Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (71 page)

“Everything.”

He turned and followed me up the stairs, the creaks and groans of the old wood drowned out by the roar of thunder outside. As we reached the top I heard Vicki closing the windows downstairs just as the rain came down in a soft, constant patter over the roof outside.

I pushed the door to my old room open and studied the space with a pair of folded arms and an appraising eye. In a few months, when Jason was well enough to function in the world on his own, this would be Elora’s nursery. I found myself mapping out where her crib would go and how much room I’d have in the cupboard for all her pretty dresses, and I smiled as I realised Vicki would have done exactly the same thing when she first learned that I was coming to stay for good. Of course, in the same thought that she planned out my wardrobe, she would also have realised that I hated shopping, and that explained why I arrived that year to a closet full of amazing clothes—handpicked by my new mommy.

“I’ll go get the mattress from the attic,” Sam said, moving toward the door.

I stepped right into the room to let him pass, wandering in a dreamy state over to the window.

Outside, my tree swing rocked and twisted in the strong breeze, the ropes sinking on the ends with the heavy rain. I could almost see my dad out there—tying the swing around the trunk so it wouldn’t blow away—and it made me miss him. The human version of him.

“Mattress,” Sam said, dusting his hands off as it hit the floor with a thud. “Bed frame next. Come help.”

“I’ll get it, Sam,” David called as he passed.

“And I’ll get the baby,” Vicki called up the stairs when Elora let out a tiny little grumble. Sam and I looked at each other and laughed.

“She’s been like that the whole time you were gone,” he said. “The poor kid couldn’t get a moment to sleep.”

“Well, what are babies for if not to cuddle and fuss over.”

“I agree completely,” Vicki said from the room across the hall.

Sam leaned in and whispered, “Did you have to turn her—couldn’t you have waited until I turned twenty-one. She hears
everything
.”

“Everything,” she echoed with a stern undertone.

Sam rolled his hand out in offering, as if Vicki was an example.

I laughed.

“One bed,” David announced, flicking on the light as he entered, the bed head tucked under one arm as if it weighed nothing. A golden glow spread over the stormy shadows in the room, darkening the glass across the window so we could no longer see outside.

Sam helped David with the bed, positioning it against the wall where it used to go, and when David went back up to the attic to get the base, Sam turned to me.

“I’m sorry, Ara.”

“For?” I asked, busying myself with the set of drawers near the door.

“I went nuts—this afternoon—when Mom told me your brother-in-law was coming to stay. I should’ve had more… self-control.”

My tight shoulders dropped a little. “No, Sam, we should have told you long before now what happened between Jason and I.”

“Just tell me now then.” He walked closer, his voice raspy with urgency. “Explain to me how you can forgive him for what he did to you.”

With a long, breathy sigh, I turned and faced the window, seeing the tree outside as a bolt of lightning lit up the night. In this moment of peace, in this moment after the chaos and madness, the echoes of a tragic past fell silent, leaving me with nothing but a tale to tell and a distant feeling of sadness. Enough time had passed now that things didn’t matter in the same way as they did before—they didn’t hurt in the same way. I could wear the scars without laying blame. And for Sam to understand how or why that was even possible, he needed to know everything. He needed to go right back to the beginning—to when a scared, broken little girl met a boy.

“Come on, Ara,” Sam prompted. “Open the door for me. Let me in. I’ve been here, I’ve watched, I’ve seen things, and I’m not a little boy anymore. It’s time you all stopped shutting me outside the vault of family secrets.”

I smiled at him, a brief moment of pride washing across it. “You sound so mature, Sam.”

“I’ve had to grow up fast, sis,” he explained. “Everything that happened—you know. I had to.”

With a bit of hesitation, planning out in my mind where I would start my story, I walked over to the window, hugging myself. Outside, the storm had blown over, leaving nothing but distant flickers of blue-grey light and the occasional rumble.

I picked up the Tree of Life from my under my shirt and studied it in the dim glow of light.

“In truth, this whole story began with Life,” I said. “But if we go only as far back as when this room was being set up for a scared young girl that just lost her mom, then I guess you could say it began with a secret…”

***

Jason didn’t even stir as David carried him upstairs and tucked him into bed. I stood in the doorway, my hand poised to turn out the light, not really intending to catch that sweet moment of brotherly love, so as David leaned forward and kissed Jason’s head I looked away as though I hadn’t seen it. He was slowly growing more comfortable with this whole love thing, but I knew it still needed time to flourish and grow—without ridicule or even acknowledgement. Despite our open book pact—to always talk about our feelings—I knew there was still a part of David’s complex relationship with his brother that he hadn’t yet revealed to me. Maybe because he hadn’t yet realised he was still hiding it. From what I’d read in Jason’s journals about the cruelty and bullying inflicted on him by other vampires, I also knew that David had protected him from things unseen. He had protected him from Hans, and to have Jason just handed over that way, and David not being there to rescue him, he must have felt the same sense of helplessness I felt when I knew Safia had my baby. But Elora was lucky. She was completely unharmed, if a little hungry and wet. I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if she’d been hurt, and so I could only try to empathise with how David must feel. And being that the ultimate emotion was vulnerability and a feeling of being totally and utterly weak, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be revealing that any time soon. Or admitting it to himself.

“Hit the light,” he said in a gentle, questioning tone.

I flicked it out and David stood back, reaching out to move the curtain aside where it allowed a thin strip of moonlight onto Jason’s face.

“He’ll be okay,” I whispered, filling that sentence with reassurance.

David smiled at me. “You sound so sure of that.”

