forgive her for making you feel that way.”
Pushing me out of his embrace, he nudged my chin with his knuckles. “I’ll come with you. If you want me.”
My eyes trailed to the squat, bristling-in-barbwire building behind him. How was I supposed to go in there? How was I supposed to speak to her after so much had happened to both of us?
“Pim...”
Forcing myself to look at him, I waited for whatever he wanted to say.
His eyes tightened, the stress lines around his mouth deepening. “When she called me back, and I told her about you...” He trailed off, tucking wind-whipped hair behind my ear and smiling with love born from being denied his own mother’s affection. “She broke. I’ve never heard someone’s voice turn from guarded to distraught so quickly. All she wanted to know was if you were okay. She didn’t ask anything else. Just were you okay. And then she begged me to bring you to her. I couldn’t refuse.”
I wanted so much to believe this would be easy. That she would forgive me and I’d forgive her, and we’d somehow fall into a relationship we’d never had, but all I could visualize was her lack of cuddles and abundance of coldness, and once again, I was flooded with fear that I was broken. That I was only capable of hating her when all I’d ever wanted was to love and be loved by her.
I’m a horrible, horrible person.
Even now, even knowing what she’d done, I still couldn’t let go of the pain of my childhood.
Something nasty entered my brain. Something totally out of character but I had to spit it out to prevent it from corroding me. “You couldn’t refuse. But I can. I don’t have to go in there if I don’t want to. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to again.”
“That’s true. You’ve been made to do enough bad things.” His commiseration turned to scolding. “But could you be that person? After everything you know? Now you know the truth about how she searched and killed for you?” He shook his head proudly and sadly. “I still have so much to learn about you, Pimlico, but I already know you aren’t capable of doing that. You’re too pure.”
I shot him a sharp look.
In one moment, he made me sound like an angel and the next, an ungrateful brat—something my mother had called me many times in my past. If anything, that reminder helped me stand taller; to shoulder my responsibility while figuring out hers.
If I didn’t visit, I would be proving her right by calling me an ungrateful brat. If I didn’t see her, I would forever hate myself for being so weak and heartless.
I was eternally grateful to her even though we’d never been mother and daughter. Her love had come from a complicated place and landed her in hell.
Even though it tangled me up inside, Elder was right.
I couldn’t refuse because I wasn’t that person.
I wasn’t selfish.
I wasn’t cruel.
I’m better than this.
My mother was my mother.
I was her daughter.
For better or for worse.
I was a Blythe.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elder
IF SOMEONE HAD asked me what my ultimate dream was, I would’ve said a reunion.
A forgiveness.
A ceremony turning me from No One into someone again and being welcomed back into my family.
I knew that would never happen for me, but to be lucky enough to witness such a reunion and not have it be my own was bittersweet. But then again, it was somehow even better as it was for someone I loved more than myself.
It was someone who deserved it more than I did.
And someone I would stand beside for as long as she wanted me.
For the past twenty minutes, I’d remained steadfast by Pim, helping fill in the visitor forms, answering guards when she turned mute, and touching the small of her back as we were guided from entrance to belly of such a dismal place.