Page 118 of Glorious Ruin
2 YEARS LATER — THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: exile - Taylor Swift, Bon Iver
Thesilenceofahouse in the dead of winter has a weight to it. It’s different from the quiet of the road or the hollow echo of an empty arena. It’s thick, laced with the breathing of the people you’ve sworn your life to protect, insulated by walls we built with our own hands.
It was nearly three in the morning when the stillness fractured.
A sharp, metallicclatterechoed from the front of the house, the distinct sound of something small and heavy tipping over onto the hardwood of the living room floor. In a fraction of a second, the hyper-vigilant adrenaline hardwired into my central nervous system booted online. My eyes snapped open in the dark.
Beside me, Silas didn’t stir. He was dead to the world, sprawled flat on his stomach with one massive arm thrown over the edge of the mattress. His soft, rhythmic breaths puffed against the sheets. He had spent the last two days running intense training, and his body was spent.
I slid out from beneath the duvet, moving with the practiced fluidity of a ghost. I pulled on a faded black hoodie, stepped into the cool air of the hallway, and padded barefoot toward the living room.
The space was washed in the pale, blue-grey light of a winter moon cutting through the windows. I stopped at the edge of the corridor, my brow furrowing as my eyes tracked the shadow standing near the front door.
She was standing frozen in the center of the room, a heavy winter coat pulled tight over her frame, staring down at a brass coaster she accidentally knocked off the side table. But it wasn’t the coaster that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
It was the two massive, packed suitcases sitting directly by her shoes.
“Josie?” I asked, my voice a low, gravelly rumble that cut through the quiet like a blade.
She jumped, a sharp, terrified gasp escaping her lips as she snapped her head around. Her long strawberry-blonde hair was falling out of a messy knot, and her eyes, those bright, stark blue eyes, were violently bloodshot, ringed by thick, dark circles of exhaustion.
“Cal,” she whispered, her voice a fragile, trembling wreck.
I stepped into the room, my eyes darting toward the short hallway that led to the nursery wing. “Where’s Ian?”
“He’s…he’s asleep,” she choked out, a stray tear tracking down her freckled cheek. Her fingers dug frantically into the fabric of her coat. “He’s in his bed. He took his bottle an hour ago. He’s out cold.”
I looked from the hallway back to the suitcases, the pieces of the puzzle slamming together in my brain.
“Where the hell are you going, Josie? It’s three in the morning.”
The question broke whatever fragile dam was holding her together. Her shoulders caved inward, a ragged, breathless sob tearing out of her chest as she buried her face in her hands. She didn’t look like a mother. She looked exactly like the terrified, overwhelmed eighteen-year-old kid who had collapsed onto my sofa on Christmas Eve two years ago.
“I can’t do it,” she confessed, the words tumbling out in a desperate, suffocating rush. “I can’t be a mom. I don’t want to be. I was too young. I thought I could force myself to want this life. I thought if I stayed here on the land, it would just click, but it isn’t clicking. Every morning I wake up and I feel like I’msuffocating. I look at him and… I just want to run. This isn’t the life I want. I can’t do it anymore.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer, the impact tearing the air straight from my lungs.
I stood there, completely gutted, a cold, paralyzing wave of my own childhood horror rushing up the back of my neck like an unholy tide. The room spun. The blue moonlight faded, replaced by the phantom image of Fiona walking out the front door, her suitcases clicking while a young version of me begged her from the hallway not to go.
“You don’t get to just stop being a mom, Josie!” I snapped at her, my voice a harsh, furious explosion that I couldn’t check. My hands clenched into tight fists at my sides, my split knuckles throbbing. “You don’t get to just turn the switch off because it’s hard! He’s ababy. He’syourbaby.”
Josie didn’t flinch. She didn’t argue back. And that was the most terrifying part of it all. She was already detached. The panic had drained out of her, leaving behind a hollow, empty shell.
“I know,” she whispered, her voice flat as she stared at the floorboards. “I’m not trying to fight with you. I can’t. I don’t have the strength to. But I know… I know you and Silas will be better parents to him than I could ever dream of being. You love him. You already take care of him more than I do when you’re home.”
She lifted her eyes, looking at me with a pathetic, desperate plea that made my stomach turn. “Just promise me,” she choked out. “Please, Cal. Promise me you won’t let my dad raise him. Don’t let Scott take him back to his house. He’ll just look at Ian and see my failure every single day. Keep him here. Keep him with you and Si.”
The fury in my gut reached a volcanic, blinding peak. I took two steps into her space, my frame casting a dark, terrifying shadow over her.
“Listen to me very carefully, Josie,” I hissed, my voice dropping into a lethal, trembling whisper that vibrated. “If you walk out that fucking door tonight… If you make this call and decide that this boy isn’t what you want anymore, you do not get to come back when you’ve got this out of your system. You don’t get to wander back onto this property when you’re lonely and expect him to know who the hell you are. I am not putting that baby through that unstable, back-and-forth bullshit for the rest of his childhood. Do you understand me? You leave tonight, and he isours. Permanently.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even blink. She just looked at me with a sad, empty finality, reached down, and grabbed the handles of her suitcases.
She turned, pushed the front door open, and walked out into the freezing, dark North Carolina night. The latch clicked shut behind her with a sharp, definitive snap.
I stood in the center of the quiet living room for a long time, my chest heaving, hot tears of rage and grief finally breaking past my eyes and tracking down through the script on my neck. The silence of the house had returned, but it felt mutated now. Heavy. Permanent.
