“It’s a beautiful wedding,” Kessian said. “You must be proud to see Fae find someone who makes them so happy.” I could read his subtext, too.Not that you care about all your children’s happiness equally.
She nodded, tapping the stem of her wineglass with one polished nail. A long silence followed, and I couldn’t do the awkward pleasantries thing. (I never could, but particularly not tonight.)
“Did you want to say something, Mum?”
She huffed. “Yes, I do.”
I waited. Her tapping got faster and faster until finally she spat the words out as if they’d been stuck in her teeth. “I wanted to tell you that … I was wrong. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you from coming. I shouldn’t have sent you away at all.” She took a very large sip of her wine before rushing through the rest. “If you hadn’t been here, Amelia wouldn’t be here, and it would have made Fae very sad for their wedding. Now I can’t help but wonder if I hadn’t sent you away, if Laurelie, your father—”
“I don’t think I’d have been able to save them,” I said. “I was sixteen.”
“Yes, well, we’ll never know now, will we? I just wanted to say that. That I’msorry.”
My mother had never apologized to me. It shocked me so much I didn’t say anything back until Kessian gave me a nudge under the table.
“It’s okay,” I said.
All the tension went out of her. Not with relief. She almost looked defeated. “That’s all? Just, ‘It’s okay.’ I sometimes wonder if it bothered you at all being sent away, or if you didn’t really care for us as your family. Did you even want to be here?”
After the apology, I was unprepared for the hidden knife of her follow-up, and perhaps I’d have seen it as a malicious attempt to hurt me before, but her words echoed Fae’s when I’d first arrived, and it brought me up short.
I’d taken too long to formulate a response. Mum was rising from the table.
“He does care,” Kessian said. “He cares deeply. He stayed away to protect you, not because he didn’t want to be here. He came back to try and fix things. He loves you all. I can see it. You can see it, too, in his actions rather than his words.”
I could hardly contain the dam of feeling welling up in me at being understood. He hadn’t known me long, but he spoke whatever strange language I did, the kind my family struggled to interpret.
Mum stood agape for a moment.
“It’s true,” I said. “I’m not good with words but I do—love you. And the whole family.”
For a second, she looked genuinely touched and happy. “Love you, too.” With a nod to Kessian, she said, “I’d better see you both on the dance floor later—Oh, unless you can’t?” She patted her mouth as if to shove the faux-pas back in there and trotted off with a quick, “Come by for Sunday roast sometime!”
“Sorry about that,” I murmured.
He hummed. “Honestly, I think I prefer that to people tiptoeing around it. Makes me feel less like the elephant in the room to at least be acknowledged as different, rather than awkwardly pretending we’re all the same, or that yoga will fix me. Though tonight I might have to kick off my shoes and stand on someone’s feet while he pilots me around the dance floor.”
I snorted. “That sounds fun, to be honest.”
“Did you want to?”
The song had turned slow. My heart ricocheted around like a stray bullet in my chest. “I’m not very good.”
“I didn’t ask if you were good, I asked if you wanted to dance.”
“With you?”
He bit his lip. “Yes?”
I got up. He’d started babbling. “So long as you don’t mind dancing with a guy who’s falling apart like a hard taco shell.”
I got on my knees and started unlacing his shoes. “Yes. I want to dance with you.” I held out my hand for him.
Kessian’s eyes glimmered as he took it. Kicking off his shoes, he leaned on me as I led him onto the dance floor.
Chapter 28
Ifelt several pairs of eyes burning the back of my neck as I tentatively held Kessian’s waist. He hung his cane on my elbow and, mischief sparkling in his eyes, stood on top of my shoes.
