Wolf's Bane (Monstrous Hearts #2)

Chapter Nine

Deciding it was better to pick her battles—and there was surely a nasty one looming just ahead once Colton arrived—Alice smiled and nodded. She could make breakfast, later.

Silence fell while Denise stuffed various berries and leafy, green things into the blender. Alice's hands clasped and unclasped her coffee cup as words snarled in her mind, words that no longer seemed safer to hide. They were old ones, polished smooth from years of tumbling together in the back of her mind, now tumbling onto her tongue from watching this woman who had always tried her best at being a stepmother, even during the times when she and Alice had been mutually baffled by each other. "I'm sorry, Denise. For how Magdalene insulted you, I mean. I should have asked her to apologize right away."

Her stepmother looked startled at the abrupt words. Then she laughed, a genuine one that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "That? Sweetheart, I forgot about it five seconds after she said... What was it? Something about being a boring housewife. There are plenty of people like her out there in the world, bitter and unhappy and attacking everyone else to feel a little bit better about what they aren't."

Then she fell serious. "You know how your father is. I argued with him about keeping distant while you were living with her, but he insisted that it was what he'd said, so it was what he'd have to do. He's so stubborn, sometimes. I kept telling him you shouldn't be left alone with someone like that."

And then there it was, hanging between them like its own ghost. The question mark of the past five years. Did she want to reveal how wretched things had become? Would it even do anything, letting Denise see a glimpse?

Suddenly, Alice found it painful to look at her stepmother's face, bare of makeup and strangely vulnerable in the early morning light, and dropped her gaze to her coffee. Her distorted reflection blinked back at her as she said, "It was a relief when she died. That's all I really want to say at this point."

"Oh, Alice..." The words wavered, and in them she heard worry hardening into grief.

Before she could look over, Denise was there, sweeping her up into a fierce hug. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. Whatever she said or did to you, it's not true and you didn't deserve it. You've always been wonderful."

For a moment, Alice remained stiff, so unused to familial affection that she didn't know how to react. But then the softness of her stepmother's robe and the warmth of her arms sank into her senses, conveying something she hadn't felt since before she could even properly talk.

A mother's touch.

Slowly, Alice hugged her back. Her muscles shuddered as if they didn't remember how to be held so gently, but her heart ached just like when she flashed onto a rare, sweet memory of her mother brushing her hair, or humming to her, or showing her how to whistle back at the sparrows hopping around in the rosemary bushes.

Before her trembling could turn into true tears, the sound of the upstairs shower hissed through the ceiling. Her father had gotten up. Alice pulled away in a spike of nerves, embarrassed at the smallness of her voice as she said, "I don't want to tell him, yet. I don't want him to know..."

To know what? That she was much more screwed up than he had expected? But even as she groped for words, Denise caught her hands and gave them a brief squeeze. "It's all right. Whenever you want to talk about it, you can. Until then, I won't."

Her hands squeezed back as relief swelled through her. "Thanks."

A minute later, Alice set placemats on the kitchen table while the blender whirred. When Denise paused to add a little more milk, a knock came at the door, short and hard against the wood.