“I used to hold you like that,” Rehv said. “And you used to sleep like that. So deep.”
“Did I?” Bella smiled and rubbed Nalla’s back.
The onesie tonight was white and black with an AC/DC LIVE tour logo on it and Rehv had to smile. It was so not a surprise that his sister had ditched the whole cutesy-cutesy ducky-and-bunny shit for a newborn wardrobe that was kick-ass. And God bless her. If he ever had any young-
Rehv frowned and put the brakes on that thought.
“What is it?” his sister asked.
“Nothing.” Yeah, only the first time in his life he’d ever thought about having offspring.
Maybe it was his mother’s death.
Maybe it was Ehlena, another part of him pointed out.
“You want something to eat?” he said. “Before you and Z head back?”
Bella glanced up at the stairs, where the sound of a shower running drifted downward. “I would.”
Rehv put a hand on her shoulder and together they walked down a hall hung with framed landscapes, and through a dining room that had walls the color of merlot. The kitchen beyond, in contrast to the rest of the house, was plain to the point of utilitarian, but there was a nice table to sit at, and he parked his sister and her young in one of the chairs that had a high back and arms.
“What do you fancy?” he said, going to the fridge.
“You have any cereal?”
He went over to the cabinet where the crackers and the canned goods were kept, hoping that…Frosted Flakes, yes. A big box of Frosted Flakes was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Keebler Club crackers and some Pepperidge Farm croutons.
As he took the cereal out, he turned the box to face him and looked at Tony the Tiger.
Running a fingertip over the lines of the cartoon, he said softly, “You still like Frosted Flakes?”
“Oh, completely. They’re my fave.”
“Good. That makes me happy.”
Bella laughed a little. “Why?”
“Don’t you…remember?” He stopped himself. “Why would you, though.”
“Remember what?”
“It was a long time ago. I watched you eat some and…it was just nice, is all. The way you liked them. I liked the way you liked them.”
He got a bowl and a spoon and the skim milk and brought the lot over to her, making a little place setting in front of his sister.
While she shifted the young around so her right hand was free to work the spoon, he opened the box and the thin plastic bag and started pouring.
“Tell me when,” he said.
The sound of the flakes hitting the bowl, the little clapping noise, was all about normal, daily life and it was much too loud. Like those footsteps down the stairs. It was as if the silence of his mother’s beating heart had turned the volume up on the rest of the world until he felt like he needed earplugs.
“When,” Bella said.
He traded the cereal box for the Hood milk carton and tipped a stream of white into the flakes. “Once more with feeling.”
“When.”
Rehv sat down as he flipped the spout shut and knew better than to ask her if she wanted him to hold Nalla. As awkward as it was to eat, she wasn’t going to let that young go for a while, and that was okay. More than okay. To see her comfort herself with the next generation was a comfort to him.
“Mmm,” Bella murmured on the first bite.
In the quiet between them, Rehv allowed himself to go back to another kitchen, another time, way back when his sister was much younger and he was considerably less dirty. He recalled the particular bowl of Tony’s best that she didn’t remember, the one that she finished and wanted more of, but had had to fight against everything that bastard father of hers had taught her about females needing to be thin and never have seconds. Rehv had cheered silently as she’d crossed the kitchen in the old house and brought the cereal box back to her chair-as she’d poured herself another serving, he’d cried his blood tears and had to excuse himself to the bathroom.
He had murdered her father for two reasons: his mother and Bella.
One of his rewards had been Bella’s tentative freedom to eat more when she was hungry. The other had been knowing there would be no more bruises on his mother’s face.
He wondered what Bella would think if she’d known what he’d done. Would she hate him? Maybe. He wasn’t sure how much she recalled of all the abuse, particularly that which had been done to their mahmen.
“Are you okay?” she asked abruptly.
He rubbed his mohawk. “Yeah.”
“You can be hard to read.” She offered him a small smile, as if she wanted to be sure there was no sting in the words. “I never know if you’re okay.”