Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

At this point, I’m almost sure he’ll walk out, refuse to say another word, but he doesn’t move. He turns his hands palms up on the bar, curls his fingers in until they’re tight fists.

Eventually, he says, “My mother. She wore a silver pendant of a swan when she left.”

What the fuck? I didn’t expect this. Totally out of left field. A glance around the others’ faces tells me they’re just as shocked as I am.

Wait, wait…

“Now you tell me.” He’s back from the place in his mind he seems to have sunk into just seconds ago. “You tell me where the hell you saw that swan. If you’re telling the truth.” He glances around, too, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think his gaze is pleading. “Where did you see my mom? Is she okay?”

Ah fuck…

“You dream of a body,” Ross repeats, his face too still. “And a swan, an ax, a temple… are you fucking serious? This is bullshit. Who put you up to this?”

“Nobody put me up to anything. I tell you I keep dreaming of this since I was a kid—”

“Dreams.” He sneers. “I see what this is. Bully the bully, is it? You think you found a way to get to me?”

It seems I did, though. Get to him. After all, he’s still sitting here, with us, talking. He’s nervous.

And scared. Scared that my dreams are real.

“We think the dreams are memories,” Gigi says, and he shoots her a hostile look. “He was gone for a whole night when he was little, when he was about four.”

Unexpectedly, the blood leaves Ross’s face, leaving it bone white. “Four. I’m two years older than you, so I was six then.”

“What is it?”

“That’s the year Mom left.”

“Fucking shit.”

“No way.”

“What are we saying here?” Octavia asks.

They’ve all pulled stools around Ross, and we’ve ordered a couple of soft drinks to appease the bartender who doesn’t care much for family reunions in his bar, as it turns out.

“Bullshit,” Ross says again. “They’re just goddamn dreams. Dreams of a river. With swans. What are you, a girl? I dunno why we’re even talking about this.”

“Your mom, did she say where she went?” Jarett asks. “Do you have an address?”

Ross shakes his head.

“Did she pack her things before she left?” Gigi asks. “Did she take—?”

“You don’t get it,” Ross says. “She left one day without a word. And never came back.”

This is looking bad.

Or like I’ve been saying all along—it could be just dreams. Fucking bloody dreams cooked up by a dark corner of my mind, a little demon cackling in the night and slowly driving me insane.

“I wanna walk by the stream,” I say, pushing away from the bar. “See if I find the spot.”

“You’re nuts,” Ross snorts, his hands shaking on the bar.

Maybe so. “Coming?” I ask the bar at large, and my family start moving. I take Cos’s hand, help her down from the stool—not because she needs help but because I love helping her, being near her—and turn toward the door.

I don’t comment when Ross throws some bills on the bar and follows us out—and then down by the stream.