“Oh, he called around eight this morning. You were still asleep, which I told him when he inquired how you were feeling. He sounded pleased, said you should sleep as long as needed, and then said he would see you tomorrow.” Olivia frowned in concentration, hands shaking with a faint tremor as she carried the tea cup to Alaric. He sat back up and quickly took it from her, and she gave him a small smile before sitting in an armchair beside the couch.
He really wanted to talk to Tarquin, but he figured it would be awkward to just call him up out of the blue and declare he was awake and missing his new boss’s voice. And his touch, and his scent, the way he filled out his suit jackets and… Alaric took a sip of tea and forced himself not to think about his boss, especially with his mother in the same room.
Trying not to be obvious about it, he eyed his mother, noting the trembling and how thin she looked, even now after a few weeks of having her day nurse cook meals for her. Olivia Keening was not well, and the prognosis they received from the doctors the week before Alaric joined his mother in Montreal wasn’t a good one, but there was hope. Proper care and minimal stress, and his mother might recover, in time.
Though recovering from a broken heart and betrayal on the magnitude she suffered when her boyfriend absconded with her money might take far longer. Roy Shivens was wanted on a variety of charges, but finding him when he had over a quarter million dollars to help him disappear would be nearly impossible. The police had no leads, and frankly, he believed they’d given up.
Olivia sighed as she leaned back in the armchair, staring out the window to the front yard and the street. If he stood, he would be able to see the piles of remodeling supplies under tarps on the overgrown grass. He stayed seated and sipped his tea, watching emotions play out over his mother’s face.
“Mom.” She gave a tiny jolt, as if coming out of a trance, and smiled at him. Exhaustion and stress battled for supremacy on her face, but the love and joy she felt for him was easy to see. “I’m glad I came home.”
Olivia shook her head, even as her cheeks gained a bit of color. He got his rampant blushes from his mother. “You left behind school and Boston to come help your poor old mother. I feel like you’ve derailed your entire life to come help me out of trouble. I’m the parent—I am supposed to be helping you, not the other way round.”
“I do miss Boston, I won’t lie, but I never really considered the States to be home. That was always with you.” Alaric sighed. “Leaving with Dad after the divorce sounded like an adventure when I was ten, but all I got for it was an indifferent parent who did the bare minimum and a slew of disappointment when I failed to live up to his lofty expectations.”
She reached out and put her hand on one of his where they tightly gripped the teacup. He relaxed his grip and set the teacup down on the coffee table, before taking her hand in his and gently squeezing. Olivia shook her head once, eyes going distant, caught up in unpleasant memories. “When your father fought for custody, he made the argument that you would surely inherit his abilities and needed to be under his guidance and tutelage. I wanted you to stay with me, but I couldn’t give you what he could. You’d already started to show signs of developing a gift, and it seemed sensible, and you were reasonably happy.”
“And Father’s extreme disappointment when I took after your side of the family instead of his meant I spent the next eight years wishing I was home in Montreal, with you. Then I went to school in Boston and got caught up with trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and never finding an answer.” Alaric exhaled roughly. “When it was obvious I was going to develop clairvoyance instead of becoming a sorcerer like him, Father washed his hands of me. When I was about thirteen or so I started to ask if I could come to Montreal and live with you, but he refused. I never really understood why he wouldn’t just let me go.”
Olivia squeezed his hand, likely remembering as he had the years of frustrated phone calls and short visits across the border. “Your father has always been a proud man. I think his pride took a hit he couldn't reconcile when his only son, one he made a point to fight for, took after his mother instead of generations of powerful Keening sorcerers. His pride refused to let you come back—it would be an admission that he’d banked a lot of future plans on erroneous assumptions.”
Alaric grimaced. “I heard plenty about his disappointment growing up. I eventually stopped looking for approval and any kind of parental concern from him.” Alaric shrugged. “I should have come home sooner.”
“You wanted to go to school, and Boston College is a fine place. I thought you were enjoying it?”
“I was, the people and classes were enjoyable, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I still don’t. I’ve never known what I wanted to do with my life.” An image of Tarquin burst into life in his mind and he mentally batted away the fantasy of loving that dragon for the rest of his days. Tarquin was his boss and a nice person and that didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t, no matter how much he wanted it to mean something.
“I never wanted you to waste your life tending to me, especially after I made so many horrible mistakes. You should be in school, or falling in love, building a career and a family and having adventures.”
“We can both have adventures once we sort out the current troubles,” Alaric said with a forced cheer. They were in trouble. A part of him was afraid his mother would lose everything, and he had nothing to help her with except a pair of hands and—hopefully—he would still have a job come tomorrow. Despite Tarquin's assurances that he wasn’t fired, he was surely using up any goodwill he had left and he needed that job. He would go to work in the morning and do his best to impress his new employer.
“Adventures sound marvelous, Ric.” Olivia pat his hand, humoring him. His heart hurt at the hopelessness he saw in her eyes, and he silently promised her that he wouldn’t give up.
They sat in companionable silence for a short while, until there was a knock at the front door. Alaric carefully got to his feet, and stared at the police vehicle parked at the curb.
His mother hurried to the door, and Alaric wondered what new troubles were going to come tumbling down over their heads.
Most of Tuesday passed as if it were a dream. He slept through another call from Tarquin checking up on him, which was disappointing, but the visit from the Montreal police department Tuesday afternoon left him rocked to his core.
Wednesday morning came with a sense of anticipation, the pull of fate or destiny or something else just as intangible but equally unavoidable. Alaric dressed in his best suit again, grabbed his satchel and coat, and called for a ride off the app to get to work. His mom’s day-nurse arrived just as he was leaving, and he shared the good news with her before his ride pulled up at the curb. He sat in a daze the whole way downtown, his mind replaying the previous day’s events over and over, wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing.
His mother’s duplicitous ex-boyfriend, Roy Shivens, had been caught in Toronto late Monday night. The police were a bit sketchy on how he’d been caught, but Alaric got the impression it was unusual and bothered them on some level, though more like they were afraid to talk about it for fear of offending something or someone powerful. Most of the money was still intact, the asshole’s accounts frozen, and after forensic accountants took a tally for evidence and accounted for every dollar, his mother would get it back. It was a few months since his mother’s ex absconded with the money, and Alaric was astounded it hadn’t all been spent, only a fraction gone.