“Five minutes,” I say. “If we hate it, we can just go home, right?”
“Danielle…”
The door behind us creaks open, then, “Uncle Castor?” comes sweetly up the walkway. Pouting, a child with dark skin, beautiful curls, and blue eyes that match Pollux’s in the way the whites of them are black stares at us. “Aren’t you coming in?”
Castor’s jaw locks.
“There’s popcorn.” The child sniffles, pitifully.
“And trauma,” Castor mutters, but he turns on his heel to face her. “Whose brilliant idea was it to send you out here toguiltme?”
“Daddy’s.”
“I might actually despise him,” Castor mutters.
The child’s expression turns feral. “No, you don’t. Hence themight.”
You tell him, kid.
Love is all he’s feeling beneath his own terror that he’s going to mess everything up, all over again. If he does, though, I’ll still be there. But I don’t think he will. I don’t think, from what he’s told me, that he is anything like the person he once was. The Castor I know is broken in different ways. And I believe that, sometimes, when we are truly bad and we have done truly unforgivable things, the only way beyond themisto break. We must reach the desperation that results in change.
Castor is someone else now.
They’ll either see that, or they won’t, but it’s up to him to take the first step. It’s up to him to believe that there are people who can forgive the unforgivable in the name of loving him.
Squeezing my hand, he says, “Five minutes. That’s long enough to have a cinnamon roll, isn’t it?”
It certainly is.
?
Castor
The infamousweekly movie night.
I’d be lying if I said I have never once come and stood on the edge of Willow’s woods, listening to the distant sounds of the found family gathering. I’ve come. I’ve stood. I’ve lived vicariously through the laughter. I’ve been angry. I’ve been sad. I’ve been grateful and jealous and…lonely.
I’ve never pictured myself being in here,joiningthem.
I’m half certain Brittny was sick knowing I’d read her book. Ollie was obviously wary and protective of his soulmate in my presence. Kassandra is currently hyperaware that Andromeda is so close to me.
I ruin things.
It’s what I’ve always done.
And right now, I am ruining the picture. Thefamily. I am breaking everything with the stress my mere presence causes.
But I cannot leave yet, because it has not yet been five minutes.
“Here!” Andromeda bursts, shoving a book onto my lap and taking my free hand to press against the paper. “Textile. I like this picture. Do you like it?”
Do I… I feel the picture. It’s… “Little lamb, is this matted crayon?”
“Yes!” Tone light, she says, “I really packed it onto the page. It’s blood, organs, and entrails. Can you tell?”
Blood, organs, and entrails, she says.
Mm, delightful.
