[This post is from Thomas Merlin Ambrose’s point of view.]
My throat tightened. “Because of Mom?”
When they’d gone, something had been afflicting my mother for a while by then, though no one seemed to know what it was. I’d heard whispers of it being linked to her talent, to her ability to peer into the future and see the possibilities—more correctly than not. It was a power linked to something, but no one ever seemed to know what that something was, and no one could figure out how to make her better once she’d started to get sick.
I tried not to remember those parts. I always tried to just remember her.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Carolyn said, her gaze straying to me for a few seconds before it drifted to the headstones. “Your father was determined to save her, no matter what. Your mother? She was determined to save all of us—or, at the very least, ensure the peace held a little longer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “Like, I said, it’s complicated. When you were a baby, Marin brokered a peace with a lot of the nastiness in this world that was trying to overtake it and us. She forced a truce on them, bought us time. When your parents left, we could see signs of that truce being tested. Your parents both thought that their departure would help solidify the peace for a little longer—and they were right. They bought us another five years.”
“Until now.”
“Yes. Until now.”
