Page 78 of Pretty Savage: Defy

“I stole the key and opened the door myself.”

I stop with the silver bowl halfway to my hair. “What happened?”

“Carr found me. He was furious.”

She smiles at the memory, which only confuses me further.

She turns enough for me to see her profile, though her eyes remain directed away from the bath. “I saw parts of Carr down here that no one else was allowed to see. I understood what had been done to him. I also understood what he might become if no one was willing to enter the darkness with him.”

The water moves around me as I lower the bowl. “You thought you could save him.”

“No.”

She crosses to the brazier. I flinch when she strikes a match. She drops it onto a waiting pile of coal and kindling. Flames light immediately, flickering like the tongues of snakes. “Loving someone doesn’t make you their cure. Even I knew that.”

I lift the silver bowl and pour the scented water over my hair. It runs down my face and shoulders.

“So what happened with you two?”

Her sigh lifts her shoulders. “We made mistakes. We chose The Order over ourselves. Over being together.” She watches the fire grow. “I don’t regret all of it. We’ve accomplished incredible things, but we’ve hurt people too.”

She pauses.

“Carrson most of all.” Rebecca crosses her arms over her chest. “If Carr hadn’t spent so many years drinking. If I hadn’t let my anger keep me at a distance unless business forced us into the same room, maybe I would have seen what was happening to Carrson sooner. Maybe I could have stopped some of it.”

I’ve gone motionless at the sound of his name. “I heard you sent Samantha after him, even when they were young.”

“I did.” Rebecca doesn’t try to soften the admission. “I saw something in Carrson. Gentleness. Kindness. Empathy.” Her voice lightens, warmed by the memory. “When he was eight, I caught him sneaking out to the boathouse. I followed him, and do you know what I found?”

The water goes smooth around me. I don’t move enough to disturb it, suddenly desperate for whatever she can give me. Pieces of Carrson from before I knew him. More ways to know the person he was before The Order taught him to retreat into himself.

“What?”

“He was feeding a nest of baby mice. Their mother had disappeared. He went down there four or five times a day with his pockets stuffed with food he’d pilfered from the kitchen. He was the only reason they were still alive.”

My heart aches at the image. A boy without a mother caring for creatures abandoned by theirs.

“What happened to them?”

I can already tell from the set of Rebecca’s shoulders that the story doesn’t have a happy ending.

“A feral cat from the barn found them.” Her head bows. “Carrson walked in while it was killing them. He tried to stop it, but he was too late.”

The fire shifts behind her, filling the brazier with a deep orange glow.

“That was the last time I saw him cry.”

My own tear slips free and disappears into the bathwater without a sound. More follow as I picture Carrson at eight years old, arriving with his pockets full of food and finding every small life he’d fought to protect already lost.

“That was when I decided Samantha should bond with him,” Rebecca continues. “I thought they might change The Order together. My daughter has a good head on her shoulders. I believed she could protect that part of Carrson. Help him become a man who nurtured rather than destroyed.”

She lets out a humorless laugh.

“I encouraged her. I pushed the idea because I believed I knew what was best for both of them. Samantha took it further. She pursued him and eventually drugged him. When I learned what she’d done, I ordered her to stop, but by then the damage was done. Carrson no longer trusted her.”

“Or you.”

“Or me,” Rebecca agrees.