Xhex took her jacket off. “That’s, ah… very perceptive of you.”
“Not really. It’s obvious to anyone who knows you.”
“I’m… I’m really glad you do.”
“Myself as well.”
Autumn went over to the windows that faced the water. Outside, the moon cast a bright light down upon the snowy landscape, the refracted illumination reading blue to her eyes.
You’re in love with me. Don’t bother denying it—you tell me in your sleep every day.… And you know damn well the only reason I’m with you is to get Wellsie out of the In Between. So don’t I just fit your pattern to a T.
“Mahmen?”
Autumn focused on her daughter’s reflection in the glass. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Do you want to tell me what happened between you and Tohr?”
Xhex had yet to take off her weapons, and as she stood there, she was so powerful, secure, strong… She would bow before no male and no one, and wasn’t that wonderful. Wasn’t that a blessing beyond measure.
“I am so proud of you,” Autumn said, turning around to face the female. “I want you to know that I am so very, very proud of you.”
Xhex’s eyes dropped to the floor, and she brushed a hand through her hair as if she didn’t know how to handle the praise.
“Thank you for taking me in,” Autumn continued. “I shall endeavor to earn my keep for the duration I am here, and contribute in some small way.”
Xhex shook her head. “I keep telling you, you’re not a guest.”
“Be that as it may, I shan’t be a burden.”
“Are you going to tell me about Tohr.”
Autumn regarded the weapons that as yet hung from those leather holsters, and thought the gleam of the gunmetal was very much like the light in her daughter’s eyes: a promise of violence.
“You are not to be angry with him,” she heard herself say. “What transpired between us was consensual, and it ended for… a proper reason. He did nothing wrong.”
As she spoke, she wasn’t sure what she really thought about it all, but she was clear on one thing: She was not going to create a situation where Xhex went after the male with all guns blazing—literally.
“Do you hear me, daughter mine.” Not a question, a command—the first she had ever made that sounded as a parent to a young. “You are not to find cause with him, or speak of this to him.”
“Give me a reason why.”
“You know the emotions of others, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“When was the last time you met someone who had made themselves fall in love with somebody else. Who had willed their feelings in a given direction, when in their natural state, their heart cleaved unto someone else.”
Xhex cursed a little. “Never. It’s a recipe for disaster—but you can still be respectful of the way you phrase things.”
“Gift wrapping one’s words does not change the nature of truth.” Autumn looked back out to the snowy landscape and the river that was partially frozen. “And I would rather know what is real than live a lie.”
There was silence for a while between them. “Is that enough of a ‘why,’ daughter mine.”
Another curse. But then Xhex said, “I don’t like it… but yeah, it is.”
SIXTY-FOUR
Tohr sat in that parking lot for God only knew how long. Had to be at least a night and a day and then maybe another night or two? He didn’t know, and didn’t really care.
It was rather like being back in the womb, he supposed. Except his ass was numb and his nose ran from the cold.
As his epic anger faded and his emotions smoothed out, his thoughts became as a band of travelers, passing through sections of his life, wandering around the landscapes of different eras, doubling back for the reexamination of peaks and valleys.
Long fucking trip. And he was tired at the end of it, even though his body hadn’t moved in hours upon hours.
Not surprisingly, the two places most revisited were Wellsie’s needing… and Autumn’s. Those events, and their respective aftermaths, were the mountains most climbed, the different scenes like vistas flashing in an alternating sequence of comparison until they blurred together, forming a pastiche of actions and reactions, his and theirs.
After all the ruminations, there were three resolutions he kept returning to, again and again.
He was going to have to apologize to Autumn, of course. Christ, that was the second time he’d taken a hunk out of her, the first being way back nearly a year ago at the pooclass="underline" In both cases, his temper had gotten the best of him because of the stress load he was under, but that was no excuse.
The second was that he was going to have to find that angel and do another set of I’m-sorrying.
And the third… well, the third was actually the most important, the thing he had to do before the others.
He had to make contact with Wellsie one last time.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and willed some relaxation into his muscles. Then, with more desperation than hope, he commanded his weary mind to be free of all thoughts and images, empty of everything that had kept him awake for all this time, devoid of the regrets and the mistakes and the pain.…
Eventually the order was complied with, the relentless mental trekking slowing down until all that Lewis-and-Clark cognition shit ceased.
Impregnating his subconsciousness with a single goal, he let himself go into sleep and waited in his resting state until…
Wellsie came to him in shades of gray, in that barren landscape of fog and frigid wind and boulders. She was so far away now that the scope of his vision allowed him to see one of the crumbling rock formations up close—
Except it was not, in fact, made of stone.
None of them were.
No, these were the hunched figures of others suffering as she did, their bodies and bones gradually collapsing in on themselves until they were but mounds to be worn away by the wind.
“Wellsie?” he called out.
As her name drifted off into the limitless horizon, she did not look at him.
Did not appear to even recognize his presence.
The only thing that moved was the cold wind that abruptly seemed to marshal itself in his direction, blowing across the flat gray plain, blowing across him, blowing across her.
As it caught her hair, wisps formed around her—
No, not wisps. Her hair was ashes now, ashes that scattered on the invisible current and came at him, hitting him as dust that made his eyes water.
Eventually that would be all of her. And then none of her.
“Wellsie! Wellsie, I’m here!”
He called out to her to rouse her, to get her attention, to tell her he was finally ready, but no matter how much he yelled, or how much he waved his arms, she did not focus on him. She did not look up. She did not move… and neither did his son.
Yet still the wind blew, taking infinitesimal particles from their forms, wearing them down.
In a gripping fear, he turned himself into a great monkey, caterwauling and jumping all around, screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing his arms, but, as if the rules of exertion applied even in this other world, eventually he lost his energy and fell down onto the dusty groung in a heap.
They were sitting in the same pose, he realized.
And that was when the paradoxical truth came to him.
The answer was at once all about what had happened with Autumn and the sex and the feeding—and yet had nothing to do with her. It was about everything Lassiter had tried to help him with—and yet none of that. It wasn’t even about Wellsie, really.