Free Web NovelChapter 44: Chapter 44 What Cannot Be Forced
_Author’s POV_
The convoy back to the city left the valley as the sun was going down.
The children were asleep in the first truck before they reached the main road, flattened by a day of running and fresh aie. Miriam sat between them and did not speak for most of the drive.
Vicky sat in the third truck with Rita and said very little, which suited Rita, who had spent the day moving in increments between the warmth of the family gathering and the watchfulness she had maintained since Rowena had looked at her across the front steps that morning.
She had not resolved anything yet.
But she had started to.
In the second truck, Pierre sat beside Rowena with his leg extended slightly, the compression wrap still in place, the injury genuinely minor despite what the afternoon had suggested, and they talked in the easy way.
“The border survey,” Pierre said. “Kasper mentioned you were planning it.”
“In a few weeks,” Rowena said. “Once the account investigation has more structure. I need to understand the territory my father was working in when the accident happened.”
“It’s not safe,” Pierre said. “The northern border regions have had three territorial incidents in the last year. The infrastructure is inconsistent and some of the pack alliances up there are... complicated.”
“I know,” Rowena said.
“Knowing and accounting for it are different things.”
“Pierre.” Her voice was even. “My father and brothers died on that road. I’m going to find out what happened and I’m not going to do it by reading reports in my office.” She turned to look at him. “I’m not careless. I’ll prepare properly. But I’m going.”
Pierre looked at the road ahead.
He had known, when he raised it, that this was how the conversation would go. He had raised it anyway because he needed to have said it, even knowing the outcome.
“I know you are,” he said. “I’m not trying to stop you.” He paused. “I’d like to come.”
The truck was quiet for a moment.
“That’s not necessary,” Rowena said.
“It’s not about necessity,” he said. “It’s about the fact that you should have people around you who can handle complicated territorial situations, and I have experience with exactly that.” He kept his voice easy, practical, giving her the argument in the register she was most likely to accept, utility rather than sentiment. “Kasper will come regardless. Greg will attach himself regardless. One more capable person is just sensible.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Which was not yes but was not no, and Pierre had been paying attention long enough to know the difference between the two in her mouth.
He nodded and looked back at the road.
“Pierre,” she said, after a moment.
“Yes.” frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
“The boy. From the stream.” She was looking at her hands. “I’ve thought about him occasionally over the years. Whether he was alright.”
The truck moved through the evening.
“I think he was more than alright,” Pierre said carefully. “I think whoever he turned out to be, that afternoon stayed with him.”
She looked at him.
His expression gave her nothing definitive, just the steadiness she had come to associate with him, and underneath it something that was either more than steadiness or exactly steadiness with depth to it, and she was not ready tonight to decide which.
“Good,” she said simply.
She looked back at the road.
Pierre looked at the passing dark outside the window and thought about the specific mercy of arriving at things in their own time.
His phone rang at half past nine.
He looked at the screen. His mother.
He answered.
“You were bitten by a snake,” Aria asked, without preamble.
“I’m fine.”
“You were bitten by a snake on a trip to the Ashthorne estate.” A pause that carried considerable weight. “I heard it from three different people this afternoon.”
“News travels,” Pierre said.
“Pierre.” Her voice had the tone it took when she was managing something she was genuinely worried about and was expressing it as something else. “How serious was it?”
“Minor,” he said. “Rowena treated it immediately. I’m completely fine.”
A silence.
“She treated it,” Aria said.
“Yes.”
“She was the one who....”
“She knew what she was doing,” Pierre said. “She was trained properly. She was calm and thorough and fast and I am sitting here entirely without symptoms because of it.” He kept his voice level. “She did well, Mother.”
Another silence.
“How,” Aria said slowly, “did you come to be bitten by a snake?”
Pierre looked at the window.
He considered, briefly, the available options. He could say they were moving through dense undergrowth and the encounter was unavoidable. He could say he had simply been in the wrong place. He could tell any version of the story that put him in the path of the snake through straightforward bad luck.
He decided that whatever he was building with his mother, the slow, careful move toward her accepting what he felt, needed to be built on honesty.
“I moved her out of the way,” he said.
Quiet on the line.
“The snake was in her path,” he said. “I moved her and it bit me instead.”
“You deliberately....”
“I moved her out of the path of a snake,” he said. “That’s not deliberate injury. That’s a basic decision.”
“Pierre!” Aria’s voice changed. The management had dropped and what was underneath it was something rawer, mixed with the complicated feelings she had been carrying about Rowena for years again. “You could have been seriously.....”
“I wasn’t.”
“Because she treated it. Because she was there.”
Her voice tightened. “Do you hear what you’re telling me? You put yourself in harm’s way for that woman and then you needed her to fix it.....”
“I needed her to do exactly what she did,” Pierre said. “Quickly and well and without panic. Which she did.” He paused. “I know you’re worried. I know this confirms things you’ve been feeling about her. But I need you to understand something clearly, Mother.”
Aria was quiet.
“I love her,” he said. “I’ve told you that. I mean it the way I mean things, fully, and with a clear understanding of what it involves.” He kept his voice steady. “I know she values her freedom. I know she’s been through something that would make anyone cautious about choosing again. I know the timing is complicated and the circumstances are what they are. I am not going to push or pressure or force anything.” He looked at the road ahead. “But I am going to be present. I am going to be someone she can trust. And if she decides eventually that she wants something more than friendship from me, I will be there.”
A long silence.
“And if she doesn’t?” Aria asked very quiet.
“Then I’ll be her friend,” Pierre said. “A good one. For as long as she’ll have it.” He paused. “Because that’s what loving someone who values freedom actually looks like. You don’t cage it. You just, stay near it and hope.”
Aria did not speak for a long time.
When she finally did, her voice was different from any register he could remember her using with him before, not the composed Luna, not the managing mother.
“I don’t understand her,” Aria said. “I want you to know that. I don’t understand why you, what it is that makes her.....”
“I know,” he said. “You don’t have to understand it. You just have to trust me.”
“She treated the bite well?” Aria asked finally.
“Perfectly,” Pierre said.
A long exhale. “Go home and rest your leg,” she said and hung up.
Kasper, in the front seat, had been very carefully not listening, which meant he had heard most of it.
“She’ll come around,” Kasper said.
“Eventually,” Pierre agreed.
“How long is eventually?”
“As long as it takes,” he said.
