Chapter 105: The parent nobody wants to see

Chapter 105 — The Parent Nobody Wants to See

The announcement came at the end of morning assembly, delivered by a teacher who sounded as though she had read the sentence aloud several times to make sure it wouldn’t cause a riot.

"Moonstone Academy will host a Family Visiting Weekend next month. Parents and guardians are welcome to attend. Forms will be distributed in your first class."

The dining hall erupted before she had finished. Chairs scraped, forks clattered, and a hundred conversations started at once.

"My family will bring the whole kitchen," Isla said happily, tearing a roll in half. "My aunt makes enough pies to feed half the dormitory, and she’ll insist you all take some home. Tessa, you’re getting a pie. Don’t argue."

"I wasn’t going to." Tessa stirred her tea with the air of someone facing an execution. "My father will ask about my grades before he says hello. I’ve timed it. Last year it was four seconds."

"Maybe he’ll improve."

"He will not improve."

Roxanne said nothing. She had become extremely interested in her porridge, which had gone cold twenty minutes ago and was now the only thing in the hall she could safely look at.

"Roxanne." Isla nudged her shoulder. "Is Amelia coming?"

"I haven’t decided whether to invite her."

Isla blinked. "Your mother doesn’t need an invitation."

"She does if I don’t want her here."

The words came out flatter than Roxanne meant them to, and the table went quiet in the particular way that tables do when something true has been said. Isla opened her mouth, then closed it. Tessa stopped stirring. Roxanne pushed her bowl away and wished she could take the sentence back, though she wasn’t sure she would have changed it.

The forms were waiting on the desks when she reached her first class.

Name, year, emergency contacts, and below that a neat box labelled Expected Visitors, with three blank lines beneath it. Roxanne filled in her emergency contact without thinking. The visitor section she left empty, her pen hovering over the paper while the room buzzed around her with questions about who was bringing what.

The teacher stopped beside her desk. "Miss Silver, that section needs completing. The forms are due tomorrow afternoon."

"I know."

"Do you need more time?"

"No," Roxanne said. "I’ll hand it in."

The teacher moved on. Roxanne looked at the three empty lines and tried to picture her mother’s name on the first one.

She could see it clearly enough. What she couldn’t stop seeing was the last time Amelia had come to the academy, standing stiffly in the entrance hall in a coat that was too good for the weather, saying all the careful things. They had talked for twenty minutes and parted with more hurt between them than when they began. Roxanne had spent the whole evening afterwards replaying each sentence, trying to find the moment it had gone wrong.

She folded the form in half and slid it into her bag, unfinished.

Lucien found her outside the classroom after the bell. He had a way of appearing in corridors that made it seem as though he had been standing there all along, and today he fell into step beside her without a word until his eyes dropped to the corner of paper poking out of her bag.

"Is that the family form?"

"Yes."

"Do you need help with it?"

"No." She hesitated. "It’s about my family."

He nodded and didn’t ask another question. They walked past the library and out into the yard, where the cold air smelled of leaves. It was Roxanne who spoke first.

"I don’t know whether inviting her would make anything better."

"Your mother?"

"Yes." She stopped near the low wall and stared at the training dummies without seeing them. "What if she comes and we have nothing to say to each other?"

"Then you have nothing to say to each other."

"That is terrible advice."

"It’s an honest answer."

She almost smiled. "You’re supposed to make me feel better."

"I’d rather not make promises on your mother’s behalf." Lucien leaned against the wall beside her, hands clasped loosely in front of him. "Inviting someone doesn’t mean you forgive them. And choosing not to invite them doesn’t make you cruel. Those are separate questions."

"They don’t feel separate."

"I know. They rarely do."

He didn’t offer to speak to Amelia. He didn’t suggest arranging anything quietly in the background, which was what Roxanne had half expected and half dreaded. He simply stood there until she had breathed in and out a few times, and then he said, "Whatever you decide, it’s yours to decide," and left her with the cold air and her own thoughts, which was exactly what she needed.

