The Holders (27 page)

“When did you find out?”

He stiffened slightly at my question, and I got an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Not until it was too late,” he said, with an echo of hopelessness in his voice. “I was on business in London when…” He hesitated, his jaw tight. “On second thought, there isn’t time today for me to tell you how I met your mother, but I can tell you that after that moment – the moment she shook my hand – my life ceased to be my own.” After a long pause, during which I focused my eyes on the leg of his desk, he continued. “I resigned my position as headmaster of St Brigid’s, and told the Order – which was only just beginning at the time that I was leaving. I was ready to be done with it all and have a real life. Ready to be happy.” He leaned back against the frame of the window, arms crossed, with a far off look in his eyes. “Judith and I left for the States, and were married. Moved into the house in Maine. Had you.” He glanced over to me, then away again. “They were the happiest years of my life,” he added softly. “We hadn’t planned on having Ryland. He was what you might call a happy accident. And on that subject,” he looked up at me, “you have been wonderful to him. Taking care and looking after him the way you have. He was very lucky to have had you growing up, as I’m sure he knows.”

“You told me to,” I whispered without looking up. The words were out before I could stop them. When he didn’t respond, I glanced up to find him looking at me with something between surprise and pain.

“I didn’t think you would remember that,” he breathed.

But I did remember. I remembered it like it was yesterday, though I’d not let myself think about it in almost a decade. As the memory of that final meeting reared in my mind, I stamped it back down, in no condition to go there, nor did I want him bringing it up. My emotional state was on shaky enough ground as it was, and honestly, he didn’t seem to be faring much better.

Luckily, he cleared his throat and moved on. “A week after Ryland was born I received a letter in the mail. It had in it the prophecy regarding both me and my son, and a note that said Darragh was on his way to take us all. I panicked. I’d seen firsthand the sort of things Darragh did to those he captured. I knew Ryland would be used only to power the Iris, and you and your mother would be either droned or killed. There was no time to call for help, no time to do anything but run. But I didn’t want that for you. I wanted you to live your lives, not to have to spend them constantly in fear. There was only one thing I could think of to do – hide you all away where no one could find you. Not even me.

That evening I did something I swore I would never do. I compelled your mother. I made her believe we’d planned to move. Put false memories in her mind about house-hunting and job-searching. Then I told her that I would have to stay behind to finish my semester at the university, but that…” He tapered off, then tried again. “But that I would follow.” After another pause, he added quietly, “I want you to know that you were right the other day. What I did was selfish. I’ve always known that.”

I looked up at him, only to see so much guilt etched on his face that I had to look back down.

“At the time I’d considered the alternative scenarios I could have left her with. I’d even considered making her believe I’d died. But, I couldn’t. I… wanted her to remember me. I pretended the reason was Ryland. I knew one day I would have to bring Ryland here and that it would be easier to get Judith to agree if she knew who I was. But I’ve also always known that to only be an excuse. What I did, I did for me. I wanted to keep the hope that one day, when all this is over, that I could…”

He dwindled off again, and I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. Just as I was going to excuse myself, offering to finish this another time, he continued. “The only person I entrusted any of this to was Taron, who I’d believed had long split with Darragh, as I had. I told him about the letter and that I would be returning to St Brigid’s. I had him make all the arrangements for your move – the travel, the house, even getting the position at the hospital for your mother – so I wouldn’t know where you were. I assumed that it was safer that way, not realizing it was all done in vain, as thanks to Taron, Darragh knew where you were all along.” There was so much bitterness in his tone that I started to wonder if Taron was in fact still alive. “He also made all the arrangements for your new name.”

“New name?”

“Changing your name to Ingle, I mean. I had Taron send new identification for you all, so there wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“No, that can’t be right. My name has always been Ingle, even before all of that.”

He shook his head. “You were born Rebecca Clavish. When I spoke to you in my office before you left,” he paused for a moment before continuing, “when I told you to take care of Ryland, the last thing I did was change your name.”

“You compelled me too?” I whispered, not doing much to mask the fact that I was upset by the idea.

“I had to.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said with a humorless smile.

I remembered Jocelyn calling me into his office the evening before we were set to move. He sat me up on his desk and told me that I was going to have to take care of Mommy and baby Ryland while he was away. I told him that I was a big girl now and promised that I would take care of everything. Yet, as the images of that meeting ran through my mind, they seemed oddly different. While I’d never let myself think about that night as a whole, I’d always remembered Jocelyn looking tired and distant. As a girl, I had assumed it was because he had spent all night packing with Mom and needed sleep. When I was older, after I knew he had left us, I assumed that he was simply tired of us. Tired of the family he didn’t want, and anxious to be on his way.

But I’d been wrong. I could see through my hate and pride to the horrible clarity underneath, where tired distance can, in different lighting, look a lot like sadness.

