An eternity passed. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Then he stiffened and a groan parted his lips. Then, his eyelids cracked open. The shimmer of colors was gone. Now his eyes were a hazel-brown. Like hers. She could only gape in wonder, the world around her gone. Aden was the only anchor she had at the moment, the only thing keeping her from floating away.
“Hello, Mary Ann,” he said. No, Eve said. It was Aden’s voice, and yet, there was a gentleness to it that had never been present before.
She shivered, the urge to hug him stronger than ever before. “Hello.”
“Should we leave?” Victoria asked.
“You can’t,” Aden-Eve said. “Without Riley, Mary Ann blocks Aden’s abilities. I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the body.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence.
“This is silly,” Mary Ann said. “There’s no way we’ll figure this out. I don’t know anything about my mother, and you don’t know anything about her, either. You don’t know anything about me.” She was surprised by the bitterness in her tone. Not for Eve, but for the things she had missed.
You do know something about her, she reminded herself. The journal. One passage was already burned into her memory.
My friends think I’m stupid. Having a baby at my age when there are ways to “fix” the situation. As if I could part with this miracle. I can feel her already. I love her already. I would die for her.
Sadly, she probably had.
“Do you remember anything about your life?” Mary Ann asked. “Before Aden, I mean?”
A shake of that dark head. “No. I’ve tried. We’ve all tried. I think there are memories just waiting to be freed. I mean, I can feel something swirling in my consciousness, but I just can’t seem to get to it.” A sigh. “We all have thoughts and feelings, fears and desires we can’t explain any other way.”
“What are yours?” she dared to ask.
A fond smile. “I’ve always been the mother hen, as Aden calls me. The protector. The scolder.” That dark gaze lowered, and the smile faded away. “I’ve always loved children and feared being alone. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t help Aden try to find a way to free us as doggedly as I should have. But that’s my cross to bear.”
The nuances of Eve’s personality fascinated her, and she found herself comparing her to the little she knew about her mother. So far, they meshed. “You met my father during a therapy session. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Did you feel anything for him? Like an unexplainable need to hug him, the way Aden says you feel for me?” A need Mary Ann still battled herself.
“I felt a fondness for him, a sense of gratitude. At the time, I assumed those feeling were because of his treatment of Aden. He sat down with the boy, listened and didn’t judge.”
“Now?”
A shrug. “I’m not sure. Like Aden, I was just a child when I first met your father. I wouldn’t have known how to interpret something deeper, like what a husband and wife should feel for each other.”
Mary Ann threw her arms in the air. “How are we supposed to figure this out then?”
“I have control of the body now. I could travel back, maybe put myself inside a younger version of me. This is amazing!” Aden-Eve’s head tilted to the side; his lips lifted in another smile. “All the voices. Wow. I had forgotten how difficult it is to tune everyone out. Aden’s reminding me that I have to have a specific piece of my life in mind to travel back and as I recall nothing about who I was, if I even was someone else, there’s nowhere for me to go but his past.”
Mary Ann chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. “There might just be a way.” Hand still shaking, more so now, she reached into her backpack and withdrew the journal. She clutched it to her chest, not wanting to release it, but after a moment’s hesitation, she forced herself to relinquish it. “This belonged to my mother. She wrote about her life. Perhaps, if you truly are her, something in there will spark a memory of your own.”
Did she want it to? Did she not want it to?
“Wonderful idea.” Aden-Eve’s hands were shaking just as violently as those strong fingers cracked the spine, settling on a page. “Today I am tired,” he read. “There is nothing on TV, but that’s okay. I have company. My precious angel, nestled close to my heart. Her kicks are strong today.” He rubbed his stomach, as if checking for signs of life. “She’s craving apple pie. Maybe I’ll bake her one. I can almost smell the cinnamon, almost taste the melted ice cream.”
Aden flipped the page, hand shaking, and continued reading. “I was too tired to bake so Morris brought a pie home. The store only had cherry so it’ll have to do. I just hope my angel doesn’t start kicking up another fuss. She’s…he’s—Oh, my God.” Lips smacked together. “It’s almost like I can taste it.” Deep breath. “Smell it, too. I can even see it. I can really see it! The cherries are so red.” There was an excited gasp, and then suddenly Aden was gone, the only indication he’d been there the dent in the mattress.
