Heart (41 page)

We cried and grieved until we couldn’t
anymore until our bodies were spent and our souls were
cleansed.

After that, we began our new lives.

Free.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Six Months Later…

“Ivy!” My mom’s voice drifted through the
closed door.

“Yeah?”

“Your cell is ringing!” She pushed my door
open and poked her head in. “Do you want me to get it?”

I smiled at her. “Yes, please. It’s probably
Ryder.”

I listened to her take the call as I finished
primping in the mirror. Although, I used that term loosely. My
jeans were of the artfully torn variety. They had holes in them
from my thighs to knees. My Chucks were new, but hopefully would
break in soon. My cable knit sweater was a little too big, a little
too hipster and a little too teal. I loved it.

I’d piled my hair on top of my head in an
elaborate messy bun and I’d just finished my make-up- a few swipes
of mascara and a layer of colored Chapstick.

This was the new me. This was my style. Or at
least my style for today.

Tomorrow I might go for an entirely different
look.

Or naked.

The best part was that it was up to me.
Nobody got a second opinion. Not even Ryder.

Not that he would try to give me one. He was
just happy when I wore a smile.

“Honey, it’s Mallory Hunter.” My mom held out
the phone to me. “She says she has good news.” She gave me a
confused look, but I had no idea what the lawyer Smith hired to
advocate my case once upon a time could possibly want.

I took the phone and held it to my ear.
“Hello?” I asked carefully. Mallory was from a part of my life I
chose not to remember these days. I couldn’t imagine what she
wanted now, after all of this time.

“Hi, Ivy,” she greeted in her usual brisk
tone. “How are you?”

I looked at my reflection in the mirror again
and didn’t hate it or myself. “I’m okay,” I told her. And I meant
it.

I was okay.

I was more than okay.

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
She seemed to need to absorb my words and weigh their honesty.
Finally, and softer, she said, “I’m glad to hear that.” I waited
for her to get to the point. “Anyway, I’m calling because I have
some good news for you.”

“Good news?”

“Yes, it’s about your trust. I’ve been
working on it for a few months now, but I’m finally starting to
make headway. There were some holdups because I can’t seem to find
a death certificate. Apparently there isn’t one.”

“A death certificate?” The air had been
sucked from my lungs.

“For a Mr. Nix,” she explained casually.
“Your trust had been transferred into his care last year, but now
that you’re eighteen you should have full rights to it. Apparently
he died sometime over the summer, but nobody can prove that. I’ve
had to use some creative lawyering.”

I let out a nervous chuckle. “Right. Creative
lawyering.”

“Anyway, the money should be available to you
in a few weeks. I just wanted to call and give you the good
news.”

I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak for a
full minute. “Thank you,” I finally said. I had completely
forgotten about my trust. Or at least given up on it. I had never
expected to see that money and that had been okay with me.

Even though it was a trust set up for me by
my father, by a man I had come to learn was good and funny and
sometimes sweet, I had assumed that money had dissolved into Nix’s
wealth and was forever out of my reach. This was a pleasant
surprise.

“I’m sorry if this has come as a surprise,”
she said patiently. “I was under the impression you were still in
contact with Smith Porter.”

“I am. Well, kind of.”

“Right. Well, I’ll be in touch in a week or
so to get the details of the account you’d like to use. I just
wanted to share the good news.”

I felt a sudden surge of gratitude for this
woman who had been working behind the scenes in my life for so
long. This was our first victory, but it was the only one I needed
from her now. Everything else had been taken care of. “Thank you,
Mallory. Thank you for not giving up on it.”

She let out a low laugh. “Well, it’s quite a
bit of money, Ivy. I didn’t think it…
prudent
to give up on
it.”

I smiled at her dry tone. “I appreciate it.
Thank you again.”

“I’ll call you next week, Ivy.” With that she
hung up.

My mom watched me with wide eyes, “So? What
was that about?”

I laughed again, this felt so weird. “My
trust,” I told her. “That was the lawyer Smith hired to help me
before. I guess she’s been working on getting me the money Max left
me.”

