Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Ru sat at her Nana’s kitchen table sipping warm tea as the other woman worked on rolling out cookie dough. At her feet, Piper played with Nana’s cat, Patches, and Ru absently wondered how Piper even remembered what it was like to have another feline to play with since she hadn’t had any others around since she was a tiny kitten herself. Her neighbor had found the litter in the garage and it hadn’t taken much convincing for Ru to choose one. Piper stood out to her immediately. That was four years ago, back when Ru was a new teacher, and Piper had been her faithful companion ever since.

“Cats are our best friends sometimes, aren’t they?” Nana asked, glancing up from her task long enough to catch Ru’s eyes. “My Patches has been a constant companion to me for… years.”

“They are,” Ru agreed. She remembered Thanatos’s warning from the night before. The first “person” Ru thought of when he threatened someone she loved was lying at her feet batting her paw at a fellow furry friend.

“Are you all ready to go on your trip?” Nana asked, placing the last perfectly formed cookie onto the sheet and turning to check the temperature on the oven before sliding them inside. The warmth radiated across the table, hitting Ru in the face, and she wished it could warm her spirit as well.

“I guess so,” Ru replied, shrugging. She’d come over to visit one more time before they headed out to Holy Island the next day. Cutter hadn’t even offered to come with her this time, which was fine. It was a fairly warm day and the walk had done her good. Just like a dog, Piper had stayed at her heels the whole time.

“You know, I always thought I’d like traveling the world, but when your grandfather told me about the airports, the long flights, all the international hassles, I was thankful I got to stay behind and wait to look at the pictures he took when he got back.” She chuckled and went about cleaning up her work area.

Ru smiled, wondering if she should get up and help, but Nana seemed to have a system. She’d take the dishes to the sink and rinse them out, though, once she was sure her grandmother was done with them. She wondered what traveling was like back when her grandfather was doing so much of it, before 9/11 and all of the current threats to safety and security. “Rider managed to get me a passport pretty quickly.”

Nana’s laughter filled the kitchen. “That boy is something else. He’s sure a character, ain’t he?”

She couldn’t help but smile in agreement. “He is. I like him. A lot.”

Nodding her head, Nana said, “He was ornery as a youngster, as you can imagine. We didn’t know if he’d ever shape up and get himself together to be of any value. But, eventually, he came around. Now, he’s a right good little Keeper, I ‘spect.”

The ebb and flow of her grandmother’s accent was intriguing to Ru. Sometimes she sounded like she’d always lived in Wyoming. Other times, she may as well have been in the deep south. She didn’t have trouble believing Rider was likely a bit of a mess when he was a kid. He was still a mess now. A thought entered her head, and she longed to ask her grandmother about Leaf, but she held back. Cutter had said he’d tell her, and she needed to give him time to do that, even if it might take longer now that she’d inadvertently offended him. She was still puzzled over Ivy’s revelation and didn’t know what to make of it. How could he possibly have feelings for her? Perhaps more importantly, if he did, how had she not noticed?

She didn’t realize her grandma was telling a story until she’d missed the whole beginning. She caught enough to realize she was talking about her mother. “So, I told her, ‘Sera, you’re just as capable as all of those boys at catching Reapers. Just because they’re bigger and stronger than you don’t mean nothin’. You’re quick, and sharp as a tack. You’ll come through where others fail.’” A shadow crossed over her grandmother’s face. “Course, I had no way of knowing what I was really saying. She certainly did do something no one else had done before her.”

Clearing her throat, she took advantage of the topic at hand and slowly asked her grandmother a burning question. “Did you know? I mean, did you have any idea about Larkin—about my dad—before… before it was too late?” It had not come out as eloquently as she had planned it in her mind, but it had spewed forth nonetheless.

Nana held her gaze for a moment in silence, and Ru thought perhaps she’d managed to offend yet another person who cared about her. “Not enough,” Nana finally stated. “That is, I knew she was interested in a boy. Course she was. She was sixteen. All of the girls were interested in some feller or another. I had no idea what she was up to. I had no inkling she was sneaking to the edge of town, meeting a Reaper there, disappearing into the night with him for hours at a time. She had good friends, ones that would cover for her.”

