Page 4 of Blood from the Marrow
“I don’t believe you.” Marisol shoved the crumpled paper in her bag.
“I know.” Her mother’s agony bled from her in suffocating waves. “And I’m so sorry for that.”
Marisol had a thousand questions. If she’d really gone into hiding, why hadn’t she taken her with her? Did her grandmother know the truth? What the hell was the truth? She had too many questions and not enough language.
“Don’t contact me again,” Marisol demanded and turned her back on her.
The sounds of cries followed her long after she’d driven away from the park. Away from the woman she once would have given anything to know.
Chapter Three
Drivingfrom the park to the downtown penthouse was a blur. If it weren’t for the nauseating pit in her stomach and ache in her chest, Marisol wouldn’t be entirely sure she’d just interacted with her. Unfamiliar emotions were warring inside of her and she had the unusual desire to bolt.
Maybe running away when things get hard is hereditary, she thought with tension in her jaw and a roiling in her gut.
While she waited for the security gate to the building’s garage to open, she tried to step outside of herself. Using a technique she’d picked up somewhere, she imagined a friend was telling her that her long-lost mother had shown up out of nowhere.
Marisol’s first concern would be for her friend. Had the woman asked you for anything? Money? Help? A favor?
The answer would be no… Or maybe not yet. It wasn’t impossible that Clara had been keeping tabs on her and now that she was with Elena—a woman so rich it seemed her funds were endless—she’d surfaced from the rock she’d been hiding under.
It was more than possible. It was highly likely. People usually only acted in self-interest, and they so often did horrendous things for money.
Annoyingly, Marisol’s rational side raised a counterpoint. For that to be true, Clara would have to have been watching her all these years in the expectation that she’d come into money somewhere. As a nurse, Marisol had a decent salary. If she was going to ask for something, why not when Marisol secured her first job? It seemed so risky to hold out for her to end up with someone like Elena. Had she been waiting for Marisol to snag a rich doctor?
Marisol considered she was lying about acting like an unseen force watching over her. How could it be true?
If Clara cared about her at all, she would have shown up any of the other times she’d needed her. Tears stung the backs of Marisol’s eyes, but she refused to let them form while she drove up the garage in circles. She would never cry for that woman ever again. Not ever.
There was no way she’d given a single shit about her. How could she not come to her own mother’s funeral? How could she know that Marisol had been left completely alone in the world before she’d figured out how to fend for herself and do nothing about it?
If Clara had appeared then, she would have forgiven her immediately. If she’d shown up on any of the terrifying nights after losing the only caregiver Marisol had ever known—nights when she had felt so desperately alone and small and scared—she would have clung to her and forgotten how many years her mother had been absent.
Old grief pressed down on her chest hard enough to crack her sternum. She wanted not to want?—
No. It was way too late. Clara was too late.
Marisol waited for a Mercedes to slowly back in to its assigned parking spot. Clara had blown any chance she had to make things right, even if she had been telling the truth.
Could she be telling the truth? Marisol couldn’t stop herself from analyzing the situation clinically.
If she didn’t just know about the Aglion… if she was one too… and if her alleged sperm donor was also one of her kind… it stood to reason that there were more. That there were others who could teach her about her identity and how to control her powers instead of hoping they’d show up when she needed them.
She thought of Zuri again. Of potentially keeping her alive forever. To do that, she’d have to go from finger-painting to da Vinci. The knowledge gap was insurmountable.
The discomfort in her chest morphed into an icy fist squeezing her heart. Maybe she could be selfish. She could call the number on the stupid piece of paper. Meet Clara and find out where to find others like herself and then walk away from her like she never existed. She didn’t need her. She just needed someone to teach her.
That was some poetic justice, wasn’t it? She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. It was exactly what Clara deserved. She deserved Marisol’s anger and pain and to be treated unfairly. Like her feelings didn’t matter.
Dropping the tension in her shoulders, Marisol couldn’t pretend she’d do something like that. Not even when her emotions were raw and it was all she could do to hold herself together. There was no way she was going to compromise her dignity to get back at a person who shouldn’t even matter. So what if she’d given birth to her? She’d never been her mother.
At the top floor, Marisol reached for the second key fob that granted access to Elena’s private section of the garage. At the end of a long line of ridiculously overpriced and mostly hideous cars, she parked her sedan next to Zuri’s hatchback.
Instead of jumping out, she let the AC blast cold air in her face while she leaned against the headrest. Attempting to centerherself in her body, she thought about the immediate present. Of the things she knew were real.
She recalled the month-long debate over her and Zuri’s cars. How unreasonably crazy it had made Elena that neither of them would accept new ones. Marisol hadn’t wanted to change because she couldn’t justify wasting money when hers was perfectly good. Zuri had most definitely refused in order to annoy Elena, or because she didn’t want to give in to her. Or both.
It had been the most absurd debate she’d ever been a part of, and she could still see Elena pacing the bedroom trying to convince them of the superiority of British engineering. When Marisol countered that her Corolla had exceptional gas mileage, Elena had nearly fainted.
