Burning for You (Blackwater) (32 page)

I shriek and the rocking chair collapses
where Heidi has sat back down in to feed the baby, making her fall to the
ground.  I leap as the baby falls from her arms but he hits the hard stone
floor with a sickening thud.  Heidi scrambles to help him, and his screams fill
the room.  I try and get to the baby before she can, but Gabe stops me with a
hand on my shoulder, holding me down.  I feel the pain in my head from his
touch grow so fierce that my vision turns white from the searing pain.

“NO!” I hear my mother scream, and
I feel a shove and the pain stops suddenly.  I look up and everything is
blurry, except for the flash of my mother’s hair and those animal yellow eyes.

How we left Blackwater United is a
blur, but somehow, my mother and I have found our way back to Betsey and are
safely inside.  Gabe’s car is gone from the parking lot.  My mother hasn’t said
a word, but I can tell something isn’t right with her. 

With shaking fingers I dial Theo’s
number on my phone.  He answers right away.  “Where are you?” I ask him frantically.

“At your house, with Jack,” he
replies.  “What’s going on?  Are you okay?”

I shake my head, no, but realize he
can’t see me.  “I don’t think I can drive right now,” I tell him.  “Do you
think you can come get us?”

“Where are you?”

“In the parking lot of Blackwater
United Methodist Church,” I tell him.  There is a long pause on the other end
of the phone, and then I can hear some shuffling around.  “Hello?”

“Don’t move, I’ll be there,” Theo
says, sounding as though he may be panicking more than I am.

“Bring Jack’s car, not yours.  My
mother might need to lie down in the backseat,” I tell him, glancing at my
fragile ghost of a mother.

“I’ll be there,” he repeats, and
hangs up. 

I put my phone back in my purse and
turn to my mother.  “Mother, say something to me, please,” I plead with her.

She turns her face to mine and
stares at me blankly.  “I can’t see anything,” she says in a flat voice.

“What, you mean you’re blind?” I
ask her.  “How many fingers am I holding up?”  I hold up four fingers, because
everyone holds up two.  That’s just too obvious.  My eyes widen as she slaps
them away.  “Well, I don’t think you’re blind.”

“I can’t see, Leah!” she repeats in
a louder voice.  “I don’t know what’s coming, I can’t see anything!”  It’s
already growing dark out, I notice, the days are getting shorter.  The dimmed
light of day makes my mother’s eyes appear dull and grey.  Her hair has come
loose and strands fall down around her neck, making her appear not much older
than I am. 

“You can’t see what, Mother?” I ask
her softly.  She appears hysterical, almost like I do when I have an asthma
attack.  “Tell me what you mean.”

“Gabe,” she whispers.  “He took my
powers.  He reaped me.”

“Oh god,” I say, putting my head on
the steering wheel.  “That was meant for me, wasn’t it?”  My mother is silent,
staring away from me now, out the front window.  I realize what actually
happened back in the church.  Gabe meant to reap me, but my mother
intercepted.  I can’t even look at her, knowing that I’m the reason she just
had everything taken away from her.  “I should have stayed away from Blackwater
like you asked me to,” I mutter.  She doesn’t say anything, which I take for
silent agreement.  We sit for a few minutes, not speaking until I see the
lights of Jack’s car pull up behind us.  I get out of the car and run over to
Theo, throwing myself into his arms.  Theo tells Jack to bring my mother back
to the house.  Watching my tiny mother helped up into Jack’s monstrosity of a
vehicle seems unusual.  Theo hoists her up into the back seat, and I note how
frail she appears and like a rag doll, she needs to be pushed and arranged and
belted in as she lies down.  Theo drives Betsey for me, following Jack home.  I
look over toward him and a streetlamp casts an eerie glow on his face.  I
notice his jaw is clenching repeatedly, confirming what I already feel –
everyone would be better off without me.  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I
finally gather the courage to say.

“I’m thinking that you’re a fool
for confronting Gabe without me there to protect you,” Theo says.  “I think you
have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“He reaped my mother,” I say.  “I
know exactly what I’m dealing with.”

“And it took an incident like that
to prove it to you!” he says, raising his voice above the normally even tone he
usually has.  The result is that I burst into tears.  “Okay, stop, I didn’t
mean to yell,” Theo says.

