“I did as well,” he corrected. “When I moved here. There was nothing left for me in Ireland. Nothing but hurt. And I didn’t look back.”
“No,” she corrected. “I’m the expert here. I made alotof bad decisions after you were gone, and I can admit that now. I isolated myself. I didn’t let anyone help pull me out. And that’s the same choice he made, onlyIdidn’t have an awesome HR girlfriend holding my hand through it. I had a Tannar.”
“Fuckingcunt. Did you book the room yet?”
Her unbinding was the following month. Her family had wanted to come with her for support, but Silva was half-convinced her father would be arrested and her mother and grandmother would wind up in hysterics. She would go alone. At least, that had been the plan until she’d shared it with Tate.
Now, Aelin would be spending the weekend with her grandparents, and Tate would be traveling with Silva to witness the dissolution of her marriage.
“I figured we’d just fly in that morning and then come home.”
“No, absolutely not. I want to know exactlywherethe ceremony is taking place. I want to knowwhois staying on site. I want to know the location of their bleedin’ rooms, so that I can ensure we have theadjoiningroom, so that he can listen to us put the fucking bed through the wall all night long.” Silva erupted in laughter, but Tate wasn’t finished. “And I want you to stand up there in front of thatdisinterestedpiece of shite excuse for a husband, dripping my cum on his fucking shoes, Silva, with his whole miserable cunt clan watching. And I don’t want to hear anything to the contrary.”
She dissolved into giggles beneath him, unable to catch her breath for a long moment, envisioning exactly that. “I don’t think we’re supposed to do things like this for each other. We’re supposed to be making each otherbetter.”
“Oh, fuck that. Please, Silva.” He lifted his hand, enumerating on his long fingers as she continued to laugh. “First of all, I cannot becomemoreenlightened than I already fucking have. Yesterday, I made a quiche. I go to therapytwicea month. I have traumainmy body.”
She was hunched with laughter by then, dislodging him from her breast, in danger of gagging.
“Wherethe fuck is it, is what I’d like to know. Cut the little bastard right out and I’d be good as new.”
He cut himself off and rolled sideways off the bed, stepping into lounge pants the instant little feet were heard in the hallway, as Silva immediately pulled a camisole nightgown over her head. They were appropriately dressed and back in bed well before Aelin reached the door, a well-choreographed ballet of experience by then.And it doesn’t get more domestic than that.
Aelin climbed beneath the covers, tucking into Silva’s side, pressing her little icicle toes between Silva’s knees as she shrieked.
“I have a very important question for you, wee miss,” Tate climbed over them, on top of the duvet, curling around Aelin with his head pressed to her back as she wiggled beneath the covers. “Why did the winter lady need to yell at you to wake up? Why didn’t you want to leave your mother’s stomach?”
“Because it was so cozy,” she continued to giggle. “I didn’t want to come out!”
Silva closed her eyes, listening to the two of them chatter, luxuriating in the sound of her daughter’s unconscious laughter. This was how it was meant to be. This was how it wasalwaysmeant to be.There is a kiss of fate upon you, I think.Maybe so. Or, she considered, neither of them had been willing to quit until they wound up exactly where they were at that moment.
Lurielle
The Saturday playgroup met at 10 a.m., which Lurielle already resented on principle. It was an aggressively optimistic hour.
Ten a.m. assumed the previous day’s naps had gone well, that dinner had been eaten, everyone had slept, that no one had woken up in the middle of the night demanding water from a very specific cup, the same cup they’d demanded the previous day, which was now in the dishwasher. It assumed that said middle-of-the-night water demands would be done in a quiet enough tone to not disturb theothersleeping child, one who was currently teething, who’d been a poor sleeper from day one, eager for an excuse to open her throat and let the whole neighborhood know of her existence.
“She’s fixin’ to be an opera singer,” Khash would say indulgently, uncaring that his little diva was screaming loud enough to shake the dishes in their cupboard. The Act Two aria rattled Lurielle’s teeth when it was delivered in the middle of the afternoon. In the middle of the night, it stabbed a part of her brain she hadn’t even been aware of before Kora’s arrival.
Ten a.m. assumed everyone was up and dressed with clean faces and tamed hair, that she herself was coiffed appropriately for leaving the house in flattering, color-coordinated active wear, free of spit-up-covered shoulders, which were frowned upon.
Lurielle knew the score.
She understood, at long last, how places like these operated. It was good that she’d grown up in an enclave, she’d thought a hundred million times in the past four years. It had been an excellent warning for the true test of professional bitchiness that lay in wait — the lion’s den she’d not realized she’d be entering the first time she’d peed on her hand, hoping to hit the test strip.
Mother’s groups were an enclave unto themselves.
Allof them, but this one in particular.
She wasn’t sure if she had given birth to Kael in a particularly auspicious year full of other baby geniuses in the halls of Healers’ Memorial, but their mothers certainly acted that way. They were fit. They were fashionable. They were entirely preoccupied with extracurriculars and enrichment programs, regularly questioning whether the public school system here was really as good as everyone claimed, or if it was merely a Hemming family-sponsored psyop to convince residents that their exorbitant property taxes were going to a worthwhile cause.
There was an orc and her kitsune wife, who talked about an art therapy program they’d discovered that aided emotional intelligence growth at home. There was the sylvan whose tiny daughter had a different class or lesson to attend seven days a week. The dragonborn who was extremely concerned over whether or not the public elementary school introduced Ivy League-level testing at an early enough age. There was a troll who talked about her pole dancing aerobics, a goblin who’d received a ‘mommy makeover’ after the birth of her second, andthe trio of stay-at-home fathers who were fawned over by most in the group simply by existing.
Lurielle needed to regularly remind herself thatthisgroup was not indicative of all the parents in Cambric Creek. There were mothers on her own street who, by her standards, were completely normal, who let their kids play in the street and run across yards. Sheknewthat . . . but the current iteration of the Saturday morning playgroup was largely composed of Kael’s schoolmates and their younger siblings, which meant she had no escape from these mothers. Unless they planned to move, she would be stuck with this group for the next fourteen years.
Allowing herself and her kids to exist solely on the periphery would be a mistake. Club life had taught her that. And so each week, she was there, whether she wanted to be or not.
Playgroup was held in one of the rooms at the community center, the same space where storytime was held. The floor was covered in primary-colored foam mats, and storybook characters were painted on the eggshell-colored walls. Baskets of Scandinavian-looking toys and low bookshelves lined the entire space; wooden animals, a miniature kitchen and a play fruitstand with felt fruit and a working checkout register. The crown jewel of the playroom was the castle, a two-story play edifice that featured a slide, a cozy little shelter inside with beanbag chairs, and a little balcony with a high enough railing to prevent any accidents.
