Broken Wings (12 page)

No. She needs to know…I
waited on telling Raea important news.
The
burning tears turned on and off without his control now.

He should have told Raea, should have
been honest from the beginning and let her choose. Sure, he hadn't
expected things to happen so fast, but it was her right to know
what could happen.

Now, he wanted to rip out his heart,
but losing her last night had already done that. He had nothing
left.

Elis rolled over and let out a
trembling breath. A faint light filtered through the shade on his
window. Dawn approached. With it would come the longest day of his
life, without a doubt. Experience had taught him that the hard
way.

Worries flooded his mind about telling
Debbie. He owed her that much after all she'd done to help
him.

Get it over with!
The sooner it was done, the sooner he could
concentrate on other things.

Other things. What
other
things
did he
have? Raea was gone with a slim chance of surviving, much less
returning. She had been his sole purpose for being there. And if
she did return, what would she decide about him?

Go!
He threw off the covers yet debated getting out of bed. Nare
should be with him when he told Debbie. After all, it was her big
idea to leave him behind. She should be the one to tell Debbie that
the Shirukan took Raea last night. It would serve her right for the
self-righteous attitude.

If only he'd been there with
them.

Laying there wasn't
helping. He had to do something,
anything.
A shower might help pass the
time. Morning moved too slowly.

The shower and dressing took almost no
time, but his stomach burned fiercer than it had during the night.
In jeans and a dark blue sweater, he crept downstairs, careful to
avoid stepping in the middle of the creaky step. Evelyn needed her
sleep, but she practically slept under the stairs.

At the consideration of the old widow,
he hesitated at the bottom. Evelyn had helped him cope with the
loss of his family. She had become his family for the last two
years, or close to it. Her kindness had filled the emptiness inside
him.

But he'd fended off her insistence of
calling Debbie last night and didn't want to face her that morning,
when he no longer had a choice.

Not what he wanted to think about.
First to get food. He'd worry about Debbie afterwards.

Good old Evelyn. She never let him go
hungry. The containers of "leftovers" from the last week filled her
fridge.

After a meal of reheated food, which
his grief refused to let him finish, Elis left the
kitchen.

Leaning on her cane, Evelyn met him in
her pale blue nightgown and long, maroon robe at the bottom of the
stairs, her short, gray hair a bit wild on her head. "You're awake
early, dear."

Great. Here it came.

"Best not to linger any longer," she
said.

"I know." He put his foot on the
bottom step, fully intending to hide out in his room, but something
stopped him. The hunched old woman with the cane gave him a cruel
glare. Her body might be weak but her mind was strong.

"This would have been easier last
night."

"I know."

"Call her now, Elis." Her voice was
firm but gentle.

"I know!" The moment he snapped the
words, he regretted it. Damn it, though. Couldn't she see how much
it hurt him?

Evelyn's gray blue eyes turned cold
for a moment, but for only a moment. They softened again with
understanding.

"I'm sorry. It's…" The lump in his
throat returned with all the weight of his guilt. "She's gone. It's
my fault." His voice trembled, strangled by the agony of losing
Raea when he should have been there.

"You did what you could,
dear."

"It wasn't good enough!" He sniffed
and wiped the tears blurring his eyes. "I'm never good enough.
They're all dead because of me."

The cane tapped once, followed by a
hand on his back. He didn't want her sympathy, didn't deserve it,
but he needed it and fell down on the stairs to sit and let the
tears flow.

"It wasn't you, Elis. Stop feeling
sorry for yourself. Sometimes these things are meant to happen.
They have a purpose, but we don't know what it is while we're too
focused on our suffering. You have to get past it."

"Get past it? How?" Tears stung his
eyes. Didn't she get it? "How do you make the hurt go
away?"

"You live and you give. I thought my
world ended when Joe died."

He'd already heard this. Her husband
had died six years ago. Joe had been her world, everything to
her—like Raea was to him—for fifty-four years, until one day he
didn't wake up from his sleep. He'd had some health problems, but
nothing serious, or so they'd thought.

"I should have made him see a doctor,
but he insisted he was fine. I was afraid of him getting mad." She
sighed. "I blamed myself for a long time for not pushing him
harder. He was a proud man but never wanted to talk about his
feelings. He loved me, though, and I loved him. That was all that
mattered. We shared each other's company."

The same story she'd told him on a few
different occasions.

"Without him I thought I had nothing
worth living for. The kids didn't come around anymore, except at
holidays, and I haven't gotten around well since my early
sixties."

Over ten years ago. Despite the bad
hip and the hump of her back from osteoarthritis, she managed
pretty well.

"Every day I prayed to join Joe." Her
eyes sparkled with her smile. "Until my angel came."

This again. She gave him too much
credit. "I'm no angel," he muttered.

"Don't be so sure, dear. Helping you
gave me a purpose. It made me want to live and learn more about
worlds I didn't know existed. And you've given me so much
more."

He did help when her arthritis got the
worst of her, but he couldn't take away all her health problems.
"You have a good heart, Elis. You made mistakes, but you learned
from them. We all do. It's part of life. You live, learn, and move
on, and there are bumps in the road. Sometimes they seem like we're
diving over cliffs, without wings—"

Her wink made him smile, in spite of
himself.

"But at least if we try to fly, we
have a chance that maybe we can. If we give up, all hope is gone.
You can't stop hoping and you can't blame yourself. You didn't know
what would happen. You did what you thought was right with what you
knew. Quit blaming yourself, dear. But don't give up. Pray for
Raea. She may be alive."

