Healer (The Healer Series) (19 page)

“I can’t see everything. The information can be random.”

“
I can’t pick the information I get either.” I shrug.

“Have you ever tried?”
she questions.

“Tried what?”

“To absorb something specific?”

“I guess not
. I’ve never really needed to.” I try to remember if it ever occurred to me that I might be able to do that.

“Hmm,” s
he says to herself as she still stares out into the field.

“Don’t you miss your
family?”

“You ask a lot of
questions.” She cuts her eyes at me.  “Rhett is all I need.”

Does she mean Rhett is her lover or something?

“Do you miss the family you abandoned?” she asks harshly.

Her
words sting, and tears form in my eyes.

“But that was to find—”

“Thomas?”
she mocks. “Was he the reason or the excuse?” She turns on her heel and continues her walk.

I
watch her go, choking on her words.
Excuse?
“What do you mean excuse?” I manage to yell after her.

“
You figure it out. You must be famished,” she calls back to me. “I think it’s time for lunch.” Her voice is casual, as if she hadn’t just whipped me in the face with her words.

“Come,” s
he orders.

I can
honestly say I’m not at all hungry, but it would be nice to get a shower and get away from her. We go back into the house and Sarah permits me to wash up and orders me to put on something nice and make myself look presentable.

I head
back to my room and take a long hot shower, and then put on a white sun dress and flip-flops from the bag that still sits on the bathroom floor. My brown satchel with underwear and makeup that I packed the night before sits on the sink. Rhett must have sent someone back to the club for it. I brush my hair and apply some makeup, while my inner self paces nervously. As I stare into the mirror, I notice how much I have aged in the last few days.

Without warning
, I vomit in the sink and cry as I rinse my mouth and face. My world has been destroyed, and I have no one to blame but myself. If I had just stayed with my brothers, none of this would have happened. I sit down on the toilet and lay my head on the sink trying to let my stomach settle.

Even in this
pain, I know I was in the same kind of pain wishing and wanting Thomas to return. The loss of Lucy and Thomas at once was unbearable. I think back to the day Beau was born. My brothers picked the name Beau (pronounced Bo) which I actually liked. The three of us sat huddled together as I held the tiny little mutant looking creature we had been waiting for. It was magical, and my heart seemed to forget the pain I harbored for so long, but the moment was fleeting. My pain would not subside. Even the memory—distant and far away as it is—ignites anguish within me.

Whit and Hudson were like two doting fathers and I
, his actual mother, couldn’t even hold him. I resented him. I don’t know why. He was a beautiful little baby, but I was sick with sadness, and his birth only enhanced that feeling. He was eight weeks old when I left. Leaving was a relief. I’ve hated myself for feeling that way, but it’s true. I left that amazing little creature to find Thomas, telling myself if I could bring him back that it would make everything all right. We would be happy. We would raise our son together and never leave each other’s side.

My brothers were angry with me for leaving. I guess having me there
, even if I was an empty shell of a human being, was better than not having me at all.

“He’s only two months old!
” Whit roared at me.

“I gave birth to him. I know how old he is!” I shouted back.

“Aldo, you have no idea where Thomas is. It would be like searching for a needle in a hay stack.” Hudson sat between us, calm, the voice of reason.

“I have to go.”
I stood, but Whit grabbed me and dragged me over to Beau’s bassinet positioned by the sofa.

“L
ook at him, damn it!” he growled through clenched teeth. “You are abandoning your son.”

“No
, I’m not!” I jerked free. “I’m going to search for his father. He deserves a father.”

“He deserves a moth
er, too.” Whit stared down at me, disappointment heavy in his eyes, a look that made me want to crawl into a deep dark hole and hide. Whit and I had never fought like this before.

“
Aldo, how long will you be gone?” Hudson tried to break the intense moment.

“I don’t know. However long it takes.”

Whit turned away from me, his body tense, arms crossed.

I stared down at Beau,
swaddled tightly, and sleeping sound despite our argument. I turned back to Hudson and picked up the notebook that sat next to the pile of his car magazines on the table. “I have opened two accounts. I will put money in them to provide for you guys so you don’t have to work.”

Hudson took
the notebook and opened it.

“I made a point list
of new locations with numbers. I’ll make deposits, but you will have to withdraw the money and leave the amount of money in the checking account to represent your location.”

“There’s over four hundred points in here.” Hudson stared up at me from his seat on the brown sofa.
“How will you remember all of them?”

“I’ve memorized them all.”

“How long have you been planning this?” Hudson asked.

That was not a question I wanted to answer, so I ignored it and said,
“There are also codes for the savings accounts. Certain amounts mean certain things. Like nine hundred and eleven dollars would mean there’s an emergency and you need me.”

“Just fucking
go.” Whit shook his head, picked Beau up and left the room. My heart catapulted into my throat. I knew Whit would be upset with my leaving, but I didn’t want to leave him seething angry at me.

“Whit—”
Hudson called.

“Let him go.” I stopped Hudson as he went to follow Whit down the hall.
I was leaving no matter what. There was nothing I could say to make Whit feel better about it.

“Don’t you want to say good
bye to Beau?” Hudson looked at me, brow furrowed.

I’m a horrible person for answering,
“No.” But saying goodbye to Beau had the potential to derail my plans to leave. I was too scared my guilt for leaving Beau would override my goal to find Thomas. I lifted my backpack off the coffee table and slid it on.