“Really?” Her eyes brightened with
excitement. She reached out and pulled me into a hug. “That solves
your college stress.”

I hugged her back. “And your rent
stress.”

I felt her sigh as it rumbled through her
chest. “You’re not using your money on me. I am excited about
starting this new job. Really.”

I pulled back so she could see my narrowed
eyes.

Her hand swatted my shoulder playfully.
“You’re such a brat! I
am
excited. I’ve never done anything
like this before. It will be good for me.” When I continued to
stare at her skeptically, she finished in a humbled tone.
“Honestly, Ivy, I think it will help me grow as a human. I could
use some of that.”

I softened immediately and pressed a quick
kiss to her cheek. “I think you’re growing as a human just
fine.”

Her eyes filled with tears, as they usually
did when we were nice to each other. “Ryder’s waiting on you. Wear
a coat.”

“Yes, mother.”

“And say goodbye to your sister before you
go!”

“Like she would let me leave without saying
goodbye.”

We smiled at each other and made our way to
the living room. Things with my mom had improved beyond anything I
had expected or hoped for over the last six months.

Without the weight of the Greek world and
Nix’s constant pressure, my mother had become a completely
different person… or maybe she’d become the person she truly was
meant to be.

It hadn’t been easy. We’d shed a lot of tears
over the last few months. She put herself in counseling as soon as
we got home and between her therapist and me, she was slowly
working through a lifetime of suffering.

There had been a lot of grief, a lot of
toxicity and an impossible amount of self-worth issues. She blamed
herself for so much. And she’d seen more than her fair share of
despicable things.

I had gone to her therapist a few times too.
I had a lot of guilt from Exie’s death and there had been times
when I thought I would shatter from grief and residual trauma.
Sometimes the weight of what I went through was crushing; sometimes
it threatened to rip me into a million, unfixable pieces. But when
I compared my eighteen years to my mother’s forty-plus… I couldn’t
imagine how much baggage she carried.

We were both on our way to healthy, but there
was a lot of work left to do.

Our relationship had been our top priority
though and her relationship with Honor. It had started the day we
came back home. After we’d dealt with Exie’s body and Sloane had
gone home to her mother, Ava had gone to bed. Ryder had stayed with
me while I opened the letter.

I wasn’t prepared for the thick pages that
she’d written for me. I wasn’t prepared to see her guilt spilled on
page after page, words mingled with her tears, her pretty
handwriting scrawled with shaking hands and a well of regret and
disappointment with herself.

She’d filled pages with two sentences written
over and over and over. They were written for every day that I had
been born. The paper had changed over the years and the older pages
were yellowed and sometimes torn.

But for each day I had been alive, she’d
written simply, “I’m so sorry. I love you.”

When Nix came for her, she knew she would
die. She had hurriedly stuffed the pages into an envelope, her
words ending in the middle of her sentence. The last line had said,
“I’m so...”

When I showed her the letters the next day,
after she’d slept over twenty-four hours, she finished it.

She had pulled me into a hug, maybe the first
real hug she’d ever given me and said, “Sorry. I love you,” over
and over and over… until I had said them back. Until the words I
confessed to her were true.

Since then we’d spent every day trying to be
the mother and daughter we had never been before.

We had been given a second chance. Neither of
us was going to take that for granted.

Now, as I prepared to go off to college,
she’d found a job at a bank and hoped to take control of her life
for the very first time.

And for the very first time in my life, I was
proud of her.

I found Honor lounging on the couch, flipping
through channels listlessly. She looked up at us as we came into
the room and grinned. She wore baggy sweats and her hair had been
piled on top of her head in what could only be described as a knot,
but she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

“Don’t leave me!” she whined
dramatically.

“I would invite you to come, but…” I waved at
her and laughed.

“Hey! I thought we didn’t care about our
appearance anymore.” She pushed up into sitting and pulled her
knees to her chest.

I smiled at her. “We care. Just enough to not
look like a complete slob.”