Maybe was the slimmest chance. And if
she was, it wouldn't last long. How could he hope for that? "I was
at least partly to blame." That she couldn't deny.

"Nonsense."

What?

"You don't control those Shirukan. You
had no way to know they would come. You didn't tell Raea to fly
without you. You actually did what she asked, and trusted her. How
do you blame yourself? You didn't make anything happen."

"But I didn't tell her about bonding,
and that led to her not wanting to be with me and going flying
and—"

"Stop it, Elis!" Despite the sagging
cheeks, her face fixed in a hard look. "You didn't know what would
happen. Raea made her own decisions. So did the Shirukan. Not you.
If there's one thing I learned from Joe's death, it's that we
always find ways to blame ourselves, to be the martyrs. It'll only
hurt you worse to dwell on it. You made a mistake, but that did not
cause any of this. Let it go and move on with your
grief."

Evelyn had never hesitated to scold
him, but she reserved it for times when he most deserved it. She
was always right too, when he looked back. But she was wrong this
time. How could he not blame himself?

"She's right."

He stiffened at the voice behind him.
"How long have you been there?"

"Long enough."

Why did people always say that when
they didn't want to admit they heard a whole conversation? And what
was with the sneaking out? He didn't even hear Nare come out of her
room.

Nare stepped lightly down the stairs.
He didn't need her lecturing him right now. At least when Evelyn
lectured, she respected him. Nare always came off as
condescending.

And she didn't need to sit by him like
she did.

"Listen to her."

"You mean
you
. No." He started to
rise—

Nare's firm grip on his arm made his
anger flare. He pulled away, but she gripped tighter. "Stay, Elis.
Just listen for once."

How dare she tell him what to do! "I'm
sick of listening to you!" He jerked his arm away and stood
up.

"Idiot!" She grabbed his jeans. "Just
stop and listen. Would you…just…"

"Go home, Nare." He yanked his leg,
but she wrapped her arms around him.

["Damn it, Elis! Don't be childish.
We're trying to help you."]

["What do you care? You've always
hated me."]

["No. I didn't. I liked teasing you.
There's a difference."] Her voice quieted to a mumble on the last
part but rose again when she said, "I'm sorry. Okay? I'm sorry, but
we were both younger then. Now, would you just stop and
listen?"

She apologized?

He couldn't believe she apologized.
Did she mean it?

"Elis, dear." Evelyn's smile chased
away the tension. "I need you. After all the lonely years, it's
like having one of my children here to keep me company. You've been
the answer to my prayers."

He knew what she said without directly
saying it. She understood what he felt and knew how to plant a seed
of guilt in him if he dared to leave her.

Nare loosened her grip on his leg.
"I'll help you talk with Debbie."

He still had to tell Debbie. Crystal
fire. And to think Evelyn's lecture had almost taken his mind off
that. "Good." He grumbled the word. "Then you can call her and tell
her we need to talk." It would save him the trouble of breaking
down on the phone.

"What's the number?"

* * *

Debbie stepped in before he could say
anything, a worried expression on her face. "Where's Raea? Nare
wouldn't say anything on the phone." She pushed aside her layers of
thick, dark hair, flat and lifeless—she didn't even wear makeup.
Debbie never left the house without makeup or her hair fixed neat.
Nare's call must have woke her up.

Elis grimaced and choked on the lump
in his throat and shook his head, unable to speak.

"Oh, God!" Her hands went to her
mouth.

Seeing her eyes glaze with tears
choked him with the cold, hard fact that Raea was gone. He'd never
cried so much in his life as he had the last twelve hours. This
didn't help.

"No. She can't be. Tell me she's
here." Her fingers pinched his arms, her eyes begging for any other
explanation. He wished he could tell her what she wanted. "I— I—
I—" She swallowed. "I thought since she didn't come home, that…she
was here all night."

A sudden, accusing rage on her face
fixed on him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner!"

At a loss for words, Elis shook his
head. Debbie's eyes glazed. He couldn't say anything but embraced
her. Debbie let loose her tears and cried with him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered and
sniffed.

Debbie said nothing for a while but
let loose her tears, sniffing and sobbing into his
chest.

She had told him when he arrived that
Padina had warned her of the Shirukan after the Starfire. Padina
wanted Raea raised as a human, unless it became necessary for her
to understand what she really was, so Raea could live a comfortable
life on Earth without feeling different. That had changed six weeks
ago, when the Starfire entities decided to reveal themselves.
Debbie had known all along of the possibility that the Shirukan
might find her. He'd promised to protect Raea, but he was only one
person.

"I'm sorry too, Debbie."

Debbie pushed away from him and wiped
her eyes.

Nare looked down at her hands a
moment. "I was the one who failed. I was the one with Raea. Elis
was with Josh, like Raea asked. I tried to protect her."

She actually admitted her mistake.
Maybe he'd been too hard on his cousin.

"What happened?" Debbie looked from
Nare to Elis. "This is Nare?"

Elis looked at Nare.

In the foyer of the house, Nare told
Debbie about flying with Raea and the Shirukan hitting her with the
neutralizer. She didn't remember anything until she woke up and
heard Elis talking with Evelyn and knew he had caught her, but she
still didn't thank him. She backtracked then to her arrival the
night before and Raea finding out about bonding and deciding to
give herself some time away from Elis.