Rehv frowned and put the brakes on that thought.
“What is it?” his sister asked.
“Nothing.” Yeah, only the first time in his life he’d ever thought about having offspring.
Maybe it was his mother’s death.
Maybe it was Ehlena, another part of him pointed out.
“You want something to eat?” he said. “Before you and Z head back?”
Bella glanced up at the stairs, where the sound of a shower running drifted downward. “I would.”
Rehv put a hand on her shoulder and together they walked down a hall hung with framed landscapes, and through a dining room that had walls the color of merlot. The kitchen beyond, in contrast to the rest of the house, was plain to the point of utilitarian, but there was a nice table to sit at, and he parked his sister and her young in one of the chairs that had a high back and arms.
“What do you fancy?” he said, going to the fridge.
“You have any cereal?”
He went over to the cabinet where the crackers and the canned goods were kept, hoping that…Frosted Flakes, yes. A big box of Frosted Flakes was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Keebler Club crackers and some Pepperidge Farm croutons.
As he took the cereal out, he turned the box to face him and looked at Tony the Tiger.
Running a fingertip over the lines of the cartoon, he said softly, “You still like Frosted Flakes?”
“Oh, completely. They’re my fave.”
“Good. That makes me happy.”
Bella laughed a little. “Why?”
“Don’t you…remember?” He stopped himself. “Why would you, though.”
“Remember what?”
“It was a long time ago. I watched you eat some and…it was just nice, is all. The way you liked them. I liked the way you liked them.”
He got a bowl and a spoon and the skim milk and brought the lot over to her, making a little place setting in front of his sister.
While she shifted the young around so her right hand was free to work the spoon, he opened the box and the thin plastic bag and started pouring.
“Tell me when,” he said.
The sound of the flakes hitting the bowl, the little clapping noise, was all about normal, daily life and it was much too loud. Like those footsteps down the stairs. It was as if the silence of his mother’s beating heart had turned the volume up on the rest of the world until he felt like he needed earplugs.
“When,” Bella said.
He traded the cereal box for the Hood milk carton and tipped a stream of white into the flakes. “Once more with feeling.”
“When.”
Rehv sat down as he flipped the spout shut and knew better than to ask her if she wanted him to hold Nalla. As awkward as it was to eat, she wasn’t going to let that young go for a while, and that was okay. More than okay. To see her comfort herself with the next generation was a comfort to him.
“Mmm,” Bella murmured on the first bite.
In the quiet between them, Rehv allowed himself to go back to another kitchen, another time, way back when his sister was much younger and he was considerably less dirty. He recalled the particular bowl of Tony’s best that she didn’t remember, the one that she finished and wanted more of, but had had to fight against everything that bastard father of hers had taught her about females needing to be thin and never have seconds. Rehv had cheered silently as she’d crossed the kitchen in the old house and brought the cereal box back to her chair-as she’d poured herself another serving, he’d cried his blood tears and had to excuse himself to the bathroom.
He had murdered her father for two reasons: his mother and Bella.
One of his rewards had been Bella’s tentative freedom to eat more when she was hungry. The other had been knowing there would be no more bruises on his mother’s face.
He wondered what Bella would think if she’d known what he’d done. Would she hate him? Maybe. He wasn’t sure how much she recalled of all the abuse, particularly that which had been done to their mahmen.
“Are you okay?” she asked abruptly.
He rubbed his mohawk. “Yeah.”
“You can be hard to read.” She offered him a small smile, as if she wanted to be sure there was no sting in the words. “I never know if you’re okay.”
“I am.”
She looked around the kitchen. “What are you going to do with this house?”
“Keep it for at least another six months. I bought it a year and a half ago from a human, and I need to hold it a little longer or I’m going to get screwed on capital gains.”
“You always were good with money.” She leaned down to take another spoonful into her mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Is there someone for you?”
“Someone how?”
“You know…a female. Or a male.”
“You think I’m gay?” As he laughed, she turned brilliant red, and he wanted to hug the shit out of her.
“Well, it’s okay if you are, Rehvenge.” She nodded in a way that made him feel as if she’d patted his hand in reassurance. “I mean, you’ve never brought any females around, ever. And I don’t want to presume…that you…ah…Well, I went to your room to check on you during the day and I heard you talking to someone. Not that I was eavesdropping-I wasn’t… Oh, crap.”
“It’s all right.” He grinned at her and then realized there was no easy answer to her question. At least, to the part about whether he had someone, that was.
Ehlena was…What was she?
He frowned. The answer that came to mind went deep into him. Way deep. And given the superstructure of lies that his life was built on, he wasn’t sure that kind of tunneling was a wise idea: His coal mountain was pretty damn unsteady to have shafts going so far below the surface.
Bella’s spoon slowly lowered. “My God…you have somebody, don’t you.”
He forced himself to answer in a way that would decrease the number of complications. Although that was like taking only one piece of garbage off the pile.
“No. No, I don’t.” He glanced at her bowl. “Do you want some more?”
She smiled. “I would.” As he poured, she said, “You know, the second bowl is always the best.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Bella patted the flakes down with the back of her spoon. “I love you, brother mine.”
“And I you, my sister. Always.”
“I think Mahmen is in the Fade watching over us. I don’t know if you believe in that kind of thing, but she did, and I’ve come to after Nalla’s birth.”
He was aware that they had almost lost Bella on the delivery table, and he wondered what she had seen in those moments when her soul had been neither here nor there. He’d never thought much about where you ended up, but he was willing to bet she was right. If anyone could watch over her decedants from the Fade, it would be their lovely, pious mother.
It gave him comfort and purpose.
His mother was never going to have to worry from up above about her issue. Not on his account.
“Oh, look, it’s snowing,” Bella said.
He glanced out the window. In the light thrown by the gas lamps along the drive, little white dots drifted down.
“She would have loved this,” he murmured.
“Mahmen?”
“Remember how she used to sit in a chair and watch the flakes fall?”
“She didn’t watch them fall.”
Rehv frowned and glanced across the table. “Sure she did. For hours, she would-”
Bella shook her head. “She liked what it looked like after they came down.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked her once. You know, why did she sit and stare out for so long.” Bella repositioned Nalla in her arms and smoothed a hand over the young’s sprinkling of hair. “She said it was because when the snow covered the ground and the branches and the rooftops, she remembered being on the Other Side with the Chosen, where everything was right. She said…after the snow fell, she was returned to before she had fallen. I never understood what that meant, and she never did explain that one.”