Ru inhaled deeply through her nose and held it, waiting to see if Nana would continue. She turned to check on the cookies without getting out of her chair. “Can I wash those dishes for you?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, dear,” Nana replied, but Ru was already up. She collected the bowls and utensils and crossed the few feet to the sink. There was no dishwasher, so she plugged one side of the sink and turned on the hot water, squirting some Joy into the basin before she slid the pile of dishes in.

With her back to her grandmother, she began to wipe the dishes, hoping the story would continue to unfold. It did. “Ribbon was her name, that one friend of Sera’s who especially didn’t seem to mind making up stories on her behalf. There were others, but I trusted Ribbon. I thought if she told me Sera was with her, she was.” Ru glanced back over her shoulder. Nana had her hand propped up on a fist, her elbow on the table. She looked more solemn than Ru’d ever seen her, and she wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have asked.

“Then one summer night, your grandfather caught her comin’ in the winda. Now, believe me, it’s much harder to keep track of your youngin’s when they can leave their bodies, but she was sneaking out in the flesh. He confronted her, and she confessed everything. She’d been with Larkin for months. They were going to run away together. We forbid it of course. And that’s when she said she was pregnant.”

Ru dropped the soapy sponge she’d been using into the sink and slowly turned around, the last spoon still in her hand. “What happened after that?”

Nana looked up at her. “We didn’t handle it well. Brighton wanted to lock her in her room for the rest of her life. She managed to get out, of course, and then… we never saw her again.”

Swallowing hard, Ru turned back to the sink, finishing the last of the dishes and putting it in the drying rack. She let the water go, a bit envious of how easily it escaped down the sink into oblivion, and then dried her hands on a nearby dishtowel. Cautiously, she crossed back over to the table and sat down. “Did she ever call? Or write?”

A small smile pulled at Nana’s lips, but it was forced. “She called a few days after you were born, said she’d had a little girl. Didn’t hear from her again for almost a year. Then, she called in a rage one night to tell us what Raphael had done, that she’d never forgive any of us.”

Realizing she’d been chewing the inside of her cheek, Ru abruptly stopped at the mention of her mother’s rage. “And you didn’t hear from her again?”

Nana only shook her head.

“Did… did she say what Raphael had done—exactly?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not exactly. She said that he took Larkin away, banished him for all time, and that he told her that he would suffer immensely for eternity if she didn’t repent. I could tell by her words she didn’t know what that meant—what she was supposed to do. She was screaming, she was so upset. And angry. She mentioned he had left her with a map of some sort, but I don’t know what she was talking about. She said she knew they were coming for her now, and I assumed she meant the Reapers, that they would be searching for her, to repay her for what had happened to Larkin. There was something along the lines of not knowing what to do with Ru—everything was ruined for you now.”

Confusion swept over her as she thought about her adoptive mother’s often repeated phrase. “What did she say? About me?”

“She said, ‘What about my little girl? She’s ruined. Everything is ruined now.’ I took that to mean she was thinking of returning you here so you could be a Keeper as intended, but at that point she thought it was too dangerous to come back. She continued to run, just the two of you now, without Larkin, running not only from us, but from the Reapers, too. And then, I guess she somehow managed to figure out what Raphael had meant and went to do her penance, leaving you with that awful woman in Tarrytown.”

“So… that’s why Liddy thought my name was Ruin. But… what about Rune? Why did my mom name me that to begin with?”

“I told you. God put a message in your back.”

“No, we were able to decipher the message, like I told you earlier, and it was placed there by someone else, though we still don’t know who.” She wasn’t about to suggest to her grandmother that her own daughter had mutilated a baby. She’d gone over everything they’d discovered the night before earlier.

“Rune, your name was Rune from the beginning. That much I know. That she told me when she called. Rune Seraphina Raphaels Ronobes. That’s your name.”

“So, you think there’s another message beneath the top layer?”

“Yes. One placed there by God Himself.”