Shadow & Soul (21 page)

He sighed and picked up her arm from his waist, pulling her around so he could hold her. “I need to tell you everything. No secrets. I need you to know so you’ll stop wondering.” He looked down at her bare legs. “But put some pants on first.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bibi pushed Margot into the house, and Faith followed, carrying the bag she and Bibi had packed, as well as a couple of plastic bags of crap the hospital had sent them home with.

It wasn’t her mother who was coming back to this house. The days in the hospital seemed to have dulled the edges of the woman she’d been. Not that Faith really had any idea who her mother had been in the past ten years.

But for the past few days, Margot had been quiet and vaguely confused. She asked for Blue all the time and cried when no one could bring him to her. She knew Bibi—almost forty years of friendship had etched her best friend into many layers of her memory—but she only fleetingly understood who Faith was, and when she did, she thought she was still a girl. Since Faith and Margot had been in crisis during those years, it was easier, and just better, when she couldn’t remember her at all.

Waiting in the house for them was Leonora Prater, who would be Margot’s primary nurse. Sera was paying for one and a half daily shifts of home nursing. She’d offered to pay for three shifts, freeing Faith up entirely, but Faith wanted to try it this way first. She had no idea why, but she wanted to take care of her mother. Or at least try.

Leonora—Leo, she’d said to call her—had started working a couple of days earlier, and she had made a list of changes that needed to be made in the house. In almost no time, several members of the Horde had widened doors, built ramps, and hauled furniture and rugs to storage. They’d also installed child guards on cabinets and doors. Faith had trouble accepting that one. Her mother was becoming a child.

Because there was a notation in her file that she was prone to violent outbursts, the nurses assigned to her—Leo and a male nurse, Jose—had particular training. And they were both large people. Margot was about an inch taller than Faith and maybe ten pounds heavier. Leo probably weighed two times as much. And Jose was built like a defensive lineman. The image of either of them taking Margot down, no matter how psycho she got, was almost laughable. If anything at all could have been laughable.

Now, Leo smiled as Bibi rolled Margot into the house. She bent down and took Margot’s hand. “Hi, Margot. Do you remember me?” Leo had visited her in the hospital the day before.

Margot just smiled. And then one of the kittens, a little, snow-white girl, tumbled into the room, followed quickly by her grey tabby siblings, sister and brother. Margot saw them, and her smile grew. She tried to get up from her wheelchair, but her leg was extended in its tall cast. Faith reached down and picked up the white girl, who was trying to climb the wheelchair, anyway.

“This is Blanca, Margot.” Calling her ‘Mom’ had only confused her, more often than not. “Would you like to hold her?”

“Please.” She took the kitten from Faith’s hands and tucked her under her neck. “I love babies. I didn’t know you had babies here. Everything’s all right, then.”

Faith felt something like love, watching her mother cuddle the kitten and laugh when her whiskers tickled her face. She hadn’t felt anything like love for her mother in a very long time. It hurt.

Seeing her calm with the kittens made her think that maybe she could be okay with Tucker, too. That was a huge leap, she knew. But Tucker was a sweet, beautiful little boy, who was usually quiet. Maybe Margot would like having him around. Maybe…maybe Michael and Tucker could move in here with them. When Michael got custody, at least.

Leo smiled and winked at Faith and then went behind the wheelchair. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen and put some lunch together? Are you hungry?”

“I have a shoot tomorrow. I can’t eat. But I’ll have some coffee. Is the coffee good here?”

Leo’s brow furrowed lightly. She didn’t know Margot’s past. But Bibi stepped up. “We had to reschedule that until your leg is better, baby. You should eat so you heal up faster.”

Margot looked at the cast on her leg like she’d never seen it before. A blank mask of confusion rolled over her face, and then she smiled again, rubbing her face on the kitten. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. That was stupid of me. Okay. Can I have grilled cheese?”

“Absolutely,” Leo answered.

“Watch out for the babies!” Margot admonished as Leo pushed her chair through to the kitchen.

Faith watched them go, her head in turmoil. It was always in turmoil these days. Bibi put her arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Maybe she’ll come back a little, now that she’s home.”

“I don’t know if I want her to. Isn’t that awful? But she’s nicer this way.”

Bibi sighed. “Oh, baby. I wish I could fix what broke between you two. I guess it’s too late now. But she does love you. I know her better than anybody alive. She loves you. But she hates the way she sees her failin’s in you.”

Faith flinched. “Jesus, Beebs. Ow.”

“I said that wrong. She sees that she fucked up with you. And she’s not the kind of person who can confront her mistakes.”

Faith shook her head. A person who couldn’t accept their own mistakes was an asshole, plain and simple. “I don’t know why you love her so much. I don’t know what you see in her. Or what my dad did.”

“Blue was no great prize, either. I loved him, but he was a domineerin’ son of a bitch. If he’d’ve been mine, I’d’ve killed him within a year. Oh, that man could not see any way but his own. Margot used to fight and fight him, but she always gave in. For years, he just rolled right over her. What he wanted, he got. And then she finally figured him out. She figured out how to make him think what she wanted was what he wanted. Once it started to work, it became a habit. I’d say that was when she started bein’ not so nice.”