She threw a pillow at my face and stuck her
tongue out at me. “Fine, I didn’t want to go with you anyway.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do you really want to
go with me?”

She wrinkled her cute nose. “No,” she huffed.
“Mom and I have an exciting night planned. You and Ryder are boring
in comparison.”

My mom walked into the room with a huge bowl
of popcorn in her arms and an industrial-sized box of Milk Duds
tucked under her elbow.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Dinner?”

She looked at my sister, “She’s a growing
girl. We need to hit all of the food groups.”

“All of them?”

She smiled sheepishly, “Well, the important
ones.”

Honor had melted into our lives seamlessly. I
didn’t know what I would have done without that little girl. She
didn’t hold a grudge against my mom or the Greek life. So when
things got awkward and difficult between my mom and me, she had
been there to smooth things over and bring us back to our new
normal.

She was as beautiful and charming as ever.
And Smith had been working with her via her new cell phone to use
her other powers to supersede her annoying Siren ones. Whatever
Smith told her had been working. She started middle school in the
fall and had friends- real friends. Normal friends. She was
gorgeous, funny and sweet and somehow managed to stay out of
trouble.

So basically, she was everything I
wasn’t.

I loved her for it.

“Well, you girls enjoy your movie night,” I
told them.

“Real Housewives,” Honor clarified. “Orange
County.”

“Oh, god,” I groaned.

“What? They’re crazier than I ever was.” My
mom plopped onto the couch next to Honor and both of them dug into
the popcorn and turned their attention to the TV.

I smiled and watched them for a minute. I had
lived my entire life without believing I could have this, a family,
a family that loved each other. I hadn’t even thought it was
possible. And yet here we were.

We weren’t perfect. And we had a long way to
go. But we had each other and I was learning that made everything
easier.

My mom waved a hand over her shoulder, “Go,
Ivy! We’ll be here when you get back.” She looked back at me with
twinkling eyes. “Actually, could you wake us up when you get home?
Last time I had Honor’s foot in my face the whole night. I’d like
to avoid that if I can.”

Honor proceeded to shove her foot in my mom’s
nose and knocked some popcorn on the floor. Both of them giggled
uncontrollably.

“Absolutely,” I laughed too. “Nobody wants to
sleep with that smelly thing.”

She threw popcorn at me while I grabbed my
purse and ducked out the door.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked to the
elevator and took it to the lobby. I sucked in a sharp breath when
I stepped outside into the frigid January evening air. Two feet of
snow lined the sidewalk as I carefully picked my way over ice
covered sidewalks and across the street to my favorite place of all
time.

Delice.

The best coffee shop in the world.

I hunched my shoulders and hurried inside. I
rubbed my hands together as I glanced around, searching for my
friends.

I’d forgotten a coat, but it was toasty in
here and I was glad I didn’t have to mess with it.

“The Ginga Ninja!” Phoenix’s voice boomed
through the quiet coffee shop.

My constant smile widened until it stretched
from ear to ear. I squeezed between tables until I reached the back
of the room where he sat with Sloane and Ryder. I waved at them
happily until Ryder pulled me down next to him.

He handed me a large Caramel Macchiato and I
fell in love with him all over again.

“Hey,” he murmured, nuzzling my ear with his
nose.

“Hey.”

“You owe me for that drink.”

A warm flush trickled through my body and I
squirmed in my seat.

“Oh, stop you two!” Sloane groaned. “I cannot
take a whole night of you two groping each other!”

Ryder pulled back and chuckled in his smoky
voice. “Fine,” he conceded. “We’ll save the groping for later.”

“That’s all I ask.” She gave me a sideways
glance and tried not to laugh.

More warmth flooded my chest. Sloane’s smiles
were few and far between these days. It was good to see her happy
and teasing.

She’d had a really rough time since getting
back. Unlike Ava, Thalia wasn’t interested in getting professional
help. She’d turned to alcohol to take away her guilt and pain.
Sloane had so much of her own sorrow and regret to deal with that
her home life had only been a catalyst to more hurt.