Page 14 of Collin, Episodes 13-15 (The Residency Boys #5)

Collin motioned them farther inside around the curtain wall. “Would you like to meet more of your family?”

“Do you mean my Uncle Richard and my Uncle émeric?”

“Yes. You’ll have to be careful with them. They’re like me.” He pointed to his cast and bandages.

Dana nodded, eyes big and serious. “Auntie Hypatia told me how to be careful.”

Mr. Reevesworth and Mr. Moreau were in the living room. Alice went first, still holding Dana’s hand. The child hadn’t let go of Alice even once.

“This is Uncle Richard and Uncle émeric,” Alice said.

Mr. Reevesworth offered a smile. He was lying on the couch with émeric sitting at his feet. It was something they did frequently these days.

“You’re big.” Dana looked them both over.

Mr. Moreau chuckled. “Do you want some tea? Cookies?”

Dana looked up at Alice. Alice nodded.

Dana took a step forward, letting go of Alice and stepping right in front of Mr. Moreau as if she’d reached a difficult but certain decision. She lifted one hand and hovered it over the side of his face where the bruises were just starting to fade.

émeric raised his hand slowly, cupping her hand and bringing her hand to his face. Their eyes held for a long time, then Dana drew her hand back. “It’s getting better?”

“Yes,” émeric affirmed.

Dana nodded. Then she pointed at herself. “I have bruises too, inside. Sometimes they look like they should be like yours, but I can’t see them. Alice says they’ll get better. Like yours.”

émeric reached out and cupped the side of her head carefully. “Invisible bruises hurt just as much as visible ones. But they can get better. We just have to take our medicine, be brave, and practice living. They have a special word for practicing living.”

“What’s that?”

“Therapy. Some therapy you go to a special gym, where you move your body, and sometimes you sit down with a special person, and they help you move your mind and your heart so you live better.”

Dana blinked. “I think Mama needed therapy. She didn’t know how to live.”

“Why do you say that?” Mr. Reevesworth asked quietly.

Dana looked at him for a long moment. “She always talked about dead people. And about things that weren’t going to happen or were going to happen.

But she never wanted to be where I was. Alice says there are three times: before, now, and after now, but we can only breathe in the now.

” Dana glanced back at Alice who nodded in encouragement.

Dana took in a fortifying breath and turned her eyes back to Mr. Reevesworth.

“Mama was never now. I always was, but she wasn’t until… until that day.”

“I wish your mother could have been with you,” Mr. Reevesworth said. “It’s important to be with those who are close to us, but the only time we can do that is in the now time.”

Dana nodded. She looked back to Alice. “Can we have cookies now?”

Collin and Alice dared to step into the guest bedroom, just off the living room, leaving the door open while Dana ate cookies and drank tea with émeric and Richard. For a long moment, all they did was hug, foreheads pressed together.

“I was so scared for you,” Collin said.

“I was scared for you. Ash didn’t tell me till the next day. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been okay.”

“You would have done exactly what you did. You would have taken care of Dana.”

Alice blinked back tears. “Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing. Hypatia says that’s normal.”

“I’d trust Hypatia.”

Alice smiled through tears. “Yeah, she’s good that way. Gah, I feel so old, Collin. It feels like it was a year ago when I was last here and we were eating breakfast over there and I told you I was going to go to the airport on my own.”

Collin pressed his lips to her forehead, squeezing her shoulder with his good hand. “Same.”

“Mom told me she’s selling the house. I told her good.”

“So did I.”

“And I’m done with Grandma.”

“Same.”

Alice nodded. She wiped away a tear. “I’m going to drop out of my university. Finals are almost here, and I can’t even imagine trying to study right now. It just seems so unimportant, compared to everything else.”

“Someday it might feel important again.”

“I know.” Alice closed her eyes and breathed.

“Right now, I just want to get Dana settled. Damian’s offered me therapy, and I probably need it, if only to help Dana, but there’s a shit ton of other things in my head with our family.

Matthew and Hypatia have been awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much in my life. ”

“You probably know them better than I do now.”

“They probably know me better than Mom, at this point, but that’s okay.

Ash probably knows me better, too. He’s adorable, but, Collin, he was so, so good.

When I needed him. He didn’t even know half of what I was asking him for when we were getting out of California, but he found a way.

