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She knew something was wrong when the car dropped her off at home, that day.
Mama was waiting for her. Mama never waited for her on the front steps, smoking a cigarette, tapping her fingers against her thigh. The cigarette was the biggest shock, never mind the fact that Mama never waited for her to get home from school. It was a big secret, the fact that Mama still smoked. They all pretended not to notice that she slipped out every evening to the back garden for a ciggie.
“Thank the Maker,” Mama said when Cerys hit the gravel of the driveway and came up to the steps. She wrapped Cerys up in her arms, holding her tightly. “Thank the Maker you’re all right.”
“What’s wrong, Mama?” She dropped her backpack and returned her mother’s hug. “Did something happen?”
Mama choked. “Your brother,” she said. She let go and stepped back. “You’re all right, though. You are.”
Cerys’s stomach twisted. “What happened to Connor?”
But Mama just shook her head and took Cerys’s hand. “I made you a snack. Some of that nice cheese you like. Come on.”
That was a shock, too. Mama let the cook feed her children; she had been born to Orlesian nobility and had never learned to cook. And the fact that Mama knew what kind of cheese Cerys liked wasn’t expected either. She must have asked Kimma. She was so surprised that she didn’t even protest that she was in high school and more than capable of fixing herself something to eat.
Cerys sat in the huge, silent kitchen and ate the pieces of cheese and the crackers that her mother had given her. Mama sat across the table from her, silent, watching her daughter eat. She lit another cigarette, let it burn without smoking it.
If Cerys had thought that maybe Mama was going to tell her what had happened to Connor, she was wrong. When she asked, Mama just shook her head.
#
That night, she slipped into her brother’s room.
His room was a mess, like usual. He yelled at the help when they came in and disturbed his piles of stuff, so they stayed out. There were piles of dirty clothes on the floor, the surface of his desk hidden with school papers, cards, and the action figures he still played with sometimes. He was only a year younger than Cerys, but sometimes the gap seemed greater. Boys grow up more slowly than girls, Father had told her once. Give him time.
His bed was unmade. She poked around the room, gingerly poking through boyish detritus. There was nothing here to tell her what had happened, where he had gone. He hadn’t been at supper. Neither had Father, though that wasn’t a surprise; Father worked long hours, keeping Redcliffe Financial on the straight and narrow. We’re Guerrins, Father always said. We may be wealthy, but we’re not idle.
Cerys sat down on the edge of Connor’s bed. “Where did you go?” she asked into the silence. The quiet was weird; if Connor was home, there was always music blasting in his room. She reached over to flip on the little stereo on his desk, pushed play.
She’d expected the music to be something loud and growly, maybe something by The Kneecaps or Wounded Age. Instead it was one of her CDs—Hopeless Hours by Ace in the Waking. The lead singer’s voice poured out of the speakers, honeyed and sharp.
Oh baby it’s the last night of our romance
and the callers keep on calling
and ever if you never were here, were here with me
I couldn’t stop myself from falling
These hopeless hours keep me in a trance
and babe I keep on running
and never if you ever loved me, loved me truly
never if I ever could stay…
She’d seen him last night. They’d watched the new episode of Nevarra Express together and worked on homework. He’d told her about the dance class he was trying out for, and she’d complained about one of the girls at school, someone who couldn’t decide if she wanted to be her friend or not.
Nothing unusual. A night like any other. He’d even been in a good mood. She hadn’t seen him this morning—she had AP Chem at 7:10, a full two hours before Connor had to be at school. His dance tryout had been after school today, so she hadn’t expected to share the car with him on the way home either.
Frowning, she rose and went to her room, leaving the stero in Connor’s room playing. She turned on her computer and pulled a binder out of her backpack, checking her assignments for tonight. Chemistry, chemistry, and more chemistry. It’ll be useful later, she reminded herself. When you get to college.
