A dark thought pops into my head. If Mom’s sentence is carried out, will they take her somewhere else or kill her here? I suppress a shiver. I haven’t been checking my emails to see if there are any updates from Mom’s public defender about her death sentence. The last few years have been a depressing parade of appeals and reprieves and all sorts of administrative hoops in the public defender’s attempts to give my mom more time. But it’s almost scarier not to know what will happen next; to have the ax hovering overhead, but not know when it will fall.
The motions to enter the prison are rote for me now. After all these years, I bet I could do them in my sleep. Go inside into a barren entryway where everything is concrete or metal. Stand there awkwardly while a bored-looking guard with chapped, bitten lips paws through my backpack, then calls over a female guard to do the same to my person. I stand still, try not to act tense or worried—though I’m very aware of my body, the tightness in my shoulders, how weird my hands feel hanging limp at my sides—and wait for it to be over, having learned long ago that any attempts at small talk would only result in an annoyed look and stony silence. The guards are efficient, but a place like this must burn any kindness out of you.
Eventually it’s over and I’m escorted to the visiting area. Just a long, off-white counter bolted against a wall of scratched, clouded plexiglass, with plastic dividers separating each slot and metal stools similarly bolted to the floor.
I settle down on the uncomfortable seat. Mom’s not here yet, so there’s nothing to look at but the faint shape of my reflection in the plexiglass, like a ghost emerging from the bare cinderblock. I search my reflection for the difference that Dad saw in me earlier. So much has happened since the last time I came here. But I just look pallid and sickly and small, same as always, same as everyone here.
A few minutes later, Mom emerges from the back door that leads to the cell blocks, and for a moment our reflections line up and overlap in the glass. Beyond the limp braid and haggard stress lines, she looks like me. Has my sharp chin and round eyes. One brown, like mine, and one green. She’s my mom. My heart jumps, and this, too, is familiar. The moment of hope when everything else falls away and for a moment I forget about the plexiglass, I forget where I am, because my mom is in front of me and that’s all that matters. For a second, all I can think about is how much I’ve missed her.
Then the rest of it comes into focus, the jumpsuit and dead eyes, and the hope crashes down. But I force myself to hold my mom’s gaze, to smile, because things are different this time. I’m not helpless. She doesn’t have to protect me from the truth anymore. I lean forward as she slumps down on the chair on the other side.
“Maddie,” she says. “It’s good to see you. How’s Havenfall? How’s Marcus?”
She sounds exhausted, her voice scraping out of her throat. I tell myself that’s a good sign. Better tired than totally affectless. “He’s … fine,” I say, and have to stifle a despairing laugh at how disconnected we’ve become, how much I’m not telling her. I hate lying to her, but when we only have a half hour before the guards turn off the intercom, there’s no time to waste, not when there are things I need to say. “Mom, I have to tell you something.”
She blinks. I guess that’s all the acknowledgment I can expect, so I go on, lowering my voice. “I know Nate was taken … I know what really happened to him.” It feels strange and shocking, even still, to say those words out loud.
Finally, a spark of life. Mom’s eyes widen for just a second before snapping back to blankness. “What do you mean?” Her inflection is robotic, even more so than usual.
“I found out about the silver. The soul trade.” It’s hard to keep my voice down so the guards won’t hear; I want to yell the words, let them spill out. “I know the truth about the Solarians. That they’re not evil. That Nate was one. Is one.”
Finally, Mom reacts, rocking back in her seat. Her eyes are round and alert. Her hands come down to grip the edge of her chair.
“He might be alive, Mom.” Hope feels like a balloon inflating inside my chest, pressing against my ribs. It’s almost painful. “I’m going to try to find him. And take down the soul trade. I know why you said you killed him, but you don’t have to lie anymore.” A bit of a laugh escapes me. “I know you wanted to protect me from the traders, but trust me, I made enemies of them all on my own.” I take a deep breath, trying to cram all the complicated feelings I have into the short, simple words. “Take it all back. Tell everyone you’re innocent. Please. I need you alive, Mom, not dying to protect me. I need you to help me find him.”
The change that’s come over her is complete. It’s like she woke up, like I’m looking at a different person. Her eyes are big and bright, her back straight, her lips parted. But the expression on her face—I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect guilt.
“I didn’t kill him,” she says. “But it is my fault.”
The words are pins in the hope balloon. The painful pressure vanishes, replaced by an even more painful vacuum. “I don’t understand,” I say blankly.
“I failed,” she whispers.
I think of her name on Marcus’s list of “hosts,” and my heart breaks a little. Of course. It was her responsibility to protect the Solarian boy she adopted; of course she blamed herself when he was kidnapped. I think of how guilty I’ve felt for all these years simply because I stayed frozen in the cupboard during the attack. How much worse must it be for Mom?
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m going to make it right.” Never mind that I have no idea how. “Do you know who kidnapped him? What are their names?”
She shakes her head. “Maddie, you can’t take them on alone.”
“I’m not alone,” I promise her, and pray that that turns out to be true. “I have Marcus. I have Brekken, Graylin, Sal—”
“They’re more powerful than that.” Mom drops her head. Her eyes have a haunted look, like she’s lost in memory. “There was a reason Marcus and I worked in the shadows. We didn’t want anyone we loved to get hurt. But even that wasn’t enough to keep you kids safe.” She raises her head and fixes me with a look that feels almost like a glare. “I don’t want you playing hero with the soul traders. They’re dangerous.”
“I know that,” I say, trying hard to take even breaths and stay calm, not wanting to draw the guards’ attention. But it’s hard when frustration is mounting in me every second. “Mom, it’s not like I’m going to barge in on them Rambo-style or anything. I just need a name. Just a place to start.”
I didn’t expect her to resist like this. I thought that I’d be bringing her hope, in the possibility that Nate is alive. It didn’t even occur to me that we wouldn’t be on the same page. Why doesn’t the idea fire her up like it does me? My frustration overflows, and I snap, “Don’t you want to find him?”
The stare Mom fixes on me isn’t like her usual expression during these visits. It’s not dead or empty—but even fully present, it’s still bleak and cold, absent of hope. “We don’t know that he’s alive. The traders are cruel.”