My throat closed up on me and I doubted it was possible to feel more terrible than I did at that moment. Could it be true? Did I want it to be true?

Jocelyn was silent for a moment, letting me collect my thoughts, or possibly collecting his own, before he said, “You should get back to the infirmary, you still need your rest. It was probably wrong of me to put all this on you when you are still so weak, but you deserved to know. Will you be able to make it back?” He walked over to my chair and extended a hand, helping me up.

“Alex is waiting to walk with me.”

He nodded then slowly walked back to the window. I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me.

“I know you think that I mistreated your mother terribly, and there is no one on this earth that agrees with you more than I do,” he said quietly, with his back to me, once again staring out the window. “But I want you to know that no matter how long I live my last thought on this earth will be of her.”

He didn’t turn to look at me, and he said nothing else. I tried again to leave, worried that the tears I could feel burning my eyes were going to brim over before I was able to make it out the door. Yet I couldn’t seem to make myself go. Something in me wouldn’t let me leave – not like that. I could see how hard it was for him to tell me everything he had, and I wanted to let him know that – while I wasn’t yet sure what to make of it – I appreciated it. I wasn’t quite ready to ask for or offer forgiveness, but I had to somehow let him know that I understood.

I could have told myself that none of it was true, or that even if it was true it didn’t matter. I could have said that it didn’t change anything, or that I was past caring, or that I had gotten over everything, or any of the other claims I’d spent years making. But I couldn’t.

As I stood there, looking at the father that I knew both so well and not at all, the man whom I’d both loved and hated, I realized that for the first time in almost ten years I didn’t want to be the tough one, or the strong one, or the one who was always in control.

I realized that, just for this moment, I didn’t want to pretend.

He didn’t hear me approach. I didn’t give him any kind of warning or apology; I simply leaned over… and hugged him.

At first he tensed – probably out of shock – but then slowly relaxed, bringing his arms up around me. His hug seemed wary at first, but soon became strong. Really strong. He was suddenly holding me so tight I could barely breathe.

“Mo ghile beag,” he whispered raggedly into my hair.

After a few moments we released each other. I turned and walked toward the door without so much as a glance backward. I stepped out of the office and began to make my way down the hall in a fog, staring at the floor.

Mo ghile beag.

 

28

 

“The plural of cactus is ‘cacti’ not ‘cactuses’, you illiterate oaf!” Mr Reid snapped, kinetically lifting the u, s, e, and s off of the Scrabble board and hurling them into Mr Anderson’s chest.

“No one says cacti! Never in my whole life have I heard anyone say cacti!”

“Of course not, you grew up in Scotland! You wouldn’t know a cactus if you were sitting on one!”

“I do believe ‘cacti’ is correct,” Cormac cut in timidly, holding his own tray of letters down against the table as though he thought they also might soon become projectiles.

As Mr Reid and Mr Anderson continued to argue, and Cormac tried in vain to keep the peace, I brought my legs up onto the ottoman I was seated on with an amused smile. I’d opted out of the evening’s Scrabble tournament, but was more than content to sit with Chloe and watch the grammatical high jinks unfold.

It was the morning of my first official day out of the infirmary, and I was feeling much better. My strength had returned almost entirely, finally allowing me to climb a flight of stairs without becoming winded, and take a shower without having to sit down and rest on the edge of the tub halfway through.

However, despite the fact that my physical being was almost one hundred percent, my emotional state – while much improved – was still far from perfect. It had been two days since my meeting with Jocelyn, followed by, bar none, the worst night of my life. After Alex had gotten me back to the infirmary, I’d basically spent the night blubbering, stammering, and sobbing, until finally passing out sometime in the wee hours, only to wake up the next morning dehydrated and puffy. Since then I’d been better, though I still wasn’t ready to actually see Jocelyn in person, which was why I was currently sitting in the lounge listening to this week’s Scrabble war instead of with Alex and Min in Jocelyn’s office hearing how the remainder of Taron’s reading had gone. I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever, but seeing him meant thinking about everything he’d told me, and right now that was all still too confusing. At some point I’d think about it and decide what I wanted to do with the information he’d given me, and, honestly, it would probably be someday soon.

Just not today.

But… soon.

“It’s twelve points, not nine!” Mr Anderson yelled, trying to snatch the score sheet and pencil away from Mr Reid.

“I see, so you can count, you just can’t spell?” snipped Mr Reid, holding the sheet behind him like a game of keep-away.

“For heaven’s sake!” Chloe chimed in, looking up from her history assignment. “Is it so hard to behave like men and not prattling boys?”

“Yes, exactly,” Reid agreed, waving at Anderson. “Stop acting like a child!”