“No!” I cry, “You’re absolutely
right!  I’m reckless.  I came back to Blackwater to get away from my crazy life
and asshole husband in Chicago and make amends with my mother and sister.  What
I end up doing is taking two lovers and getting my husband killed and my
mother’s power reaped by a psychopath, while my sister kidnaps my best friend’s
baby and thinks she gave birth to it.”

“Your sister was going to kidnap
that baby whether you came back to Blackwater or not,” Theo replies.  “You
couldn’t have stopped that.”

“But then I wouldn’t know, or care,
and my mother would be just fine,” I say.

Theo grabs my hand and squeezes
it.  “Leah, I know she wasn’t fine before.  How do you feel with Ash being gone
right now?”

“Horrible,” I admit, feeling bad
because I still have Theo right next to me.  “Like half of my heart has been
ripped out.”

“Your mother hasn’t been fine since
your father left Blackwater, Leah,” Theo says.  “You haven’t really been the
cause of her not being ‘fine’.  You know that.”

I sigh.  “Theo, let’s say she does
see my father again.  I don’t know if she will, but what if?  Would she still
feel the same way about him?  Would he still be her catalyst?”

“I don’t know,” he says.  “I
honestly don’t know how it works.”

“For once, I feel like I know as
much as you do,” I tell him.  “So what happens now?”

“I think you should tell Eleanor
what we know,” Theo says.  “I also think Jack should come with you.”

“Okay,” I agree, nodding.  “And you
come with as well.”

“Are you kidding?” Theo replies. 
“Of course I will.  After what happened tonight, I’m not leaving your side
until I know Gabe is dead.”

*

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack wants
to know, meaning my mother.

“Where is she?” I ask him back,
purposely avoiding the question.  I’m not really sure how to answer him.

“She went upstairs to her room,”
Jack says, blocking me as I try to make my way past him up the stairs.  “Don’t
bother her, Leah.  I think she wants to be alone.”

“Jack, she’s my mother,” I tell
him.  “I have to go see her.”  Jack glances at Theo, as though he’s in charge. 
I’m suddenly dying to know what passed between them when they were at the house
alone together, and in the car to get us.  What would Theo have to say to Jack
at all?  Still, they seem copacetic from the exchange they’re having.  Theo
nods and Jack moves aside.  I charge up the stairs and to my mother’s door. 
“Mother?” I say, knocking softly.  “Mom?”  She doesn’t answer, but I let myself
in anyway and close the door behind me.  I glance at my mother lying prostrate
on her large bed under her white down comforter.  The room seems frigid, as
though the heat isn’t working at all, and I notice her window is wide open, swirling
gusts of cold air through the room.  I walk over to it and put my hands on the
rail to push it closed.

“Don’t,” my mother’s voice says in
a whisper from her bed.  “Leave it.”

“You’ll get sick,” I tell her,
echoing the very sentiment she would give me when I would go outside in the
cold without a hat on when I was a kid.  “I’m closing it.”

“I like the air, it lets me feel
something,” she snaps, and my hands drop to my sides.  I back away from the
window and turn toward her and sink down to perch myself on the edge of her
bed.  “You should leave.”

“Blackwater or your bedroom?” I ask
her. 

“It’s too late for you to leave
Blackwater now,” my mother says, yawning loudly.  “I’m exhausted.”

“I’ll go,” I tell her.  “But I want
you to tell me something.  Do you regret that I came back to town?  Do you wish
I’d never set foot in Blackwater again?”

“Leah,” she replies.  “I wish you’d
never left, and that’s the truth.”  I sit in stunned silence, not expecting
that answer from her at all.  “Do you regret leaving?”

“I regret everything right now,” I
say.  “Everything I’ve done these past couple of weeks has amounted to complete
disaster.”

“Not everything,” she replies. 
“You have two men who would do anything for you and some people have no one.” 
She doesn’t add that she can include herself to the list of “some people”. 

“Two people are too complicated,” I
declare.  “I would have been happy with one.”

“All love is complicated,” my
mother replies.  “It’s not worth it if you don’t have to fight your way through
it.” 

“What if I don’t want to fight?” I
ask her.  “I just want everything to work and everyone to be happy.”

“Then make it work, Leah,” my
mother tells me.  “You’ve found yourself in a love triangle.  Well guess what? 
A triangle is a completely functioning shape.  It has three lines that connect
on all sides.  What do you get when you have two lines?”

