She’d left the hospital shortly after, but not before she’d pressed a feather-light kiss to his fingers, leaving her tears behind. Elshona was left with the strict instruction to call her the instant he was awake. As much as she wanted to sit there at his bedside, pinky hooked around his every minute of the day and night, she couldn’t. Aelin had a routine, needed structure, didn’t deserve to have her little life interrupted just for Silva to accomplish nothing sitting there while he was unconscious.
Besides, they had a move to complete. A move that seemed even more important now, as he would need his apartment to come home to, once he was released.Home. The thought brought her up short and made her sway in the apartment’s kitchen the day she’d mopped it.
He was home.
She’d done stupid, dangerous things looking for him, scraping herself down to the marrow and then rebuilding herself back up to learn to be a good mother . . . and now he was home. Not justback. It was only the difference of a word, but sayinghe was homemade all the difference, made her heart stumble at the thought. Bringing him home was all she’d wanted in all her searching.
She took Aelin to the little community festival in Cambric Creek on the last day, inviting Dynah to join them on a whim, having settled into their little condo at last.Home.
She and Aelin went shopping at the Food Gryphon, finding the peanut butter brand he liked, a box of his favorite tea, filling the cart with nonperishables for his cupboard. His clothes were gone from the apartment, and she had no idea which store his favorite black T-shirts came from, but she did her best. Recovery clothes, soft and snuggly. Warm lounge pants, shirts that were as closeto his preferred style as she could find, and a slate gray bathrobe and slippers. He was home. She wanted him tofeelat home, to be comfortable when he was released from the hospital at last.
“Who are we shopping for, Mommy?”
She’d given her daughter a kiss on the forehead. “We’re shopping for Tate. He’s in the hospital right now, but he’ll be home soon. And you’ll get to meet him then.”
She’d stocked the kitchen in the apartment, put fresh linens on the bed and fluffy new towels in the bathroom, prepped for his homecoming as best she could.
And then she’d needed to redirect her attention, because her daughter’s needs still came first. She enrolled Aelin at the preschool in Cambric Creek for the start of the following month, took her to story time at the library, visited the petting zoo at the farm. She did her best to put the hospital in Starling Heights out of her mind. Elshona was his voice. There was nothing Silva could do but sit idly at his bedside until he woke, and her daughter needed her to be present.
The week passed.
The day she and Aelin met her mother and grandmother for lunch in town, Silva was reminded how different her status was now that she was a mother.
Everything had been going fine. Aelin had cheerfully told them about her new bedroom and the festival they’d attended. Silva mentioned that she was going back to work for her previous company.
Her mother looked pained, setting her teacup down with a sigh.
“Darling, I still don’t understandwhy—”
Her grandmother’s hand had shot out, gripping Silva’s mother by the wrist, and whatever her mother had been planning on saying died in her mouth. The two elves had a furious, silentconversation with their eyes, and the rest of the lunch had gone on without incident.
Dowagers were at the top of the food chain, and her grandmother adored her. Now that she had a baby, now that she was back . . . they would do whatever she wanted, in whatever capacity she demanded it. It shouldn’t have been what was required, but she wasn’t about to ignore the reversal of fortune. No need to be a mouse. No need to split herself.
Just Silva.
The second week passed, and her phone stayed silent.
She could go back to the hospital, could see for herself, but the thought paralyzed her. He was supposed to be home; heshouldhave been home by then.Unless something terrible happened.She called Elshona. Left a message. Texted. Called her again. When she had her phone in hand to call the orc woman a third time, Silva instead decided to call the hospital in Starling Heights herself, half convinced he had died and no one had bothered to tell her.
The nurse on the phone had argued.
“Miss, I understand you’re concerned, but we don’t give patient information out on the phone. Toanyone. I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t been able to prevent her frustrated tears from rising to the surface. “I do understand, but . . .please. Is thereanything you can tell me? He was in the ICU with a collapsed lung. An orc. I just want to know that he didn’t die.”
A significant pause and then the nurse’s voice, more terse than she’d been before. “Hold please.” The woman’s tone had gone from bored enforcement to borderline hostile in an instant. It took only a few minutes for the nurse to be back on the line. “That patient has been discharged. And he’s not welcome back, so if he’s experiencing complications, you’ll need to contact another facility.”
Silva blinked in shock when the line was disconnected abruptly.And that’s what we get in human hospitals. So much for privacy violations.
After that, her worry and fear turned to frustration, frustration deepening to anger.
How dare he?It had been five years. She had done as he’d asked, had pushed on with her life, devoting all her love, attention, and care to his little girl, and had done the best she could. How dare he come back and ruin the tentative peace she had been building, only to disappear again? Even worse, because this time his actions were on purpose.How dare he come back at all?
Now Silva stood in the apartment above the Plundered Pixie, eyeing the minor devastation of the space, fear blooming through her, momentarily supplanting her anger.
She left the groceries she pulled through the door there at the edge of the room, carefully picking her way across the broken glass in the kitchen. A glass had shattered. She could see the base of it there, having rolled beneath the lip of the countertop.
And he’d left it.
