Fables & Other Lies

“You did it.” She rushed over to me, taking the leaves from my hands and picking me up from the ground.

Inside, she got to work, making her tea for Mami. I watched numbly. She hadn’t even taken another glance at me. Hadn’t even cared what I had given to get these damn leaves. I realized she’d always been like that. She cared about herself and sure she’d cared about her family, but at what cost?

“It’s your fault the curse exists.” I swallowed.

She stopped mashing leaves and glanced at me. “You met Mayra.”

“How could you do that to your own sister?”

“Did she tell you what she did? She wished for my death.”

“And then the Devil turned around and told you about it so you wished for something worse,” I said. “You always told me to stay away from there. To stay away from them, from the Chair, and all the while you were the cause of all of this pain.”

She glanced away, looking down at the leaves, and continued mashing. She was quiet as she picked them up and set them in the boiling pan. Quiet as she prepared it in a mug. Quiet as she walked it out of the kitchen and over to my mother’s room. I cried again as I sat there. I felt like a different person in this house. It’s funny what knowledge does to someone. What forgiveness brings. I’d come here looking for both of those things from my grandmother, my mother. I didn’t know I wouldn’t find it here at all. I didn’t know I’d find it in the one place I should’ve never gone looking, but I did. I found especially that the forgiveness I so desperately was seeking had to come from myself, not anyone else.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

River

“If she’d stayed long enough she could have lifted this curse. She could have cured this house. I felt it, felt her presence lighting the way,” Sarah said.

“She chose to save her mother. We can’t fault her for that.”

“A mother who did her no good?” Sarah shook her head. “A mother who shunned and turned her back on her?”

River glanced over at Sarah. “A mother, nonetheless.”

“Your father won’t survive the night,” she responded. “You don’t look so well yourself.”

“I know.” He did.

He knew he’d be gone soon. He knew how this worked. His father would die, Penelope’s mother would live. River would die and Penelope would live. It was the bargain he’d made, after all. Two souls for the price of one. He would have bargained that of Gia Guzman’s, but the Devil didn’t want wretched souls, only pure ones, and even though River had done his share of bad shit in his day, he’d done half of those in the Devil’s name, and asked for penance on the other half.

Technically, he was a fucking saint.

He laughed at that.

Chapter Thirty

River

The house shook vigorously. He hadn’t slept in two nights, but even he knew he wasn’t fabricating what he felt. He clicked the mouse and shut down the computer. Even as he clicked the button, the irony wasn’t lost on him. More likely than not, he wasn’t going to survive whatever came next. He knew that because he asked for it and he felt the Devil smile at the request. Sick bastard. River knew he didn’t need him. His back was covered in welts and scars. He was running out of space and the Devil liked blank canvases. So yeah, he was pretty sure he’d die. The house shook again, harder this time. He ran out of the study and found his father standing in the foyer.

“I sent Sarah away. You should go.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” River shot him a bewildered look. “Why are you still here?”

“I’ll die here.” His father smiled. It wasn’t happy or sad. It was the smile of a man who’d made peace with his destiny. “You should go.”

“I’m not just going to leave you.”

The house shook again, and this time, the chandelier hooked into the thirty-foot ceiling in the center of the foyer came crashing down, the crystals spattering everywhere. River put an arm around his father to shield him from the crystals that bounced in their direction. Wilfred had never been one of those fathers who showed much emotion, rarely hugging River or kissing him. He often just squeezed his shoulder and smiled, and most of the time that was enough. Sarah had been the opposite. Though she wasn’t his mother, she’d been very motherly toward him, always there to kiss him and hug him when he got home, always there to encourage him and smile when he needed her to. He smiled now, thinking of her safety, of her freedom, finally.

River took hold of his father’s hand and walked him to the back of the house, toward the Tree of Life. It was a longshot, but maybe. Anything was possible. His father was walking slower than usual, but River pushed on, gripping his hand tighter, walking harder against the gusts of wind. This wasn’t normal. The day leading up to the water rising again was always nice, the final nice day they had until the gloom settled again. It was never this. It had never been this. River wondered if his mood had anything to do with that. If the fact that he was mourning his loss was causing all of this, the loss of the woman he loved. The loss of what might have been, had he not been tethered to such a despicable being. He glanced at the garage door. If they could make it there and race to the helipad, he could get them out of here. But he still needed the leaves. The ground beneath them shook again, this time forming clear fault lines around them.