Page 176 of Forbidden Fate

But the cars tell me enough. People are here.

The Bellamys.

I open the door of the car and step out. The Texas heat hits me again.

I smooth a hand down the front of my dirty and wrinkled black shirt, though smoothing doesn’t help. There’s no hiding the facial lacerations, the bruises on my throat.

I walk toward the house.

43

ROBIN

Star Bellamy, my mother, who was not at the airport, who did not wrap me in her arms the second I stepped off the plane, decided she wanted to cook a big meal at the main house for the whole family to celebrate my return.

Celebrate.

As if I’m returning from a vacation. Like we should have cake and balloons.

Though I admit the house smells amazing. My mom is a wonderful cook. Her Mexican food is delicious, and she loves preparing it. Sometimes she doesn’t even let her private chef in the kitchen, though she is helping tonight.

I want to be annoyed. I want to stand in the doorway with my arms crossed and reject the whole thing on principle because my mom doesn’t get to pretend she cares that I’m home.

But the house smells like roasted pork, toasted chiles, garlic, warm tortillas, melted cheese, cilantro, lime, and smoky rich mole.

My stomach, traitor that it is, growls the second I walk inside.

Mom made red enchiladas and green enchiladas, arranged in two enormous pans like she expects half of Texas to come through the door. She made crispy carnitas—my favorite—slow roasted from the moment she got word I was coming home, according to Raven. There’s mole poblano in a heavy pot on the stove. Guacamole sits in a massive bowl beside chips and stacks of fresh homemade tortillas.

It’s too much.

Everything in this family is too much.

Too much money. Too much pride. Too much history. Too many secrets buried under land that should have been just land.

When Mom leaves the kitchen and looks into my eyes, for a moment, she actually looks motherly. “Oh, Robin,” she says and she hugs me.

I let her.

Because even at age thirty, and even when you’ve never felt close to your mother, after being abducted and abused and not sure you’d ever see your family again, being held by her feels good.

Damned good.

She trembles against me, sniffling, repeating, “Oh, Robin. Oh, Robin. Oh, Robin.”

Maybe she does care.

Maybe she always did, just badly.

Or maybe she needed a distraction from her baby in the hospital, her husband’s suicide attempt and subsequent aphasia, and everything else.

I don’t know.

I’m too tired to know.

So I let her hold me. When she finally pulls back, her eyes filled with tears, she swallows. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” I say.