A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(71)

“But it did?” I ask breathlessly, sensing I’m finally about to learn something about my mother, anything; even the tiniest ancestral morsel that might help me understand why she came here. Why she came back.

“It made a difference to Ralph,” Dad says. “He would have married her if she would have consented. Well, and if I would have given her up, which never would have happened.”

“I don’t understand,” I say slowly, trying to fit the pieces together. “He was in love with her? Did she love him back?”

Dad exhales. “I keep forgetting that there’s so much you don’t know.”

But that’s your fault! I want to say, but I hold my tongue. I want answers more than I want to punish my father for not giving them to me sooner.

“I think Ralph did love her,” Dad says after a minute. “Or at least he thought he did. He was certainly obsessed with her, and obsession can often feel like love, especially when pain is involved. Or power.”

“Are you saying they had an affair?” I ask, knowing it’s a tactless question, but barely caring. If she and Ralph were having an affair, then the explanation for why she went back is obvious, and I can begin to let go of her disappearance. I can stop attributing to Thornchapel all the sinister and beautiful qualities that I’d attribute to a temple or a god-garden or a cemetery. I can stop believing it’s suffused with high, holy magic, and I can stop imagining that the high, holy magic chooses people for itself and pulls them inexorably back into its rustling, sun-dappled heart.

“They didn’t have an affair in the sense that you’re thinking of it,” Dad answers vaguely.

“Then they did have an affair in some other sense?”

“I can’t talk about this with you.”

I make a frustrated noise. “Why not? She’s gone, Ralph’s dead, what difference does it make now?”

“Exactly. And what difference can it make now?”

“It makes a difference to me,” I tell him. “I want to know why she came back here. And I deserve to know. And I deserve any pieces of her that are left, because she took herself away from me, because she left me nothing but doubt, and I’m scared of living with that doubt inside me for the rest of my life. I’m scared it will spread to everything, that it will cover over my heart like mold, and then that mold will spread and spread and spread, and everything that’s fresh and bloody and alive in me will wither and decay until there’s nothing left. No pieces of her or me. Nothing.”

Outside, the rain picks up in earnest, coming down with soothing, steady force.

“Poe, I just need you to know that your mother loved you very much. More than anything. More than the world.”

“Then why did she leave?”

This time his silence is almost comforting, and I know if I were there and we were talking face to face, he’d be pulling me into his arms. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t.”

“Is that the truth?”

An exhale. “Yes.”

“But you do know about her and Ralph,” I push. “You do know if that might have been the reason she came here.”

“I do. And it might have.”

“Were they fucking?”

“Proserpina!” my dad says, shocked.

“I’m twenty-two, I know what fucking is,” I say irritably. “I know you and Mom did it, I know you probably did with other people before you met her, I know she probably did too. I just want to know what happened, and I guess it’s shitty of me to ask you about Mom being unfaithful, but it’s been twelve years and—”

“She wasn’t unfaithful,” Dad cuts in. “It wasn’t . . . that. Wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“It was like this: we loved each other. Sometimes we also loved other people. We never lied to each other about it, and we never chose a new lover over what we had together. That’s what marriage meant to us, and that’s why your mother wasn’t unfaithful, not in the truest sense of the word. She didn’t betray my trust, and she didn’t sneak around. I knew about Ralph because I was there. I knew about Ralph because I loved Ralph too.”

I drop down onto the bed, stunned. “You were in love with Ralph Guest?”

“Was. Past tense. I stopped even before your mom disappeared, because he was greedy. Not even with money, but greedy with people. Greedy with time and sex and feelings. He was jealous and possessive, convinced that your mother belonged to him by some ancient familial right, and it eventually tore us apart, all of us. We were too tangled by then for it to do anything else.”

“You were all together? All the parents?”

“Parents are people too,” Dad says in his professor voice, as if pointing out a remedial fact I should have learned long before I ever set foot in his classroom. “We fall in love just like everyone else. Although I wouldn’t say we all were in love with each other, only that some of us were in love with some others. But we all shared time and affection.”

I’m a very sex-positive girl, but the moment I realize time and affection is a euphemism for all of our parents having sex, I make a face, which thankfully he can’t see.

“But it all went sour,” he goes on. “Ralph had this idea that your mom being a Kernstow meant something, that your mom was another Estamond come back to life or some fucking nonsense. He wanted her to be his, which was patently ridiculous.”