“Why me?”
“Because you’ll have Hazel, and this,” Milly said. She handed him a bundle of rags.
Randy accepted the package and opened it. Inside was the family Glock 19, the gun that Staff Captain Sarah Hendricks had brought from the Oceanic Eco. The gun was slick with coconut oil, and Randy raised it and aimed at the wall. It didn’t feel right in his hand. He lowered the weapon and walked out onto the balcony. A gust of wind bit at his face, and he threw the gun into the surging ocean below. He heard it splash.
Randy headed back inside, and Milly said, “What did you do?”
“Something Grandma Sarah should have done fifty years ago. I rid the world of a useless and dangerous tool. If I go to Argartha, it won’t be carrying a gun.”
“Since Hazel is smarter than you, please see she gets that there,” his mother said. She lifted her skeletal arm and pointed toward the corner.
Peter’s axe leaned against the wall, its metal head oiled and clean, the composite fiberglass handle still strong. “I’ll see that she gets it. I promise. Hazel will love having it. You agree with Hazel that I should go to Argartha?” Randy said.
His mother harrumphed, then coughed hard for several seconds, then blew her nose in a rag. “Hazel is like me, you’re like your father,” Milly said.
“Is he my father?” Randy said. He was immediately sorry he said it.
Even in her frail state, Milly reared in her bed, and her hand shot out and grabbed his arm. “Who said he wasn’t? I’m not dead yet and make no mistake I’ll put a knife in the person who said that.”
His mother’s outbursts had diminished with her illness, but at times like these he thought long and hard about the price she’d paid to go to the old country. If she wasn’t damaged when she left, she sure was when she got back. “Nobody said it. After everything you’ve told me, I had to ask.”
She sighed, then coughed. “Fair enough.”
“You followed the turtle. How did you do it? Following drawings on trees? Nothing but a belief to guide you? No proof,” Randy said.
“Another leap of faith. Like the fire guard test. Was it worth it? I’d say so, though when I reached my goal, I understood how misguided my purpose had been. The turtle is just a symbol, something simple to focus on. The tenets are where the real meaning is found.”
“So you believe in those things?”
“I do. I’ve seen the skeletons of the gone world, the world some of the sacred texts speak of. My mother used to tell me the story of The Day, and how the decisions she made saved lives and created Respite. She was so very proud that they’d stood up to death and won.” Milly coughed into a cloth hard for several minutes, and when she took the rag away it was covered in blood.
“Let me get Ren,” Randy said.
“No,” Milly said. She grabbed his arm, her bony claw amazingly strong. “There is nothing she can do. My time is almost up and I need to get a few things off my chest. First off, I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault Peter died. It’s true I didn’t move fast enough to drop my gun, but Tye challenged Axe, yelled at him in a defiant way. Then Axe shot Peter. My hands aren’t clean—it was my fault he was there—but I wasn’t responsible for his death,” Milly said. “I felt I had to take responsibility. I told Tris, but I don’t think she believed me. She blames me for everything, and I guess she’s right.
“And another thing. My mother didn’t order Jade Robbi to kill Hazel’s grandfather. It’s myth. Folklore. What isn’t folklore is how Hazel’s grandfather used the affair with Sarah to force her into a relationship that made her betray Grandpa Gary and Respite.”
“That’s bullshit,” Randy said. It was his mother’s death bed, and they had no time for falsehoods or delusionary truths. He only had one more shot with Hazel, and he needed to know everything. “You’re telling me grandma didn’t love Ben Hasten? That she didn’t want to screw him? That the whole “they have secrets on me” wasn’t an excuse?”
“It was all those things. That makes your grandmother an adulterer, and there’s plenty of blame to go around if we want to cast those stones. What it doesn’t make her is a horrible person and destroyer of families. She didn’t mean Ben harm. Make Hazel accept it as truth, even if you don’t. You’ll never be together if you don’t,” Milly said.
“I should believe you when you say you didn’t love Peter? And that you loved my father?” Randy said.
“I loved them both, in different ways. Someday when you’re as old as me you might understand,” she said. “I guess you’re right though, Peter and I used each other like Ben and Sarah.” A gust of wind blew open the shutters, and the old wood slapped against the cracked concrete wall. Milly said, “Do you know when I’ve been most at peace in my life?”
Randy shook his head no.
“When I got home from Argartha, and the night I saw the Perpetual Flame come to life. My mother and I were in that Chestnut tree, gazing out over the desolated land, and that flicker of orange light saved me. Reassured me everything would be all right.”
She went into another coughing fit, and this time she struggled to open her eyes.
