Page 89 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
But I wasn’t his problem. I never was, and he always had time for me anyway.
“I suppose, in a matter of blood and whatnot, that is true,” he says in that careful way of his that I have spent my lifetrying and failing to emulate. “And I did know it.”
“So,” I say, and I don’t sound as careful as he does. Or as careful as I should.“Why?”
“What I also knew was that you were here. A perfect little baby girl with all that red hair.” He shakes his head. “I knew that Desmond was not going to admit any involvement, and your mother was ashamed. Of her own actions. Of her ownmistakes.” He smiles again, and it’s even sadder this time. “She’s never been good at making those and dealing with the consequences.”
He understands her better than I’ve given him credit for. Certainly better than I ever have.
I want to tell him that, but it’s like I can’t speak. Like this time, my own history has me in its grip, so hard around mythroat that all I can do is stare at him through the snow.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen your mother really love anyone,” he tells me in that same quiet way. “Perhaps it’s not in her.”And then he shrugs, like that’s... just life. Some people don’tlove. “It seemed to me, or it did when I saw an innocent baby, fresh and new and with old souls in her eyes, that someone shouldlove her. And if it wasn’t going to be her father or her mother, it might as well be me, because I loved you from the momentI saw you, Georgie.”
He makes it sound so simple. A choice he made. Like that’s all love is, in the end. Achoice.
Like he’s always known aboutold soulsand never thought them foolish, or that I thought too highly of myself to imagine I might have an old soul myself.
He made that choice to love me, day after day. Maybe he never stood up to my mother in any real way, but much like with Lillian,I knew I would always find a soft spot to land with this man. He was who I ran to when I was little.
And maybe I did let my mother get to me, finally. Maybe I had too much of her in my head as this year unfolded and it becameclear that we were going to take on the Joywood. When it became obvious what that could mean for me personally.
Still, for a whole lot of years, I got to daydream as I pleased. I got to retreat into my fairy tales and enjoy them as Iliked. Because of people like Lillian Wilde, Emerson and Rebekah and Ellowyn—all of my best friends.
But it started here. With him. All because Stanford Pendellthoughtsomeoneshould love the baby his wife gave birth to after an affair.
A few tears fall onto my cold cheeks, and he reaches out and brushes them away. Just like he always did, that achingly familiarbrush of his gloves against my skin. “Nothing has changed for me, Georgie. It’s as I told you—facts aren’t the whole story.You of all people should know that you get to write your own as you go.”
It makes me think about past lives. New lives.
And the thread that moves through all of them, no matter the ending.
A thread that isn’t red and terribly painful.
Love.
Maybe none of us can choosewhowe love, but we can certainly changehowwe love. This man is living, breathing proof.
I move forward and envelop the only father I’ve ever known—and the only one I imagine I’ll ever acknowledge—in a hug. “Thankyou for loving me... when you didn’t have to.”
He squeezes me back. Hard. “It’s no great sacrifice to love you, Georgie. I can’t think of a single reason why anyone wouldever do anything but.”
I think I knew that, deep down under all the confusion that family tree kicked up, but I needed to hear it. I needed to dothis. Maybe I still need to deal with my mother and Desmond at some point, but this is the person who matters the most tome.
Because this is the person who showed me what love is, every single day of my life.
How can I pretend I don’t love him in return? As wholly and completely as I always have?
“Dad,” I say, because he is my dad. Maybe he’s never been mybiological father, but he is, and always will be, mydad. “I’d like you to come help me in the witchlore archives. I know I can’t officially deputize you yet, so it might mean a lot of sittingaround being a wall I can bounce ideas off of until we get past Yule, but I think... I think that’s what we need.”
The people we love and who love us, no matter the circumstances.
No matter the difficulties.
Hasn’t that been the lesson we’ve learned over and over again this year? Love is magic.
Loveis the antidote.
To everything.
