Page 58 of Ladybirds

She doesn’t believe that for a second, but the fact that he can say it means he does. Sara can’t help but wonder if that’s a reflection of his past or her. Either way, it coaxes a pang from her heart. Suddenly, it feels important that she know. “Will you tell me anyway?”

He hesitates. “Certainly, but… do you really wish me to? Truly?”

“Does that really surprise you?”

“Yes,” he says, softly but without a hint of doubt. The tightness in Sara’s chest grows, an aching pain. Seth must catch her flinch, because his expression changes into one of awkward embarrassment—hands sinking into his pockets. “It’s only, well, no one has ever asked.”

“Oh,” she breathes, but the pressure in her chest doesn’t lessen. If anything, it feels heavier. How could she be the only one, in all those hundreds of years, who cared enough to want to know? “Well, I am. And, you know, if you’re ok with it, I’d like to hear about it.”

He drags in a shaky breath, pulling his hands from the confines of his pockets and leaning against her dresser. “Very well then. Ask away.”

She falters. “But if I ask, you’ll have to answer.”

Seth shrugs. “If you don’t, I’ll have no direction to begin.”

Sara takes comfort in the relaxed line of his shoulders, the openly curious tilt of his chin. If their roles were reversed, she would be terrified, but Seth almost seems… eager. Still, she makes a point to keep her questions open enough for him to escape. “Did you have any siblings?”

“Unfortunately,” he sneers. “Two older brothers. Both of them were utter pillocks.” Glancing at her, seeing her awkward confusion, he rolls his eyes. “Idiots?”

“Oh.” She shifts, picking at the seam of her pillowcase. “You didn’t like having siblings?”

“Far from it,” he glowers. “They were both over a decade my senior. By the time I came into the picture, our dear Father was already grooming them to be as heartless as he was. Carry on the family legacy and all that rot.”

“Which was?”

Seth waves a flippant hand. “Managing the estate, overtaxing the tenants, making examples of the ones unable to pay. They were nothing but numbers on a page to him.” His eyes harden, a sneer curling his mouth. “God forbid he see a person in the face of a peasant.”

“So, regular grade-A asshole?”

“Precisely.”

“And your brothers were the same way?”

“Worse,” he says, the word spat with a level of contempt that surprises her. “Youth made them more ambitious.”

Sara leans forward, chin resting on the end of her pillow as she processes what he’s told her. She frowns. “But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your dad didn’t want to teach you the family business?”

Seth laughs, the sound as bitter as it is harsh. “Goodness, no. I was the third son. Hardly worth the time when he already had two strapping young men ready to take over.”

There’s only one other family member she can think to ask about, but it takes her a moment to gather the courage. Sara thinks of her mother’s red sedan, the dust and gravel it kicked up behind it. Sometimes she can almost taste it on her tongue, still choke on it. Her voice is little more than a hoarse murmur when she brings herself to ask, “What about your mother?”

His expression softens, his adoration so vivid it nearly makes her sick with envy. “Mother was… she was the only good thing in that family. My light. She was a poet, you know, and a fine one at that. Though no one ever cared to know it.”

He goes quiet, soft smile dimming until it resembles more of a grimace. There’s an old pain there, a regret, hiding in the furrow of his brow and the glassiness of his eyes. “I watched over her. From the day I became, well, this, to the day she died. I watched her suffer without me. Listened to her pray.”

Sara’s heart gives a sympathetic twinge. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“I tried.” His voice is level, but there’s a reserved sort of agony tucked around the edges. A pain so deep, that even centuries worth of time were unsuccessful in completely smoothing the barbs. “Her only prayer was for my return. And, for however many times I tried, the magic refused to take.”

Sara sucks in a breath, hands fisting in her pillow. Grief fills her, rising like floodwater the longer his words sit between them. Sorry is too soft a word, but she can’t find any others, so she sits—lips parted around an apology she can’t string together and her eyes burning with a sadness that isn’t her own. “Seth…”

His hands are in his pockets again, fingers fiddling with the chain of his watch. “Don’t fret over it, Princess. It was a long time ago.”

That doesn’t mean it ever stopped hurting, though, and in that moment—with the porch light casting slotted patterns across the room—Sara can almost see her pain reflected in his own.

---