“Aldo,” Hudson
gasped, shame in his voice. The weight of Hudson’s big brown eyes fell heavy on my shoulders and it felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I’d put it on the top five list of the worst I have ever felt in my life. Just above leaving Whit fuming mad at me and right under the day that Lucy died.

“I have to go.” I q
uickly kissed him on the cheek, grabbed my bag at the front door and left.

T
hey may never be able to forgive me for leaving them, just like Lucy and Thomas, but I thought Thomas would fix that, too. If I brought Thomas back, it would all be okay. They would forgive me.

I
sit up, willing myself to stand, Sarah’s words sit in my throat, burning through the lies I have told myself, like acid on flesh. I stare at myself in the mirror
. What is true?
I ask myself this, over and over. I love Thomas, but the years apart have changed us. Could he really love who I am now? The woman who abandoned our child, pitting all hope of happiness on finding him? The woman who resented not only a baby, but
his
baby? I have always prided myself on being a good person, but the truth is, I’m not. Yes, I left to find Thomas. There is no untruth in that, but I also left because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be a mother. Not then. I was barely a woman. I couldn’t be Lucy.

Thomas tried to send me on my way
by putting me on that bus, and I told myself that it was time to go home and raise my child, but instead I made an excuse to come back. An excuse that didn’t even involve Thomas. Ella.
Why? Why did you go back, Aldo?
I ask myself. You had been found, so why go back? “
Because you wanted this.”
I hear a small voice whisper in the back of my mind
.
I dry heave as these truths wash over me.
Why would I want this
?
Because I failed? Because Thomas wouldn’t go with me
? Sobs escape me as I lean over the sink and cover my mouth trying to muffle the sounds of my despair.

I look back into the mirror
and find it is cracked. My crying is momentarily suspended as I eye it.
How did that happen?
I trace my finger over the crack that extends across the mirror. I make a mental note to tell Sarah about it, but my mind resumes reflecting on the sins of my past. No matter what, I know I love my son. He will never know me, but I know my brothers will tell him his mother loved him, even if they are angry with me. Beau would grow up thinking I left searching for his father and died before I could get back to him. Maybe he would think I was a hero. I cringe at the thought, realizing how undeserving I am, but my son thinking his mother abandoned him is unbearable.

I wipe under my eyes and clean myself up.
I deserve no less than a soulless existence, I convince myself. There’s no one to blame but myself. It’s time to let go of my past. Forget it. I can no longer lie to myself anymore. I will never be a mother. Nor will I be with Thomas. Who am I now if I am not the girl chasing down a man who refuses to be with her? I guess I never took the time to figure that out.
No more chasing Thomas, Aldo.

I make my way downstairs and find Sarah changed
, looking fresh as a daisy, but still void as ever. She stares blankly out the window at the rear of the house.

I plop down in front of the disappointing menu
of fruit and yogurt, set on a place mat before me. “Did you make this?” I ask, trying to break the deafening silence.

“No,” s
he snickers. “Mickey made it.” She nods her head towards the kitchen, where I see a tall thin Asian man standing in the corner of the kitchen, still as a statue. The familiar sound of pitches and vibrations fill my ears.

“He’s human?” I whisper
, even though he can hear me.

“Yes.” She rolls her eyes.

I glance back at Mickey, who smiles and nods once, as if saying hello. Why would they have a human on staff? Then it occurs to me.
Blood for them.

“Do you feed on him?” I ask be
fore I have time to flip on the filter that keeps people from saying something stupid.

Sarah nods
her head. “Yes, he’s so delicious.” She widens her eyes and runs her tongue across her teeth.

I’
m too naïve to know if she’s being facetious or not. I watch her, but she doesn’t give me any indication as to if she’s joking. I look at Mickey, who still stands in the same place, smiling. He shakes his head no to relieve me of my anguish.

I nod
back slightly and proceed to eat my meal. I finish in less than five minutes, still hungry for more. “Can I have something else?”

“No.” Sarah
takes my plate and places it on the kitchen island. Mickey moves fast, grabbing the plate and rinsing it in the sink.

“I’m still hungry.”

“Trust me. You will thank me once you’ve changed and are thin forever.” She rolls her eyes and walks out of the room.

Somehow I doubt that.

“Come!” she shouts from down the hall.

I
scurry after her, nodding a thank you to Mickey as I exit. I find Sarah standing at the front door, waiting for me to catch up. We walk out onto the porch and she sits on a porch swing, indicating for me to sit beside her.

“So what exactly are you training me to do here?”
I motion my hand in a circular motion above the porch swing.

“
What are you so afraid of?”

Her question takes me by surpris
e. “Being turned into a vampire,” I say with a
duh
, type tone.

“
You remind me of a little child.”

Her words offend me
and I glare at her. “Oh, were you jumping for joy to be turned?” I snip back.

“It’s not just about being turned. You’re scared of everything.” She shakes her head.

I try to think of what she means, but she interrupts my train of thought.

“Scared of life, scared of death, scared of being alone.”

“That’s because my life has been flipped upside down,” I remind her.

“Most of it self-induced.”

“Whatever.” I
cross my arms and turn my body away from her.

“You need to let go of some of these worries you carry. You want your transition to be clean, free of regret. Otherwise
, you will be miserable forever.”