There were times when it seemed like that’s all she was living for, college and the chance to get out from under her parents’ watchful eyes. Connor was the rebellious one, the one who couldn’t help chafing at the many restrictions of their lives. Cerys had more patience. Just go along with it for now, she’d kept on telling Connor. He’d never listened.
The messenger client on her computer pinged. She sighed and went to log out; she’d never get her homework done if her friends were bugging her all night about whatever the crisis du jour was, and she really wasn’t in the mood. She brought up the message window, then tilted her head.
It was Uncle Teagan.
BestUncleEver: Hey, kiddo, are you ok?
She took a breath, a hope leaping in her chest.
Cerys: NO
Cerys: What happened to Connor, do you know?
BestUncleEver: I don’t know. I’m going to the hospital to visit your dad.
BestUncleEver: Is your mom there already?
Cerys: WHAT
Cerys: Hospital?
Cerys: What happened to Dad?
BestUncleEver: Oh, Maker, your mom didn’t tell you?
BestUncleEver: Your dad had a heart attack this afternoon
BestUncleEver: I’ll take you to the hospital. Be there in 15.
She sat, staring at the screen. Nobody told me. Mama had picked up her purse and left after Cerys had finished her snack, without a word. Why didn’t anyone call me at school?
She shoved her homework into her bag. Maybe her uncle would be able to tell her more.
#
When people said heart attack these days mostly you thought that maybe they’d end up having bypass surgery and they’d be okay.
Father’s heart attack wasn’t one of those.
They were still working on him, and Cerys wasn’t allowed in to see him. “It’s not good,” Teagan told her when he came out of the consult with her Mama. “Cerys, I’m sorry.”
Mama was crying, and when she wasn’t crying she had a thousand-yard stare that Cerys knew all too well. She hunched into her leather coat. “This is the best hospital in Ferelden,” she said. “I saw an article. If anyone can fix him, they can.”
Her uncle just gave her a sorrowing look, and awkwardly patted her shoulder.
#
Father took six months to die.
He was lucid for some of it, lucid enough to deal with details of the estate. He went back into the ICU two months after the heart attack, as his organs started shutting down one by one. Cerys visited him every few days, when she was allowed to. She sat by the side of his bed and did her homework, read aloud to him from the books she was reading for lit class.
Nobody would tell her a thing. The nurses brushed her aside when she asked what the spidery patterns of burn up her father’s arms were. And nobody could tell her why he was dying, just that he was. It was like everyone was afraid to talk about it.
I’m almost sixteen. I can handle the truth.
Nobody would talk to her.
She went looking for Connor, who was still missing. Instead of doing homework some nights, she would take her old bicycle and sneak out of the house and out the gates on the drive and pedal down into Redcliffe proper, looking for her brother. She checked under bridges and in libraries, ice cream shops and youth service centers. She made fliers with his picture on them and handed them out, at least she did until Mama caught wind of what she was doing and sent Uncle Teagan to bring her home.
“Kiddo,” he told her as he got off the freeway, turning the car towards the estate, “I know you mean well. But your brother is gone, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to stay gone. Your mother’s heart is already broken. Don’t make it worse, all right?”
Cerys slumped down in the leather seat of her uncle’s car. “What if he needs help?” she asked. “What if he’s hurt, or sick? What if he wishes someone would come find him?”
Uncle Teagan shook his head, his lips tightening. “I know you’re frustrated,” he said. “And I’m sorry. We’re doing everything we can to protect you. And we can’t protect you if you run off like this.”
“Protect me from what?” The words burst out of her mouth.
Uncle Teagan sighed. “It’s a very long and complicated story, Cerys, and it’s much better for the moment if you don’t know.”
She made a frustrated noise and pulled her knees up to her chest.
Ever if you never were here.
#
Eventually, Connor’s things disappeared from his room. First the dirty clothes on the floor were picked up. Then Cerys came home one day to discover that the rest of his stuff had been boxed up, the bed stripped.
Then came the call they’d been dreading. Father had died in the night, in ICU.