“I’m a child?” Anderson retorted. “Perhaps you should take it like a man!”

“Bloody hell…” Chloe huffed, shoving away from the table and stomping across the lounge to the bookshelf.

“You’ll get nine points, or you’ll get none!” Reid said, pointing the tiny game pencil in Anderson’s face.

“Perhaps we could make it ten and a half?” Cormac suggested meekly. “You know, split the difference?”

“No!” both Anderson and Reid yelled simultaneously, glaring at poor Cormac like he was out of his mind.

I felt the comforting pull in my chest before I heard his voice say, “You’ll have to forgive them, Cormac. They’re a couple of idiots when it comes to these things.”

“Alex,” said Mr Anderson, ignoring the jibes, “‘Cacti’ or ‘cactuses’?”

He stepped up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders, grazing his thumbs up and down the back of my neck. “I believe it–”

“Cacti,” Chloe announced loudly, holding a large volume from one of the bookshelves. “C-A-C-T-I.”

“Ha!” Mr Reid barked. “There, you damn fool, I told you so! And that’s nine points,” he said, making a bit of a show writing the number down on the sheet. “Thank you, lass,” he said to Chloe.

“Pleasure,” she said, not hiding her sarcasm as she closed the book with a slap and stuffed it back on the shelf.

“That’s weird,” Alex said as Chloe returned to her table, “I was sure both were correct.”

“Sst!” Chloe hissed, shushing him quickly while glancing over to the game table to make sure no one else heard. “And have them fighting all day?” she whispered, giving Alex and I a sneaky smirk before returning to her work.

I felt Alex chuckle behind me. “You up for a walk?” he asked quietly, squeezing my shoulders.

I nodded still smiling, and we left the lounge hand in hand. “Where are we going?” I asked as we paused at the stairs.

“I wanted to go down to the lake, but it’s a little cold for that, so balcony?”

“Great.”

He waited until we got up to the second floor to ask, “How are you doing?”

“All right,” I said, knowing he was referring to Jocelyn. “Better.” I waited until the balcony door was closed behind us before continuing, “Still afraid to see him. Still have no idea what to do, or think, or how to feel. I have spent years hating him, and part of me still does. But now there is this other part of me that doesn’t, and the sick thing is, I don’t want that. I want to hate him, even though I know that’s horrible, and yet, at the same time I don’t want to hate him…” I squeezed my eyes shut with a frustrated huff. “I don’t know.”

Before I had a chance to open my eyes, I felt a pair of arms holding me securely.

“You’re not sick,” Alex said quietly, lightly kissing my forehead, “and you’re not horrible. What you’re feeling – all of it – is natural, and no matter which side you come out on, what really counts is that you’re trying.” He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting my eyes to meet his. “One step at a time.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, letting out a long breath. “And step one is getting over being weirded out by the whole name change thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it: he actually changed my name and I had no idea! How creepy is that? It would be like someone telling you that up until yesterday the sky had been purple, even though all you can ever remember it being is blue. I can barely even wrap my mind around it, not to mention that the whole idea is scary as hell! He could do anything he wanted! He could change history, and no one would even know!” I sat down on the window seat with a deep breath, trying to quell my paranoia. “I guess I just figured that if someone messed with my mind like that I would know. Or at least know that something wasn’t right, but there is nothing.”

“It’s a dangerous ability to have,” Alex said sitting next to me, “which is why it is so important that we stop Darragh before he is able to do any real damage.”

“Speaking of Darragh, how did it go? Did Jocelyn get anything useful out of Taron?”

“No.” Alex shook his head, clearly disappointed. “Nothing else. Just that same name, Ciaran Shea.”

Well that was a little let down. “What do we do now?”

“Jocelyn looked into it, and it appears Ciaran is one of the Originals, or that’s what they call themselves, anyway. They are a group of Holders who live in Dublin,” he hesitated with a slight eye roll, “but they are not like us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say, they don’t like to get their hands dirty.”

“And Ciaran is one of them?”

“Looks that way. Jocelyn is arranging for some of us to go and meet with them, and see if we can find this Ciaran for ourselves.”

“But if he and Taron were working together, wouldn’t Darragh know about him too?”

“We’re not sure what Darragh knows at this point, which is why we have to move fast.”

We sat in silence for a minute while I looked for a new topic, not liking at all how uncomfortable the Darragh subject was making me.

“I’m not sure I’ll know what to do in my own bed tonight,” I said, hoping my diversion tactic wasn’t as plain to him as it seemed to me.

“I know,” he laughed. “What will you do without the creaky, rock-hard mattress, and the constant running of the broken toilet in the bathroom?”

“And the nurses constantly coming in to check on me, and then there was this guy who would not go away…”

I peeked over at him with a grin, to find him shooting me a wry glance. “Sounds awful.”