“I have no idea?” I reply.

“It could be an ‘X’ or it could be
parallel lines side by side that never actually connect,” she explains.  “I’ve
seen it both ways.  Heidi and Jack operated parallel to one another.  They
existed side by side, living their own lives their own ways without ever
connecting at any point.”

“But Heidi found Gabe,” I say. 
“And now Jack is alone.”

“Poor Jack,” my mother agrees. 
“I’ve always liked Jack, and I always knew he and Heidi were wrong for each
other.”

“What should I tell Eleanor?” I ask
her.  “She’s going to be devastated.”

“That baby isn’t Eleanor’s,” my
mother replies.  “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” I wonder.  “You
and I both know that’s Eleanor’s baby.  Heidi’s gone crazy.”

“Eleanor gave birth to him,” my
mother replies, “but Gabe has reaped that baby’s powers and instilled them into
Heidi.”

“Can a baby have powers?” I ask
her.  “How could Gabe do that?”

My mother nods.  “You did.  The
moment you were born I could feel how strong you would be.  But like your mind,
your powers grow as you get older.  The more you hold in your heart, the
stronger they get.  You can’t control them when you’re first born, and you
don’t know they’re there, but you learn to hone it eventually.”  She takes a
deep breath.  “Gabe can reap powers and hold them himself, or he can cast them
where he wants to.  Heidi was a vessel for that baby’s powers, and now she
holds them.”

“So the baby has no powers anymore?”
I want to know.  My mother shakes her head.  “But then why keep the baby?  How
did Heidi have that milk to give the baby?”

“Heidi needs that baby, Leah,” my
mother says.  “As long as it’s dependent on her, she will control its powers. 
Once that dependency is severed, she will lose them.”

“Oh, you mean the milk?” I
realize.  “How did Heidi have milk?”

My mother shrugs.  “Eleanor and
Drew are earth elementals.  It’s natural to produce milk, and Heidi has figured
out how to control it from the powers Gabe has reaped into her.  I don’t
pretend to understand all of Gabe’s crafting abilities.  He’s reaped before,
and he holds the skills and ability of every crafter he’s reaped.  He is the
most dangerous kind of crafter, because no one knows what limits he might
have.”

I shudder, wishing that I’d heeded
everyone’s warnings about Gabe sooner rather than later.  “Why did you let me
go out with him that night?” I ask her.  “The day after I came back to town,
you let me be alone with him.”

“You weren’t alone,” my mother
says.  “Ash found you that night, didn’t he?”  I nod.  “I didn’t see Gabe
coming.  He blocked me out, I wasn’t expecting him.  The minute I saw him at
the door, I knew Ash would be there and you would be safe that night, so I let
you go.  I had the plan to get you out of town with Michael, but that failed
too.”

“Yes,” I say.  “It failed
miserably.”

“He’s gone,” my mother says, and I
wonder how she knows.  Her sight is gone, but she must have known before
tonight.  “I need to rest, Leah.  Go tell Eleanor her baby is gone.  She needs
to let go and grieve.”

I stand up and walk to the door and
put my hand on the knob, turning back to look at my mother.  I realize how much
power she had held before tonight, and how strong she really was.  Now, because
of me, all of that is gone.

I call up Isabel and ask her to
come over and stay with my mother.  Despite the fact that she is an adult, I
don’t feel right leaving her in the house by herself.  Initially I asked Theo
to stay with her but he won’t leave my side after what happened with Gabe.

Eleanor’s house is brightly
illuminated, seeming like every light in the house is on.  Theo, Jack and I
approach the house slowly, no one saying anything to one another during the car
ride or on the walk up to the house.  No one wants to deliver terrible news.

Drew opens the door before any of
us have a chance to knock or ring the bell, and we walk in silently, me first,
and Jack bringing up the rear in single file fashion.  Eleanor comes up to me
and I can see she has tears in her eyes.  “Tell me, Leah,” she says, taking my
hands in her own. 

“He’s gone,” I choke out, finding
myself sobbing along with her.  “Heidi and Gabe took him.”

She nods and looks down, the tears
rolling down her cheeks.  Drew comes up behind her and puts his hands on her
shoulders, rubbing them comfortingly.  Eleanor doesn’t let go of my hands.