“You could take some time off of school,” Uncle Teagan said to her after the funeral. “I’m sure they’d understand.”
“It’s all right,” Cerys said. “I have finals in two weeks.” She felt oddly numb. Mama was a wreck; Cerys had been dividing her time between schoolwork and taking care of her for two months now. People in grey uniforms came to the house sometimes to talk to Mama, and afterward Mama would always retreat into her room and refuse to eat for a day or two.
A tall woman with a forbidding look on her face had asked her a few questions, but none of it made any sense. No. No, I never noticed anything. No, Connor was pretty normal. No, nothing strange ever happened when he was around. Yes, he fought with Father sometimes.
None of it made any sense, so she focused on what did make sense—school, college placement tests, sending away for application packets. Mother wanted to her to go north for school. Too many kids in Redcliffe had gone missing over the years since the Panic. Cerys still had her senior year to get through, but she thought she could apply for early admission. Maybe that would make Mama happy. Give them all something to plan for.
She was already the girl with the missing brother. Now she was the girl with the dead father. She was getting used to it, and to the fact that all of her friends had melted away like spring snow. She missed the petty dramas and the gossip that had annoyed her so much.
Most of all, she missed Connor.
#
Three days after her father died, Cerys went looking through his papers.
Mama was distraught, Uncle Teagan distracted, and nobody missed the keys that Cerys stole out of Mama’s purse. It was a Friday night, and the house was quiet. The season finale of Nevarra Express had aired last night. She wondered if it had been any good. Without Connor to watch it with, it had seemed like a waste of time.
She unlocked one of the big filing cabinets, and went looking for answers.
There were a lot of papers, all neatly filed. Financial records, tax records, miles and miles of the family’s finances and holdings. Nothing out of place. Nothing had been filed since her father’s heart attack.
She unlocked another cabinet and went rifling. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Medical records, everything from Mama’s cancer scare a few years earlier. That had been when Mama had started smoking again.
At the very back of the bottom drawer, there was an unlabeled folder. She pulled it out and then bit back a hiss as she cut herself on the edge of it. She opened it up to look, sucking on her bleeding finger.
At the top, in bold text, was Order of Adoption.
It seemed like half of the form’s fields were blacked out. There was her name. Her parent’s names. Blacked-out names by Birth Mother and Birth Father. An unreadable signature. Everything else redacted.
She stared at the paper, unable to breathe.
There were more papers. All of them had her name on them.
I’m adopted.
And it made sense—the way her father always insisted that there was elf blood in Mama’s family, the way Mama would always tighten her lips and then, quietly, agree. Cerys didn’t look like anyone else in the family. Elven genetics, her father had always said. Funny things, those.
Her blood was coppery on her tongue. She closed the folder, replaced it in the cabinet, and then locked it up.
She went to Connor’s room, curled up in the middle of his bare mattress.
After a while, tears slipped from between her lashes, but she didn’t make a sound.
#
“I don’t remember,” Uncle Teagan said. “I think her name was Katje. I know she was Fereldan. That’s all your father ever told me.”
She and Uncle Teagan were at an upscale restaurant, the kind of place where the service was unobtrusive and the booths placed to provide privacy for the customers. Cerys was wearing a dress for once, something her mother had picked out for her before Father had gotten sick. “Katje,” she repeated. “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”
He shook his head. “They wanted you to feel like you were theirs,” he said. “And they were your parents. Eamon never wanted me to interfere.”
She swallowed and looked down at her empty plate, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Yeah,” she said, softly. “I guess.”
“Hey,” he said in a kind voice. She looked up at him. “Here comes your ice cream. Happy birthday, kiddo.”
She smiled at him, though her vision was swimming with tears. The waiter put a silver dish of ice cream in front of her, with a single birthday candle lit in the center.
“Make a wish,” Uncle Teagan said.
I wish Connor would come home, she thought, and blew out the candle.
Never if I ever would stay with you, darling,
Never if I ever.