“That’s because I am.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed him tight. “We love him, David. We won’t stop trying until we make him okay.”

His arm came down around my rib and he squeezed me tight. “Thanks, Ara.”

“For what?”

“I just… that makes me feel a little less alone.”

I drew away, looking up through the shadows of night to the sharp angles of his face and the pair of predatory eyes. “Why would you feel alone at all? Do you not understand that I’m here for you? That—”

“I do,” he cut me off, walking away. “It’s just that… I’m all Jason has left now.” He waited by the door for me, cupping the handle, and closed it as I passed into the hallway. “Uncle Arthur was the rock in our family. He knew what to say, what to do. I know I have you, Ara, but without Arthur…”

“You feel like it’s just too big a responsibility?”

He opened our door quietly, casting his eyes across the room to the crib by the window. “I’m just scared for him,” he whispered in a very small voice. “And I don’t know what to do with that fear.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“I can’t lock it away. I can’t shut it out. I feel scared for him
all
the time.” He pressed his hand into his chest. “He’s human now—vulnerable physically as well as emotionally. And I can’t protect him from the pain—from the things that’ll hurt him in the world.”

My eyes moved on to Elora, sleeping peacefully with her pink silk blanket snuggled against her cheek. “I understand how you feel, David—completely.”

I heard his breath leave his throat in a little laugh. “Yeah. I guess it is the same. And I guess I do feel kind of like a father to him now.”

“Then he’ll be okay.” I stood up quickly and slipped my arms around his waist, catching him off guard. “Because you already are the best daddy in the world.”

“Say that when I’ve had a chance to
parent
,” he stated with a laugh. “Caring for a baby is very different to parenting a child.”

“I know.” I nodded against his chest, letting my ear take notice of how his skin warmed the fabric of his shirt. “But you care, and you’re capable of showing great amounts of love. I know you’ll make each decision for Elora based on that love, and you’ll do the same for Jason.”

“But I’ll never stop worrying, right?”

“Never. But you can feel a bit better knowing that I’m right here—worrying along with you.”

He cupped the back of my head and lowered his lips to it, breathing deeply out into my hair. “I have to thank you, by the way.”

“Why?”

“I know you… you’ve known… each time.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple brushing against my head. “You’ve known when I hide away to cry. You’ve heard me late at night—I know that. And I wanted to thank you for giving me space—letting me empty those emotions in my own way. I knew you’d wait for me to come to you when I was ready, and that made me feel safe to cry—knowing you’d let me be.”

I bit my lip, suddenly feeling very glad that all those times I’d been a breath away from rolling over and asking if he was okay, or a step away from entering the bathroom to comfort him, that I hadn’t. “I’m here, you know that,” I said. “Whenever you’re ready to talk.”

He was quiet for a moment, but his arms were tight around me, his lungs dead still, so I stayed put, hoping he was on the verge of opening up.

“If it happened to me,” he started slowly, “I could handle it—face it. But it happened to him. And I feel like he’s not strong enough to deal with it when it hits him.”

I smiled into his chest, wiping it off before looking up at him. “Then you don’t know him very well.”

He laughed breathily, nodding. “I know you’re right. But… he’s my brother. I love him, and I don’t
want
him to have to face it.”

“Well, you can’t face it for him, and… maybe, when you tell him what happened, it might ease some of the burden—maybe give him some of the weight to carry because… David?” I stepped back and reached up with both hands to cup his face. “It’s too heavy for you. It’s slowly killing you. I can see it. Feel it.”

The silence felt too dense then, until he nodded. “Will you be there?” he said. “When I do eventually tell him?”

“Of course I will David.” I sat down on the bed again and rolled my shirt off. “But you should let him read his journals first—the recent ones. Prepare his mind for that dark world, let him see what he was capable of—the bad—before we make him the victim.”

“And you think that’ll help?” He sat down beside me and started undoing his boots.

“It might. It might not. But it’s a start.”

“Hm.” He rolled his foot out of his boot and tossed it aside, making a rather loud thump in the quiet.

We both held our breath, looking at the crib. When the sleeping baby took a deeper breath, held it, and then let it out, we exhaled too.

I looked at David with the wide eyes of frustration.

“Sorry,” he said, both hands up like a criminal before a circle of cops.

***

The engine turned over in the still of dawn with a gentle and familiar hum. I rolled onto David’s side of the bed and snuggled into the warmth he left behind, hoping for another hour of sleep, at least. We’d been here for only four months but, in that time, a structured day and weekly routine had become habit, and I could plan my day by the events of the one before it, like a normal person. I wasn’t sure how that would change today when Jason entered the picture, but I was looking forward to seeing him sitting in the kitchen—also like a normal person.

Outside, David’s car reached the end of the street and I listened as it turned away and took him toward the city for the day. Then, I would listen again at five o’clock, waiting for it to bring him home again. He’d walk up the steps, his shoes clapping the wood, and open the front door, his bright smile landing on Elora the second he walked into the kitchen to find her in her chair, slobbering out a mouthful of baby food. These moments were the best parts of my day, and sometimes it made me sad to think Elora would be our only child. But that just made me enjoy every moment a thousand times more—knowing it would be the last one of its kind.

Across the hall, through two closed doors, I could hear the human heart beating. Fast. Faster than Sam’s beat when he was sleeping. And when I listened but couldn’t hear Sam’s in his room where it usually was, I threw my covers back and landed by the door in a panic. Sam had tears in his eyes last night as I told him my story. So I thought he understood. I thought he had compassion for Jason now. But if he wasn’t in his room, where was he?