This is the other half of the letter. I take it from Jasper without speaking, and read.
it? But—God forgive me, because I doubt you can—I was wrong.
There’s no such thing as a birthright. All you have inherited from us are your cheekbones and your stubbornness. You are free to make your own life, build your own home, fight your own battles. This House has no heirs; the next Warden will be whoever takes up the sword.
I’m sorry. I have loved this place for so long, and fought so hard for it, that I got all confused. I thought I was fighting for a home; I was only ever fighting for you.
Back in North Carolina, the dreams didn’t come to me when the bank took the house away. They didn’t come when we missed rent in the trailer park, either. It was only when I knew you were on the way that I started dreaming of Starling House, because that’s when I decided I needed someplace nobody could take from me.
I chose. So will you.
I love you.
Mom
P.S. Your father wants me to remind you to trim the roses before the last frost and stake the foxgloves by June. I told him you weren’t coming back and he said that’s fine but I should tell you just in case.
P.P.S. Wherever you go, I hope you’re not alone. If I was ever strong—if I ever did a single good or brave thing in my life—it was only because I had you and your father to be strong for.
The letter leaves a catch in my throat, an ache in my chest.
All this time, I still thought Arthur was trapped, cursed to carry on his mother’s work. But he wasn’t. He came home to bury his parents and found a letter setting him free. He never had to take up the sword.
Right now, he could be living in a cute two-bedroom apartment in Phoenix, haunted by nothing more alarming than mice. He could be working nights and dating a dental hygienist. He could be a professor or a happily starving artist or anything he wanted.
But he’s here, all alone, paying a terrible price so that no one else has to. And if he has made mistakes—if he let a monster slink out into the night, hunting Gravely blood—hasn’t he paid enough for it?
I fold the letter carefully along the tattered lines and slip it in my pocket. I swallow twice. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have read that.”
Jasper’s eye roll is almost audible. “Okay sure, but I did, and so did you, and now we both know the truth.”
“That we are criminals and degenerates?”
“That every Warden makes a choice. It’s not inherited or destined or whatever. A few of them had families, right? And do you know what happened to their kids? They moved away and got married and had normal lives! Nothing kept them here, not fate, not blood.” Jasper is leaning toward me now, speaking clearly, like a teacher talking to a sullen and slightly slow child. “The Wardenschosethat place. And that means we can choose, too.”
“I get what you’re saying but”—someone hits the brakes in my brain, tires squealing—we?”
Jasper looks at me for a long time then. Long enough for me to notice the spongy, sleepless bags beneath his eyes, the new lines carved beside his mouth, the wispy not-quite-stubble of an unshaven teenager. Then he says, horribly slowly, “You aren’t the only homeless kid in this town, Opal.” In his eyes I can see the reflections of doors and stairs he’s only seen in dreams, the ghostly map of a house that isn’t his.
All the air seems to evaporate out of my bloodstream. I’m dizzy, breathless with emotions I can’t even name. Fury, maybe, for the years of secrets between us, and fear for what happens next. But also something acid and viscous, bubbling noxiously in my throat:envy.
“You can’t ever go back there. Promise me you won’t.” My fingers are biting into the turf, ripping roots.
Jasper is closing his laptop, sliding it between the textbooks in his backpack, zipping it shut. He stands, looking at me with that tired, distant expression back on his face. “Why? Because you want me safe, or because you want the house for yourself?”
“Oh, go tohell—”
“You haven’t been able to make up your mind, have you? But I have.” His smile is strangely gentle. “Nobody—not you, not that house—is going to tell me what to do with my life.”
Jasper picks up his blue plastic tray and leaves me alone at the edge of the field.
Iwaste the rest of my lunch break kicking rocks at the Tractor Supply dumpsters, periodically shouting swears. It doesn’t help; by the time I clock in I’m still so mad that Frank opens his mouth to bitch at me for being late and then slowly closes it and scurries down the cat toy aisle instead.
I ring up four customers without making eye contact. I don’t look up until a cool, not-from-around-here voice says, “Good evening, Opal.”
I hadn’t seen her approach the counter: a pretty woman with her watch turned to the inside of her wrist and a smile that looks like it was clipped out of a magazine and glued to her chin.
I’m not surprised; I always knew Elizabeth Baine wouldn’t give up easy.