And the whole time, he thought you might die, and he stayed with me.

Even when I was driving and crying through the mountains to Reno with Dana in the back seat, thinking I’d killed someone, he just listened and then told me jokes.

I think he just found a joke website and read them to me until he found ones that made me laugh. ”

“He’s a good kid.”

“The best.” Alice bit her lip and smiled. “Fuck…I’m totally going to mess up and call your men Uncle Richard and Uncle émeric. We’ve been telling Dana about them with those names for so long it’s stuck in my head.”

The courts assigned Linda and Richard joint custody of Dana the next week.

Linda had a designer and decorator in and redid a room in her apartment for Dana and another for Alice.

They were small by necessity. Linda hadn’t planned to make her place a three bedroom, but neither Alice or Dana felt the pinch.

It wasn’t like they were trapped there. The city was their playground, and Ellisandre’s place was just one floor below, where Ash was also now living, and The Residency and Hypatia and Matthew’s place were open to them.

With a security guard watching over them, they had the run of cafés, museums, parks, the aquarium, libraries, and shops.

Sometimes Ash joined them after work hours, popping up in the feed of photos Alice dropped in the group chat with ice cream on his face or Dana giving him bunny ears from behind.

“Is it strange, mon amour, ” émeric murmured to Richard, looking at the latest photo on his phone, “that I feel like they finally get to be children now that none of them are?”

“No, they are fae children, ma raison d’être. They have the choice and the wisdom to use it.”

Collin had to look away then and stare hard out of the window to stop the tears that came all too easily these days.

His therapist had made a house call and had agreed to come again the next week, or even before, if Collin wanted. He said it was good that Collin could feel, that he was expressing himself, that there was nothing wrong with the tears that came and went.

émeric had taken to sketching for hours. One day, he left his pad on the coffee table, and Collin saw it. It was a drawing of him crying.

Collin had stared at it until he felt like a benediction had sunk into his skin and fused with something deep inside. What his sir saw when he cried wasn’t ugly; it was beautiful

Tears meant he was alive to cry. Tears meant he was safe enough to feel. Tears meant he had the luxury to feel.

When he thought back to his life before his Master and his Sir, the memories felt dry or bottled up, either too full or too distant. But now, for pain or pleasure, he was awash in being alive. He felt everything.

“I think I have a decade of tears to cry out before I catch up,” Alice confided in him one evening over text.

Probably a decade and a half for both of us, he thought.

Bernstein was arrested. There were more names.

Collin listened to Mr. Reevesworth and Damian discuss it but let the details pass by him, content to sit on the floor, leaning against Mr. Reevesworth’s legs, reading books or slowly picking his Chinese vocabulary exercises back up.

Whenever his Master’s hand came down and rested on his head, the world settled and became small and tranquil.

Moving into the third week, émeric dared to try making easy recipes in the kitchen.

Collin joined him though he could mostly only hand over ingredients and turn burners on and off on the stove.

It was important to be themselves, in whatever way they could.

Sometimes Collin sat between émeric’s feet in the living room while émeric graded papers forwarded to him by the TAs that had taken over the in-person duties for his class.

“It’s Thanksgiving in two days,” émeric said one night as the four of them shared the living room together.

“We were supposed to be out at the estate for Thanksgiving.” Richard sighed.

“What about starting Christmas there early instead?” émeric suggested. “Collin should be out of his cast by then, and you and I should be cleared for more normal exercise.”

Richard turned to Damian. “Damian, how would that work for you?”

“I can sort things depending on how early. If I can bring work with me, then anything after the fifteenth I can probably handle with a few emails.”

“What about me?” Collin smiled up at Richard.

“Oh, émeric and I will clear your schedule, little one.”

Collin giggled. It was the most dominant thing Richard had said in weeks, and something loosened in his chest.

“We can have Hypatia, Matthew, and Linda’s crew for a post-Christmas or pre-Christmas holiday,” émeric suggested.

“Hypatia and Matthew have Hanukah with his side. They can come out after they fly back. I think Hypatia told Alice they’re in town starting the twenty-sixth,” Collin offered.

“Alice and Hypatia are close, aren’t they?” Richard’s lips curved up.

Collin nodded. “Scary close. I’m pretty sure they’re going to start planning world domination.”

“Just hospital administration,” émeric said blandly.