Bibi gave her a squeeze. “And he was always sweet to you. Sweeter even than he was with your sister. You had him tied in a bow around your finger, and it hurt your mama to see it, when she had to fight him so hard, all the time.”

Pages of the past were flipping in Faith’s head, and old hurts, hurts that had been aching ever since the hospital had called her about her mother’s accident, began to bleed. “That’s what she did to me, isn’t it? It wasn’t my dad. It was her.”

“What good is it pickin’ at that old sore? Blue was out of his head. They both were. You know that. Your daddy saw you as his baby. The thought of what Demon…well, that was too much for Blue.”

“I mean the rest of it. What happened after.”

Bibi stepped away and picked up Margot’s suitcase. “You need to stop thinkin’ about that, honey. It can’t be undone, so let it be. I’m gonna unpack your mama’s shit. Why don’t you see if Leo needs anythin’.”

After Bibi left the room, Faith picked up one of the grey tabbies. There was another kitten, solid grey, around somewhere. And Sly, too. He might have been outside, but he’d been staying close since he had a family to see to.

Standing in place, Faith tucked the kitten—she was calling this little boy Petey—under her chin.

She couldn’t let it be, because it was a secret between her and Michael, and he had laid himself out to her. Because she was a stupid, jealous cunt, she’d basically forced him to tell her things that hurt him to think about. And now they hurt her, too. Maybe he’d been right to think that she couldn’t understand. But he’d been wrong to worry that it would change her love for him. If anything, knowing what his life was, and knowing him now, his strength and his kindness, his capacity for love, made her love him all the more.

Now she had to tell him the thing she was holding back. She had to. No secrets—that was what he’d said, what he wanted. But Bibi was right. Her secret would hurt him. It might break him.

So she would hold onto it until she figured out a way to tell him without hurting him.

~oOo~

“Wouldn’t be much to make this into a shop for you.” Michael stood with her in the garage. With the help of Keanu and Peaches, they were working on clearing the mountain of junk out of this three-car space.

“Studio. I’m an artist. What I need is a studio.”

“You want a welding rig in here. That’s a shop, babe.”

She laughed and punched his arm. “If you can make it work for me, call it what you want.”

“No sweat.” He hooked a finger through her belt loop and pulled her close. “It’s not drywalled, and that’s good. The ceiling’s already vented. We can put in some fireproof insulation, improve the lighting, bring all your
studio
shit in here. And put in a steel door into the house. Take me a weekend.”

“Really?”

“Sure. We can send a couple Prospects to move your shit from Venice.”

“Stop calling my things
shit
.”

He grinned. “I thought I could call it whatever I want.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. When she moaned in response to the soft but demanding touch of his mouth on hers, curving into his body and wrapping her arms around his neck, he moved his hands to her waist and lifted her up. Then he walked her to the garage wall and leaned her against it, his weight holding her up.

They made out like that for a long time, ignoring the Prospects carrying loads of her mother’s junk from the garage to a U-Haul, but when Faith, unable to stop herself, began to grind on his erection, he pulled back with a groan. “Fuck, this is hard.”

Arching up to tighten their connection again and feel him hard between her legs, she whispered, “Yeah, it is.” Then she smiled and leaned closer to bite his lip.

“Faith…” He set her down.

“Yeah, I know,” she sighed. In the week that Margot had been home, though things between them had smoothed out again, they hadn’t been able to sleep together for a whole night. She stayed here, and Michael stayed with his son at Hoosier and Bibi’s. They were back to stolen moments. “It’s like it was before.”

He frowned. “No, it’s not. There’s nothing wrong about us now. Things are just inconvenient.”

“You’re right. Sorry. My mom likes Tucker, though. And she has no idea who you are. Maybe it would work here for all of us.” Margot had been mostly quiet and pleasant since she’d been home. Like a barely-acquainted houseguest who was trying hard not to make too much of a ripple in the residents’ lives. Faith felt guilty for enjoying it so much, but it was peaceful.

And she didn’t feel
too
guilty, because twice during the week, the Margot Faith knew had reared up and said something bitchy or just plain nasty. There was a voice in Faith’s head that was suggesting that what was happening to her mother was karma.

But what did that mean for what was going on with Faith herself? Every good seemed balanced by a bad, or at least a complication.

“Let me focus on getting Tucker. If that happens, then we can figure out how we’re all together. If Tucker’s safe here, and your mom isn’t gunning for me, then yeah. I think we can make that work.”

She hugged him, feeling her own karmic scale tip toward the good, at least for now. “You want a sandwich? I’m going to check on everything inside.” Not that her supervision was needed inside. Jose and Bibi were both in there with Margot and Tucker.

“Sure. Any more of that sweet tea Bibi made?”

She yanked on his kutte until he dipped his head so she could kiss his cheek. “I’ll check. Hey guys,” she called to the Prospects. “Sandwiches?”

“Yes, ma’am!” they called.

‘Ma’am,’ Faith thought. Wasn’t that a hoot. Smiling, she headed into the house.

Once inside, she could hear Bibi and her mother arguing—she heard the tone but not the words themselves. Jose was in the kitchen, looking like he wasn’t sure what to do. She went into the living room. Bibi stood next to Margot’s chair, holding Tucker, who was quiet but looked like he was headed toward upset.

The eyes her mother turned on her were full of recognition—and anger and accusation, too.

“What’s going on?” Faith asked.