That afternoon she passed the common room and heard Liam before she saw him.

"They’ll ask about my grades, then my training, then whether I’m finally behaving myself." He was sprawled across an armchair with one leg over the arm, addressing the ceiling. "And then my mother will look at me with that face. You know the face. Like I’m a very expensive disappointment."

"You are a very expensive disappointment," Lucien said from the window.

"Thank you, brother."

Roshan looked up from a book as Roxanne passed the doorway, and after a moment he rose and followed her into the corridor. He kept his voice low.

"Have you decided what to do about your own family?"

"Not yet."

"All right." He nodded as though that were a perfectly good answer, which she found unexpectedly comforting. "If you want to talk about it, I’m around. If you don’t, I’ll tell you about the time Liam tried to teach a goat to fetch."

"That sounds made up."

"I wish it were."

Kai was waiting at the end of the corridor, as though he had heard every word. Maybe he had. He didn’t pretend otherwise.

"If you decide to meet your mother," he said, "I’ll come with you. If you want. You don’t have to say yes."

Roxanne looked at him. It was a generous offer, and she knew it was meant without conditions. But she tried to imagine Kai Moonstone standing beside her while she and Amelia struggled through a conversation neither of them knew how to have, and her stomach turned over.

"Thank you," she said. "I’ll think about it."

"That’s enough."

He went on his way, and she stood there a moment longer, grateful and nervous in equal measure.

Her phone buzzed while she was walking back to the dormitory.

The message was from her mother. Roxanne stopped in the middle of the path, ignoring the students who veered around her, and read it through.

*Roxanne, I’ve heard the academy is holding a Visiting Weekend. I wanted to ask whether you would like me to come. I’ll understand if you would rather I didn’t. Also, Edward is planning a family gathering at home soon, and you would be welcome to visit during the holiday if that is easier. Please let me know. Amelia.*

It was polite and careful and painfully formal, the way people write to someone they are afraid of upsetting. She read it three times. Then a fourth.

She remembered the school send-off her mother had missed, and the empty seat. She remembered years of distance that nobody had named. She remembered the apology, which had been sincere and had still managed to fix nothing. And she remembered, because it was only fair to remember it, that Amelia had reached out after the incident with Arabella, clumsily, but she had tried.

Roxanne typed a reply. *I don’t know yet.* She deleted it. She typed, *Yes, come.* Deleted that too. She sat down on the nearest bench, set the phone beside her, and put her face in her hands.

Isla found her there an hour later, though not on the bench. Roxanne had made it back to her room by then and was sitting on her bed with the folded form on her knee, staring at it.

Isla closed the door softly and sat down at the other end of the mattress. She didn’t say Amelia is your mother, you should be kind. She didn’t say time heals things. She only asked, "What do you actually want?"

Roxanne let out a long breath. "That’s the problem."

"Is it?"

"Part of me wants her to come. Part of me wants her to show up and prove I matter to her." Her voice cracked slightly, and she cleared her throat. "And the other part is terrified she’ll walk in, act as though everything is normal, and leave me feeling like an idiot for hoping."

"That makes sense."

"Does it?"

"It’s the most sensible thing you’ve said all week." Isla pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m just going to sit here."

"That isn’t helpful."

"I know. I’m very good at it."

Roxanne laughed, and it came out wetter than she intended. Isla handed her a pen without comment.

She unfolded the form, flattened it against her knee, and wrote one name on the first line of the visitor section.

Amelia Silver.

It looked strange in her handwriting, small and plain. She didn’t hand the form in. She set it on the nightstand beside her phone, where she could see both, because writing a name on a page was one thing and knowing how to stand across from that person was another.

Several minutes later, the phone lit up.

Roxanne picked it up. A reply from Amelia, a single line.

*There’s something about your father I should have told you a long time ago.*