Second Fate

17

When Valentine had offered to accompany us to the car, I'd rejected him vehemently. I wanted to be with Vine so we could discuss the evening's events and I wanted to hear his version. His reaction had differed from everyone else's so drastically that I had a thousand questions. They had burned on my tongue, while we were making our way back along the forest path at whose end the jeep was parked. Only with the greatest effort had I kept myself from questioning him in the depth of the forest.

My foot was heavy on the accelerator, while I yanked on the steering wheel to make a sporty turn between tree stumps and blackberry bushes.

"Why would Meredith do this?", it burst out of me, when the car lights were no longer hitting shrubs but had found asphalt. The broad street was and stayed empty since it was the middle of the night, and we were out in the boons. Left and right of us, trees were shooting up.

Vine shook his head to indicate that he didn't know either.

"Has she done this before? Sent someone after you?"

"No." His calloused hands were kneading each other.

"So, something must've changed."

His head lifted very slowly, until he met my gaze over the middle console.

It's me. There's me now.

"At first, I thought ... for a second, I was scared that she'd sent them after you."

"After me?"

"After Meredith met you, she was acting weird. She kept reaching out to me, which in itself isn't unusual, but lately she's been sending some ... concerning messages. She's even dropped by a couple of times at the mansion to–"

"What?", I interrupted him with a little jolt, completely aghast. This was the first time I heard about her visiting again.

"I think she takes issue with me moving on", he said. "As long as Kenna hasn't been found, she can't let go of her daughter."

"But Kenna's de–"

"Yes, she is. But her mother has a different opinion", he explained. Tired as he was, he was still picking his words carefully. It made me think that he had a lot pent up in regard to the topic that he thought but didn't tell. "Still, I never once thought she would attack a human. And I'm the one doing something wrong, in her view."

"The guy wasn't aiming for me before I attacked him", I admitted reluctantly. My arm was still aching, so I felt like it was very good-hearted of me to say so.

"Thankfully." Vine's relief was audible as he spoke. "You have no reason to get involved in this."

"I ... kind of have, don't I?"

Our eyes met again, and I offered a little smile, even though I was still feeling shaken up. But I'd been scared for a couple minutes, while Vine had been terrorized by Meredith for the last weeks without him telling anyone. That he hadn't foreseen how things would escalate told me as much about him as her.

He closed his eyes for a second as he took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. But you do have to answer my questions."

"I'm sure you have many ... and I have quite a few myself", he said.

It was ice-cold in the car because neither of us wasted a thought on the heating. The cold of the steering wheel seeped into my scraped palms and spread from there through my whole body.

"In your place, I'd have more anger than questions for them."

"It's complicated. Especially since I know how much they've suffered after Kenna's death."