Fire Night (Devil's Night 4.5)

I balled my fists under my arms.

She let her eyes fall again, and I saw something shimmery drop off her cheek.

“I wanted to die.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I deserved to die. I was trying to die.”

Every muscle in my body hardened.

“God, I wanted it all to end,” she whispered, her shoulders shaking. “I had no idea how ugly the world could be until your father.”

She turned blurry in my vision, because that was a good way to put it. With my father, everything was dark and hell.

“I was a child.” She walked closer. “I didn’t even know how to ride a bike until I was eighteen. Schraeder taught me. I was so sheltered.”

Tears spilled down her face, thinking about this teenage girl, younger than Rika was when I terrorized her.

Banks, Winter, Em, Rika…I had no doubt they would survive what Christiane went through, but…they would’ve been hurt. Badly hurt, inside and out.

Anger twisted my gut just thinking about it.

“Rika was so alone for so long,” she murmured. “Quiet, meek, always pressing her nose against the glass, trying to see into a world she was waiting to be invited into. She had no voice, because I had none to give her.”

I remembered.

“The years faded in and out,” she continued, “and any moment of clarity was like a knife in my brain. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand to remember you. I was so weak.”

I knew what that was like. I had the scars to prove it. She had pills. I had razor blades.

But it wasn’t weakness for me. It was coping. I had to do something.

“But she eventually found her way, didn’t she?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. “Michael, Kai Mori, Will Grayson…you. I should’ve known life would find a way to take care of her when I failed to. I should’ve known you’d find each other.” A gentle smile flashed across her lips. “She speaks like she has ten-thousand soldiers behind her now. You did that. Not me.”

Rika learned everything she didn’t want to be by seeing firsthand every day what a wasted life looks like, just like Banks and I did in my house.

“And you’re happy,” she told me. “Winter did that. Not me.”

Christiane had finally learned what she should’ve taught her children—instead of them teaching her—you’re one-hundred percent responsible for your own happiness.

“I’m grateful the lessons she learned didn’t come at too great a cost,” she said, approaching me. “And I’m forever regretful yours came at so much.” Her chin trembled. “I’m sorry. God, I wish I could go back and do it all differently. I would do everything differently, even if he killed me for it.”

I forced down the lump in my throat, my head aching, trying to hold back the tears.

He would’ve killed her. Maybe she should’ve fought. Should’ve tried. Should’ve gotten ready for when I was old enough to approach, or gotten some help from people my father feared, but maybe it would’ve still ended badly, and instead of having a sick mother, Rika and I would’ve ended up without one.

Enough time had been wasted.

“I will be forever sorry, but I needed you to know that I love you,” she said. “Always have, and there is one more present under that tree out there that those beautiful children can’t have, because it was always yours. You can open it after I leave or never at all, but I needed to give it to you.”

She started to leave, always ducking out, because she didn’t want to overstay her welcome, but while I was curious what she got for me when I was a kid that she left under the tree, I didn’t want her to leave yet, either.

“Christiane,” I said.

She stopped, and I looked over at her next to me, not sure I had the stomach for this. I didn’t trust parents, and I was too old to start.

But I didn’t want to hurt her anymore.

Maybe I could be her son, eventually. Maybe not.

But we could try to be something.

“How is it you don’t know how to dance?” I asked.

She blinked at me. She and Matthew looked like two middle schoolers at their first Spring Fling back there. I thought she was cultured.

She shifted, looking uncertain. “I don’t know a lot, I guess.”

The dull hum of the music drifted through the walls, but I was able to make out the tune as I turned to her.

Holding out my hand, I waited as she stared at me, looking a little shocked.

Finally, she took hold. I pulled her in, her cool hand fitting in mine as I slipped my other around her waist. My heart skipped a beat, feeling my mother in my arms for the first time.

She gazed up at me, the lines around her eyes giving away her age, but the look in them still like a child.