Victoria and Riley popped to their feet, both gazing around the room with concern. Mary Ann just clutched her stomach, tears of dread and that silly hope she’d tried so hard to deny pouring down her face, and waited for Aden-Eve to return, telling herself they’d merely gone back into a past version of Aden.
She didn’t have to wait long. Within three minutes, Aden was back on the bed as if he’d never left. His eyes were still hazel. Like Mary Ann, he was crying. Or rather, Eve was.
“I remember. I remember.” Eve launched herself at Mary Ann, arms wrapping around her. “Oh, darling baby. My darling baby. How I’ve waited for this day. Dreamed of it, all the days I carried you.”
At first, Mary Ann tried to remain immobile. This proved nothing, not to her. No one could remember an entire lifetime that quickly. Right?
“I went back. I was there, in the little house I shared with your dad. I was eight months pregnant and lying on the couch, rubbing my belly and singing you a lullaby, that bowl of cherry pie resting on top of me. I remember now. I remember. The walls had the most horrid floral wallpaper, and the furniture was threadbare, but clean, and I loved every stitch. The orange couch, the yellow loveseat. I’d worked as a waitress to help pay for everything. And since my first memory with Aden isn’t as your next-door neighbor, I’m guessing his parents moved him.” Her grip tightened. “All this time…if only they had stayed, I could have watched my angel grow up. My beautiful angel.”
Mary Ann remembered that floral wallpaper, the carrot couch, as she’d called it, and the sunshine lounge. She’d spent the first ten years of her life inside that house, climbing on that furniture, while her dad put himself through school, then worked like an animal to pay off his debts.
Carolyn could have changed the décor, but she hadn’t. She’d left everything the same. A tribute to the sister she’d both envied and mourned?
There was no way Eve could know those details. Unless…Mary Ann stopped breathing. It was true, then. Eve really was her mother. Eve really was her mother. For a moment, she was too stunned to react, her emotions numb. Then joy burst through her, joy in its purest form, undiluted, heady, leaving no part of her untouched.
Eve petted her hair. “Tell me your aunt Carolyn treated you well. Tell me your life has been happy.”
Her arms moved of their own accord, wrapping around Eve’s shoulders. They hugged as tightly as they’d longed to do since the beginning. Just then Mary Ann felt like she was finally home, enveloped in warmth and light and love.
“I was happy,” she worked past her throat. “She treated me like her own. And I think—I think she missed you. She changed nothing in the house, even picked up the bright color scheme when we moved, probably so that we’d both feel closer to you.”
“So she forgave me. Thank you for telling me that.” Eve pulled back and cupped her trembling chin, staring into her watery eyes. “Oh, my darling girl. I adored you from the moment I first learned of you, imagining the two of us tending the garden together, shopping, you styling my hair, painting my nails and doing my makeup as I used to do to my mother. Your father named you after me and the hospital you were born at, I’m guessing.”
She nodded. With a whimper, she threw herself back into Eve’s arms. The tears were flowing freely now, burning her skin. She had what most people could only dream of: a second chance. A second chance to love, to apologize. “I’m so sorry I killed you. It was my fault. I drained you, stopped you from using your ability.”
“Oh, sweet baby, no. Don’t ever think that.” Eve ran her hands down Mary Ann’s back, soft, gentle. “You might have stopped my ability to go back for a redo, as I called it, but I was happy about that. I can’t tell you the number of times I screwed up my present by messing something up in the past. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t accidentally or even purposely go back, so the amazing future I saw for myself was secure. The nine months I carried you were the happiest of my life. What you gave me…I can never thank you enough. And my sweet darling, it was better for you that I wasn’t there. Knowing myself the way I do, I would have tried to go back and fix everything that went wrong in your life. I might have ruined you. Killed you. And I couldn’t have lived with that. Your father couldn’t have lived with that.
“He was always a good man. Don’t be too hard on him for keeping me a secret. I was a difficult part of his life. And a good one.” A grin. “We would lie outside for hours, gazing up at the stars, holding each other close.”
Mary Ann rested her cheek on her mother’s shoulder, the new center of her world. “Was Aden good to you?” She wanted to know everything, every little detail, about her mother’s second life.
“The best. He is a treasure, that one. Anyone else would have crumbled thanks to what we put him through, but he managed to flourish. Now, enough about me and the kid for the moment. I want to talk about you. I want to know everything.”