“Oh, it was!” I bit back a giggle. “I swear he was with me twenty-four seven, poor guy must have no life at all.”

“Must have been hell. You had to spend all that time staring at him, was he at least good looking?”

“Ah,” I shrugged, no longer able to contain my smile, “he’s all right.”

“Just all right?” he growled through his grin, grabbing me around the waist and dragging me with a shriek up onto his lap.

The next moment his mouth took hold of mine as both of his hands wound into my hair. My eyes fluttered as his lips worked their way down, nipping at my chin before blazing a tingling trail to my collarbone, then climbed back up the side of my neck, ending at his favorite spot just under my ear. The noises coming out of my mouth as my head lolled back were entirely involuntary and not exactly graceful, but given Alex’s reactions to them, they were exactly what he wanted to hear. I slid my hands down his back then slowly up his sides, relishing the moan that rumbled in his chest. Just as my fingers reached the buttons on his shirt, he let out a long breath and rested his forehead on my shoulder.

“We should stop,” he said with a hoarseness that made me shiver.

“No, I don’t think we should.”

He looked up at me with a grin. “We are in public, after all.”

“Then let’s go somewhere private,” I whispered, bending forward and kissing his neck as he’d done mine. As my lips teased the hollow of his throat, his chest begin to heave under me and suddenly his hands were grabbing at my back, fisting my shirt, pulling me closer.

“Becca,” he breathed after a too-short moment, “we have to stop.” Reluctantly, he took hold of my shoulders and lifted me away from him. “You’re not ready for this yet, you need more time.”

“Fine,” I sighed, with a frustrated grin.

“Don’t worry,” he said, kissing me lightly on the nose. “Soon.”

We sat, both of us trying to get our pulses back down to where they should be, while I was again trying to find a topic of conversation. Wonderful as kissing Alex had been for – ahem – personal reasons, it had also kept my mind from the hard lump forming in my stomach that I was trying desperately to ignore. I felt the tension creep into my face, and hoped I could find a new distraction before Alex noti–

“Becca, what’s wrong?”

Damn. “It’s nothing,” I said, standing. “Let’s go back in.”

“Becca,” he said, reaching out and grabbing my hand before I could walk away. “Please tell me.”

I looked down at the soft concern on his face, and felt the truth spill out of me before I could stop it. “I… I’m scared, Alex,” I admitted, looking away. “Darragh… he knows about me, I know he does. Cail would have told him by now. This is getting so serious, and I’m supposed to be the one who fixes everything. I’m not supposed to want to hide in my room.” I stopped, still looking down at the floor, both relieved to get the words out and ashamed at what they were. “What if I can’t make everything better?”

“Come here,” he said, pulling me back down onto his lap. He held the side of my face, and looked hard into my eyes. “Listen to me. It’s OK to be scared, it would be foolish not to be. But I want you to understand that it is not up to you to make things better. It’s up to all of us. You are never going to be alone, do you hear me? I will always – always – be there, right next to you. Even if I am just all right looking,” he chided, trying to get me to smile.

I tried to grin, but I don’t think it worked. “This is going to get really dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked, already knowing the answer was yes.

I looked at Alex expecting just for a moment that he would tell me no, and not to worry, and that everything would be fine, and anything else that he thought might comfort or reassure me. But of course he didn’t. He didn’t, because Alex would never lie to me. He simply nodded and said, “Probably.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes. I’m scared for what may come, scared for what could happen if we fail, but more than anything, I’m terrified for you. You have no idea what it does to me to know that Darragh is after you. To not know what he’s planning, or how you’re going to be involved.”

“So what do we do?”

“We trust,” he said, brushing his fingers lovingly through my hair. “I trust in you, you in me, and we in us. We trust the Order to have our backs and we trust that, together, we will all find a way to win. It will be hard, but the way I see it, as long as we have each other then we have everything we need to make it through.”

As I looked into his stormy-gray eyes, a calming sensation rippled through me like a gentle gust of wind over a silk flag. He was right, and in that moment, deep down, I believed that everything would be OK. I may not have known what was coming, but I knew that Alex was my rock, and as long as I had him next to me I’d be OK. Maybe this was why we were bonded. Maybe some fate somewhere had destined us for each other because she knew that individually we weren’t strong enough for what lay ahead of us, but together we could face anything.

“I love you,” I sighed, turning my head into his hand.

“I love you too,” he said, kissing my forehead.

“I wish I could be more like you.”

“Like me?” he laughed.

“Hmm,” I agreed, leaning over onto him and resting my head on his shoulder. “I’ve wanted to say that for a while now, actually. You’re amazing.”

“Now I know you’re still under the weather,” he chuckled, feeling my forehead. “Shall we go in?” he asked.