She faltered, not knowing what else to say. She also learned, with scorching swiftness, that words were impossible when the air felt like glass. Paipanne seemed to commiserate, his eyes soft but his chest pumping hard. Jayd watched, oddly transfixed, as he stepped behind the chaise’s headboard. Maimanne tracked her head toward his movement.
Tracked it.
But not seeing it.
She gulped. It felt like a pier piling shoved down her throat. She looked harder, wondering if she had just been observing a trick of the light across Maimanne’s gaze. No such fortune. Her mother was truly this messed up—and her most horrifying instincts, supported by Paipanne’s tension, kept conveying it had been self-inflicted.
“Yes, Xaria,” her father murmured. “She is right here, my raismette. Try to look at her, darling. Just for a moment.”
Maimanne gingerly turned her head. Jayd slid her hand down and wrapped it with her mother’s. She tried but failed to ignore the fresher marks across Maimanne’s closer wrist.
Holy Creator on high.
No wonder she had never been summoned that night. And that Maimanne had failed to reach out at all.
She had been fighting for her life.
More clearly, someone else had fought to preserve it first.
When she looked up once more, she was certain who that person was.
Thank you, Paipanne. Thank you so much.
His gaze glistened, indicating he received and treasured her tacit message. She dropped her own teary gaze back down. But the haze of her emotion was only a part of the new filter through which she now beheld her mother.
In her heart, the woman had always held a place of special awe. Xaria Cimarron carried herself like Elizabeth Windsor, groomed herself like Grace Kelly, and owned every room into which she walked like a combination of Beyonce, Aretha, and Gaga at once. Jayd constantly struggled to believe the woman’s DNA ran in her veins—yes, even in this moment, when so much had changed. When the woman returned Jayd’s hold as if it were her last purchase before tumbling over a cliff. When she forced her gaze open with a small wince, clearly straining to see past the healing ointments that fogged her eyes.
“My beautiful girl,” she rasped, stretching out her other hand to feel along the side of Jayd’s face. “It is you. What on earth did you do to your hair?”
The demand was as beautiful as a ballad from any of the divas she had just evoked. “Oh, it is still here.” With a nervous laugh, she tugged at her damp ends. “Just…less of it.”
Maimanne fingered the spikes too. They were probably the color of peacock quills by now. Just as swiftly, the woman jerked her head in an unintelligible way. Jayd braced herself for the ensuing critique.
“I…like it.”
Jayd fought whiplash. “You—ermmm—do?”
“Yes,” Maimanne said. “But not half as much as I love you.”
And now whiplash was the least of her concerns. She had no idea what this reactive feeling was, bringing on the strange wrench of her stomach and the dizzying heat to her cheeks. It was certainly not unpleasant.
“You—um—uh, all right,” she finally managed in a strained sough.
“I should have told you so before now,” Maimanne blurted. “So many times, Jayd Dawne…I should have told you!”
“Ssshhh now.” Paipanne stroked the side of her neck with a massive thumb. “You are telling her now, Xaria. And she hears you.”
“I do.” Jayd pressed a kiss into a puddle of her own tears along the back of her mother’s hand. “Every syllable. Maimanne, please do not—”
“But if I had said them sooner, you never would have doubted their truth. You never would have run away to look for that wretch who gave you nothing. Who gave me nothing, save the gift of you.” She switched her touch from Jayd’s face to her own, only now her fingers were self-punishing claws. “I never should have looked at him. Not even once. I never should have bought his despicable illusion. I never could have believed his beauty was as thin as his morality!”
“Maimanne! Stop! Please!” Jayd joined her father in fighting Maimanne’s shocking strength, but the woman kept plucking at her eye socket as if needing to yank the organ all the way out. “He is not worth your grief by half! By even less!”
She almost plowed on to relay how Louis LaBarre had matured past the point of anything close to it, but what solace would that bring? Maimanne’s mind had seemingly stop-framed on her seducer from twenty-five years ago, not the skeletal addict she and Brickham had met back in Paris. Worse, even those distant memories had brought Arcadia’s queen mother to today’s present mess—where she loathed the concept of LaBarre so much, she had tried gouging out her eyes because of it.
The eyes that now flowed with milky mixtures of ointment and tears as Maimanne reached again for her.
The eyes that squeezed tight before her mother tucked her close, an embrace she had stopped dreaming about a long time ago.
The eyes that quickly turned her shoulder into a pool of wet, as Maimanne wept quietly for long minutes on end. Each and every one was a treasure to Jayd. All the messy magnificence of them. Every inch of the wet. Every aching drop of the emotions. Every sloppy sob she gave in return to her mother.
This force of nature…who now felt like a mother.
Force of nature, indeed.
At once, she could not wait for the chance to have her parents meet Brickham. As soon as humanly possible. Yes, there was still that small, nagging warning that it would likely be just once, but did that mean it could not happen at all? That she was forbidden from looking forward to the magic of it? Not so long ago, she had never thought a moment like this would ever be possible with Maimanne and Paipanne.
Miracles did happen. All the time.
This one got even better too. It was enough to make Jayd laugh aloud, from the moment Paipanne shifted around and gathered Maimanne and her in his massive embrace.
And now, there was complete warmth.
Absolute acceptance.
Consummate perfection.
Yes. A miracle.
“Your maimanne started from our union because I wandered first, Jayd. Your conception is what started pulling us back together.”
And now, those astounding words.
“My beautiful little girl. You brought so much back to my life before you were even born.”
And then those.
“This still does not mean we are perfect,” Paipanne injected. “It simply means that you showed us that we have to try. For each other, and for all of you kids, we promise you that we will always try.”
Even more joy.
Then a thousand more sublime sensations, overflowing every lane and curb of her heart, until they drenched her soul as well. Until she was a buoy of elation on those waves of happiness, to the point that she was not aware of her fresh sobs until she had to suck in a glob of snot.
Thankfully, her parents were ready with indulgent laughter and thick tissues. After Jayd evacuated her nose as politely as possible, she sat back and stared at her parents. And then stared some more. It was the only option she could grasp. The only way to properly wrap her mind around this moment. She could only keep taking it in, over and over. Force-feeding its incredible reality into her psyche.
After the better part of a long minute, Paipanne spoke up again. “Do you believe me now, bijeur? Do you feel all of this, from both of us?” Once more, he folded one of her hands between both of his. “You were our ultimate blessing, Jayd Dawne. Never, ever our mistake.”