Chapter 65 ELENA
Ava's POV
Nobody moved for a long moment after my mother said it and the corridor was completely silent and my father stood at the end of it looking at her like a man seeing something he thought was gone forever and wasn't sure what to do with finding it again.
My mother's hands were on my face still and I could feel them steady and warm and real in a way they hadn't been in years, no trembling, no fragility, just her, solid and present and looking at my father with eyes that had no fear in them at all.
"Elena," my father said quietly and his voice had something in it I couldn't name.
"Don't," my mother said, same quiet voice, same absolute certainty, "don't say my name like that, like we're having a conversation between two people who are equal in this, we are not equal in this James and we both know it."
He looked like that landed.
Dominic touched my arm lightly and I turned and he tilted his head toward the room and I understood and took my mother's hand and brought her inside and closed the door and left my father in the corridor because that was where he was going to stay for now.
The room was small, just a bed and a chair and a window overlooking the quiet street, and my mother sat on the edge of the bed and I sat next to her and Dominic stood near the door giving us space but not leaving and I was grateful for both things.
"How long have you been up," I asked her, meaning on her feet, meaning well, meaning how long has this been happening without me knowing.
"Four days," she said, "I woke up four days ago and the pain was just gone, I lay there waiting for it to come back and it didn't and by the second day I understood it wasn't coming back."
"Why didn't you call me," I said.
"I didn't have my phone," she said, "and I didn't want to call from the hospital because I didn't know who was listening and I already knew something was wrong, I could feel it, something pulling at me telling me you weren't safe and I needed to move."
"You could feel me," I said slowly.
"I've always been able to feel you," she said and she said it simply, like it was obvious, "since you were born, something in me has always known where you are and whether you're safe, I thought it was just a mother thing," she paused and looked at the mark on my shoulder, "I understand now that it was something else."
I looked at her and she looked back at me and I said, "how much do you know," and she said, "more than you'd think, less than I need to, tell me everything," so I did.
I talked for a long time and she listened without interrupting and Dominic stayed by the door and didn't speak and my mother's face moved through things as I talked, recognition and grief and anger and something that looked at certain moments like relief, like a woman finally getting the explanation for something that had been destroying her for fifteen years.
When I finished she was quiet for a moment and then she looked at Dominic and said, "come here," and he crossed the room and stood in front of her and she looked up at him from the bed with those clear steady eyes and said, "did you know what would happen to her when you started this."
"No," he said, and he didn't qualify it or explain it, just no, which I thought was the right answer.
"Do you know what you're asking her to give up by completing this bond," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And you're asking anyway."
"I'm not asking," he said, "I told her everything and I'm letting her choose and whatever she chooses I'll accept."
My mother looked at him for a long time and I held my breath and then she nodded once, a small decisive thing, and looked back at me and said, "he's telling the truth, I can tell," and I let the breath out.
"You can tell," I repeated.
"The bond gives you things," she said simply, "I had the beginning of one once, I still have traces of what it gave me even after everything your father did to stop it."
I thought about that and what it meant and then I said, "Mom, the man whose bond was suppressed with yours, Elias, he's here, he's been helping us, I need you to know that before you see him."
Something moved across her face, complicated and deep, and she pressed her lips together and looked at her hands and then back at me.
"I know he's here," she said quietly, "I could feel that too, from the moment you walked into this building, I could feel him somewhere in it," and her voice on that last part was very careful, very controlled, and I reached over and took her hand and she held it tight.
"You don't have to see him today," I said.
"I know," she said, "but I think I need to."
She stood up and smoothed her clothes and straightened her back and looked more like herself than she had in a decade and I stood with her and we went to the door and Dominic opened it and we went out into the corridor and my father was gone which was either his decision or Adrian's and either way I was fine with it.
We went downstairs and Elias was in the small sitting room with Adrian and he looked up when we came in and the moment he saw my mother he went completely still, the kind of still that isn't calm, the kind that's the opposite of calm, everything held very tightly in place.
My mother stopped in the doorway and looked at him and I watched fifteen years of something move across both their faces simultaneously and the room was so quiet I could hear the street outside.
"Elena," Elias said, and the way he said it was nothing like how my father had said it in the corridor, it was a whole different word in his mouth.
My mother took a slow breath and said, "you got old," and Elias made a sound that was almost a laugh and said, "so did you," and she said, "no I didn't, I got sick, there's a difference," and he said "I know, I'm sorry," and she said "don't be sorry, just help us finish this," and he nodded and something settled between them, not resolved, nothing like resolved, but set aside for now with an agreement to survive first and feel it later.
I looked at Dominic beside me and he was already looking at me and he took my hand and I held it and we stood there in the doorway of a London guesthouse with my mother and Elias finding a way to be in the same room and Adrian very carefully studying the ceiling and outside the ordinary city carried on and inside this room everything was anything but.
Then Dominic's phone buzzed and he looked at it and his jaw tightened and he showed me the screen and it was a message from Sera, just four words.
They found the cottage.