Page 73 of The Poison Season

Fiona was quiet for a moment, and Leelo was afraid she wouldn’t tell her the rest, the part she needed to hear most of all. “And you fell in love?” she prompted.

Leelo felt her mother’s legs trembling beneath her, and she sat up to find her weeping. “It’s all right,” Leelo said, sitting on the bed beside her and wrapping her mother’s thin frame in her arms. “It’s all right, Mama.”

After a few minutes, her tears subsided. “I’m sorry. I know this must be a lot for you to take in.”

“Will you tell me about him?” Leelo asked.

“About Nigel? Are you sure?”

She nodded. “He was Tate’s father. Of course I want to know about him.”

“Well, he was tall. He had dark hair and eyes, like your brother.”

Leelo smiled to herself. So much for those traits being inherited from their grandfather.

“It’s hard to remember much, to be honest. I just have those stolen moments together over one brief winter. In the end, I suppose it didn’t amount to very much time. But it felt momentous.”

“I understand,” Leelo whispered.

“He was kind,” Mama said finally. “That’s what I remember most. He wasn’t at all like I’d been told about outsiders.”

Hot tears seeped from the corners of Leelo’s eyes. “Is Tate with him?”

“I hope so, my darling. I hope so.”

Leelo believed that her mother hadn’t meant to hurt anyone by her affair, but she wasn’t sure she could understand betraying Kellan. By all accounts, he had been a good husband and father. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Did you really love my father?”

“I did. Very much.”

Leelo released her breath. “But differently than Nigel?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Were you ashamed?”

Fiona was quiet for a long time. “Was I ashamed of my infidelity? Yes, of course. I made a vow to your father, and I broke that vow. Shame is a very powerful emotion. It eats at you like poison, killing you slowly from the inside out. But if you’re asking me if I regret it, then the answer is no. Nigel gave me Tate, and he showed me a different kind of love, the kind we choose rather than the kind we are given. I did love your father, but I don’t know how much he ever really loved me. He stood by me, even when he knew what I’d done. But sometimes I wonder ifnotstanding by me would have meant he truly cared.”

Leelo tried to imagine marrying someone she loved as a friend. She knew that marriage provided security and companionship, but after being with Jaren, to marry for convenience would feel like a betrayal of her own heart. She realized now that she had taken it for granted that her parents had always been in love, the way most children probably did. But she didn’t actually know anything about their relationship, other than the little bit she could remember.

“You never told me how you and Father knew each other.”

“To understand that I have to first tell you about Aunt Ketty and Hugo. His father was the island’s only blacksmith, so their family always had steady business. Their house was larger than almost any on the island, in part to accommodate so many children. Hugo had six brothers, and they were all big, strapping boys, their mother’s pride and joy. She was a diminutive woman, standing no taller than her sons’ chests, and everyone marveled at how she’d managed to produce such massive offspring.

“As the youngest of seven, Hugo was the baby of the family, and his mother was always packing his lunch before Watcher duty, sometimes bringing it to him during his shift if he left it at home. Ketty and I would giggle about this. There was certainly no one at home packingourlunches. And Hugo, believing that everyone adored him as much as his mother, seemed to think Ketty’s giggling meant she liked him, because he started singling her out at every gathering, bringing her gifts, and generally making his intentions clear.

“At first, Ketty seemed indifferent to Hugo’s clumsy advances. But as our parents began hinting that an affiliation with Hugo’s family would be very good for everyone involved, she had begun to take him more seriously. Hugo was a perfectly decent suitor, but I had always seen my sister as a wild thing, carefree and independent, not someone who would willingly be tied down.”

Leelo couldn’t help thinking of Sage then, of what her mother had done by betrothing her to Hollis.

“As Ketty and Hugo started to spend more time together, I was often dragged along against my will as a chaperone. That was how I met Hugo’s quiet, fair-haired best friend, Kellan. He somehow seemed younger than the rest of us, and shy, but then, so was I. Ketty liked the idea of the four of us marrying together, in one grand ceremony. And I loved Ketty. The idea of marrying best friends was comforting. We would always be close. And it wasn’t so scary to think of marriage and children when my sister would be going through it with me.

“We were all married two years later, in that grand ceremony Ketty dreamed of. It wasn’t until a few years after that that Hugo started drinking too much and his cruelty emerged. By then, we were both pregnant, and even your father couldn’t calm Uncle Hugo when he’d had too much drink.”

Leelo felt a stab of pity for her aunt. Things might have been different if she’d married someone else. Different for Kettyandfor Mama.

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