Page 85 of It's You
“I know, Mom. I’ll be there soon.”
“Wait! Before you go. Did you see her, Jacques?”
He took a deep breath and sighed, feeling very tired and very sad.
“Yeah. It didn’t, uh…It didn’t go so well. I, uh…I’ll be there soon.”
He pressed end before she could reply, and Jack stared at her picture on his phone for a moment. It was an old picture of her from his childhood. She was wearing a parka, and the fur surrounded her face with her tangle of thick, black hair spilling out the sides, down her shoulders. There were snowflakes caught in the strands, white crystals against the inky cast of her hair. Her cheeks were red, and her dark eyes were shining, while her lips tilted up in a surprised grin. His father had taken the picture long ago, and Jack had always loved it best of any photo taken of her before or after. She was hopeful then. She was happy. It was one of the last times Jack ever remembered his mother being happy.
She had been exonerated for the murder of Lynette Reynard, of course. Jack had even testified on her behalf, confirming that yes, Lynette had challenged the binding between Tallis and Dubois. It was an open and shut case.
The Roux-ga-roux’s sacred text held a long explanation about the inviolable nature of bindings in their culture, ending with the words “for what is bound cannot be broken.” Jack and every other blooded Roug held those words as sanctified, as absolute. Bindings were a preordained contract in the Roux-ga-roux nation, and challenging it on any real level was a valid cause for self-defense or defense of mate. When Lynette uttered the words “Your binding is broken…It’s dead,” she’d given Tallis cause to retaliate. Her actions were excused as a crime of passion in emotional self-defense, and the matter was summarily dropped. However, Lynette’s death left one very inconvenient loose end.
The council gave the motherless child, Lela, to Dubois and Tallis to raise, and because she would be raised in a full-blooded household, and as remuneration for her mother’s murder, she was elevated from the surname Reynard to the surname Beauloup.
The humiliation of not only raising Dubois’s bastard but also having to honor her status as a full-blooded Roug was difficult for Tallis. No one actually heard the bells at the time, but the death knell rang for Dubois and Tallis’s bond that day. And after that, there were no more photos with shining eyes and snowflakes in her hair.
His mother, who sat on the council with the other pack elders, was the only member of his family who knew about Darcy. Jack hung up the gas nozzle, got back in his car, and pulled away from the service station, vividly remembering the night he told her about his binding.
As Jack drove furtherand further away from Darcy, from the high school auditorium where he’d kissed her hours before, from the small-minded town where he’d never really fit in, he felt his heart stretching painfully.
Tallis had returned to Portes l’Enfer with the girls and Julien as soon as the school year was over, leaving Dubois, Jack, and Lela in Carlisle. His mother missed the pack too much to stay. She missed her role as a council elder. She didn’t want to live among the humans, Southern Bloodlands or not. And the bottom line was that she couldn’t bear to look at Lela, who was a constant reminder of Dubois’s infidelity.
When Jack arrived in Portes de l’Enfer in the middle of the night, several days earlier than expected, Tallis was delighted to see him, but perceived the differences in him almost as soon as she embraced him.
“Jacques! Vous êtes trois jours plus tôt que prévu!” You’re three days early!
He leaned back, holding her eyes in the darkness, and his mother gasped, grabbing his arm and hurrying him into the small living room where she had killed Lynette Reynard. She stood with her hands on the hips of her jeans, staring at his eyes, her face concerned.
“Your eyes are burning, Jacques.”
He nodded briefly, suddenly worried to tell his mother the extraordinary truth of what had happened between him and Darcy.
She took a close look at his face and clothes. They showed no evidence of a hunt, but she still asked uneasily, “Did you just come from hunting?”
He shook his head slowly. No.
“There were no She-Rougs in Carlisle.”
He shook his head slowly, no again, then swallowed, looking up at his mother submissively from downcast eyes.
Tallis glanced nervously at the girls’ bedroom, pressing her finger over her lips as she pulled their door tightly closed. She took Jack’s arm, leading him into her bedroom, behind the kitchen on the other side of the cabin. He sat down on the foot of her bed, and she stood before him, hands on her hips.
He could hear the panic in her voice. “Jacques…”
“She’s human.” He blurted it out.
Tallis gasped, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes widened. She shook her head quickly, staring at his face.
“That’s not…That’s not possible.”
Tears pricked his teenage eyes, and he dropped her gaze. She put her hand under his chin and lifted it. He watched as her face transformed from surprised to horrified as she saw the truth in his eyes.
Finally, she sat down beside him, staring straight ahead. She took his closest hand in hers and squeezed it reassuringly.
“You must tell me everything.”
He told her about the sun shifting course to shine on Darcy that first day in the library. He told her of his endless yearning to be near her. Tiny details about how she looked and how she moved now spilled out with such precise, intimate description, in such a devoted tone that it was as if Darcy Turner stood before them in the flesh, and he merely pointed out the obvious. He didn’t hold back the details of their kiss, and when he described the stillness of his heart between their first kiss and their second, his mother had suddenly tightened the grip on his hand andbowed her head. Jack suspected she was working to hold back tears.
