Bianca was my mother’s name. Mara was her alter who tortured me, screaming about me taking her baby away. The first time my father met Bianca’s alternate identity, he fled and ran straight back to the family he’d abandoned for her. Isaac’s family.
A sound behind me, the crunch of glass under a shoe, has me looking over my shoulder and seeing a very pregnant Aurelia walking in while looking around with an unreadable expression. “Princess?”
Slowly, Aurelia’s eyes turn to me, and she gives me a warm smile that I don’t return because the shame of her seeing this place has my skin crawling.
I turn to fully face her as she walks deeper inside, carefully stepping over the debris littering the floor. I rush over to meet her and take her arm to hold her steady. “What are you doing here? Andwhat the fuck?” I say as I touch her hard, round stomach. “You’re pregnant? When did this happen?Howdid this happen?”
“Well, you see, Zeke. When two people love each other, they sometimes express that love by—ow,” she says when I bite her cheek.
“Smartass.” I rub her belly and try not to freak the fuck out at the news that I’m about to be a father. The last time I saw Aurelia, she was getting into the back of a car and I was screaming at her not to leave. Did she know then? Is that why she left? “How are you feeling? Thorin must be insufferably happy,” I ramble when I can’t find the right words.
“Well, there’s the mood swings, heartburn, and swelling in weird places, but yeah, Thorin’s thrilled. Look, we don’t have long,” Aurelia warns, skating right past the fact that she’s pregnant in only the way she can. “I convinced Khalil and Thorin to wait outside, but they’re very nervous and worried about you. I figure we have about two minutes before they come rushing in here to make sure you’re in one piece.”
We have so much to talk about—her leaving at the top of the list—but I guess that will have to wait.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in one piece,” I say. “Not for as long as I can remember.”
“What do you mean?”
I take a deep breath and fight past the urge to bury the truth I came here to find. But one look in Aurelia’s warm eyes and I know I can trust her with it.
“I want to show you something.”
She nods. “Okay.”
Walking over to the filthy, mold-ridden mattress, I crouch and peel the corner back. A mouse scurries out from underneath where it chewed a warm home into the underside, but I pay it no mind as I stare at the name written on the floor in crayon.
“Seth,” she breathes out when she sees it. “How?How is that possible? I don’t understand.”
“I think Seth manifested long before Isaac ever got me on that table. I think after my mother died and she couldn’t hurt me anymore, he stopped waking up and I forgot about him until—” I try to swallow past the knot in my throat.
“Until Isaac.”
Letting the mattress go, I stand, towering over Aurelia, who tilts her head to look up at me. “I don’t think he even remembers existing. I was so young when she died. My memories barely stretch back that far, which means Seth can’t remember either. He thinks his life began in that cult, and the alternative isn’t much better.”
“Why?”
I tell her about my mother having DID. I tell her about Bianca and Mara. Two sides of the same coin, one who had the warm embrace of a mother and the other who wore her face but never wanted anything to do with me.
“Why do you think she hated you?” Aurelia asks softly, referring to Mara.
“I don’t think she hated me. I think she knew I didn’t belong to her. I think she was jealous of Bianca having a child andwanted one of her own. I think everything she did to me was to create Seth. A child of her own.”
There were gaps in my memory from childhood, but I always chalked it up to my young age, never once considering those gaps were coming from Seth’s presence. At the time, whenever I’d wake up to find I’d lost a few hours or even days, all I could remember was feeling afraid and not knowing the reason why.
Aurelia’s lips part, and her eyes shimmer with tears. “So Seth has a mother?”
“Seth had a mother,” I softly correct.
Because when mine died, it meant Seth’s did too. And one day, when I go, it means Seth and Bane will too. And even though Seth having a mother in Mara meant I had to be in pain, I don’t begrudge him that. The real question is how do I tell Seth he had a mother he doesn’t remember? He might get curious. He might go digging in places where neither of us belong, searching for memories closed off by time to both of us forever.
I already owe him a lot more than I thought. I owe him a life without pain.
“What are you talking about, Zeke?” Aurelia questions, sounding nervous when I tell her that.
“I’m talking about giving Seth that chance,” I say as I take her hands in mine, trapping them between our bodies. “I’m talking about going to sleep one last time…and never waking up again.”
“What?” Aurelia snatches her hands from mine and backs away with disbelieving eyes.
