Page 6 of Bound By Fury

As far back as I can remember, Earnest has been my home. For all the ways my mother’s house in Pine Grove has been a tomb—an altar for a man who will never return—Earnest has been the warmth that allowed me to grow. Gigi and Earnest go hand in hand, and now more than ever, I feel pulled here, called here; to this home, this land, this school with its pointed turrets peeking over the tree line, looming above the town.

But Gigi had been clear my whole life: BMA was not as wonderful as it seemed. She talked about it like it was a blight and not the center of everything.

And of course, there are the rumors surrounding the school, the rings of dying forest near its grounds, the portentous clouds of bats thundering through the night sky, and the dreadful squalls wailing from the deep wood like something ancient is dying there.

But those are all the things I love most about Earnest. A place as haunted as I’ve always felt inside. That feeling has only grown since last summer. And now with Gigi gone, too…

I don’t know if there are answers for me at Black Mountain Academy, but I know I need a change. I need to escape. I don’t care if I’m running from my problems. From my grief. I don’t know what I’m looking for, or if it’ll be there. All I know is that if I stop moving, even for a second, I’m afraid I’ll cease to exist.

Huffing out a shaky breath, I stand, stretching my legs and making my way to the large bay window that overlooks the backyard. The sky rolls, the clouds swirling in lazy patterns. The trees sway back and forth in the wind.

Today will bring intense change, my horoscope app warned ominously this morning. It rings true as I turn and lock eyes with my mother.

I haven’t cried yet. Not when I found Gigi in her bed, not when they took her away, not when she was sent to hospice, not when my mother called, not when the nurse led me into a soulless room, my grandmother’s body supine on the bed, a blanket pulled past her still chest and resting below her chin, her wrinkles smoothed by the hands of death. But now, for some reason, it comes. It comes in great, heaping waves, a tsunami of emotion that flattens me to the ground. Sobs wrack my body like pounding fists, and my head throbs with every beat of my heart.

In an instant my mother is by my side, her arms wrapping around me as we lower to the floor, curling into each other like yin and yang.

Dying is inevitable. But the real tragedy isn’t in the loss of your life but in all the people you leave behind, forced to live without your light to guide them.

Like a reprimand from the universe, the mechanical doorbell chimes.

The mourners are here.

The time has come to say goodbye.

THREE

I BITE THE INSIDE OF my lip until it bleeds. Oozing copper spills against my tongue, and I lick it away as I weave through the barrage of grim-faced guests. The citizens of Earnest have flocked to Willow Estate like flies to cow shit. Everyone wants a piece of ol’ Ms. Harper. And I don’t care if it’s selfish of me, but I don’t want to share. Not my memories. Not my grief. Not her award-winning banana pudding recipe.

I don’t want to hear what a great person my grandmother was or how she’ll be missed. I want to climb into bed and close my eyes because in my dreams she’s still alive, and maybe when I wake up, this’ll all just be one long, elaborate nightmare.

My mother stands in the corner, her face twisted into a grimace as people come up and give their condolences. By the end she was just as much Gigi’s child as I was. Whether she liked it or not. But more than that, she is the stand-in for my father. The generational bridge between Gigi and me. What do you say when people apologize to you for the loss of the mother you never wanted? In the absence of the man who broke your heart?

Mom and Dad didn’t meet in Earnest. They met halfway between Buncombe and Loudon in the Great Smoky Mountains, high on mushrooms and tripping through some now-defunct Appalachian hippie festival. I guess this was before grief stole all her whimsy.

In the end I only have two memories of him. The first is from my fourth birthday, a few months before he left. It’s only a snapshot. Him lifting me into the air and spinning me around. I’m doing one of those big belly laughs, and he’s smiling at me like I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.

The second is just of his voice, weeks later on one of our last weekend visits to Earnest, so deep it rumbled through my chest even as I lay across the room. It was well past my bedtime and long after Gigi’s story had drifted to a stop. She thought I was asleep.

I wasn’t.

They were talking quietly in the doorway.

“If they know about her, why do you insist on us bringing her back here? Wouldn’t it be safer if we kept her away?” He sounded irritated.

“You can’t keep her away, this land is a part of her. She needs to be here, to grow up here, to understand this place the way I do, the way Grannie did.” Their voices were hushed, and I stretched my ears to hear them despite the lull of sleep making me heavy.

The door let out a low moan as it began to close.

The last thing I heard before the click was, “She needs to be here when she comes into it. It’s her legacy.”

This is the memory I play most, turning it over in my head, comparing it to everything else I know about Gigi and Earnest. It’s the first thing I thought of when I finally had a chance to sit down and process what happened at Dawson’s. It’s like I have all these pieces of something, but I don’t know how or why I should put them together.

And the only people I could ask are gone.

I tried once to bring it up to my mother. But it was the only time I would ever broach the subject with her. A nurse and a scientist, Ellie Taylor-Scott finds nothing more abhorrent than someone who chooses to ignore fact for fiction. Besides, she thinks that if it weren’t for Gigi, my dad wouldn’t have left. Gigi thought he was coming back. “Xavier,” she mumbled on her deathbed, an echo of this conviction surfacing amidst her delirium.

My mom thinks Gigi’s magical woo-woo nonsense got into his head and caused some kind of psychological break. She says that way of thinking is dangerous. That believing in things as ridiculous as magic just opens your mind up to delusion.