Page 46 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

She stared me down with those vivid blue eyes she’d once been famous for.

It would kill her to see the image she cut now, unkempt hair, clad in a soft velour track suit because certain fabrics could set her off and slippers I bought her for Christmas with bunny ears.

Once, she’d walked red carpets in vintage Dior and custom Marchesa.

Once, she wouldn’t have left the house for even a moment without doing full glam hair and makeup.

I always wondered if that was what she was bemoaning during these episodes, that the disease had robbed her of everything she’d worked so hard to collect: money, fame, and beauty.

Even though she was left with family who would, and had, done everything for her, that wasn’t enough for Miranda Hildebrand.

Suddenly, I felt like weeping myself.

But I could do that later, after I got Miranda into the house in a familiar environment and locked the house down.

My mother stared at me now, as if she were the child, with wet eyes, a trembling mouth, and a suspicion that I might not be who I said I was stamped in her expression.

“Mom,” I said in a low croon as I took a few steps closer and held out my hands palms up. “It’s me, Linnea. Do you remember?”

She shook her head tightly and hugged herself so hard, her hands disappeared around her back.

“I’m your daughter,” I told her patiently, still moving and smiling slightly as I touched my hair. “You always told me I got my good hair from you instead of Dad. You named me Linnea after your mother, do you remember? She was Swedish.”

Something flickered in her eyes, and she dropped to the ground as if her strings had been cut, curling up tighter. “No,” she said. “I don’t have any children.”

I crouched before her and gently ran two fingers along the back of her hand, cupping her knee. “You used to sing me a song when I was too little to remember, but we sang it together sometimes when we lived in London.”

This was the ace up my sleeve. Dr. Jamshidi, Miranda’s physician, had sent me studies that the part of the brain that most types of dementia attacked was entirely separate from the area that stored musical memories.

Sometimes I sang this song we’d shared together, and others I tried from the soundtracks of her favourite movies like Mamma Mia and Kinky Boots .

I started singing “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone in my passable alto. My entire focus remained on my mother as I sat on my bum across from her and gently took one of her hands in both of mine.

There was blood on the back of it, and I wasn’t sure if she was hurt somewhere I couldn’t see or if it was from Mrs. Ramirez.

I was only a few lines in when Miranda’s face lost some of its abject terror and softened into something closer to confused wonder. By the time I sang the first line of the chorus, she was humming brokenly along with me.

“‘ I’m feeling good ,’” a rich tenor joined with mine, startling me so badly I nearly jumped to my feet.

Only the scent of spice and warmth my subconscious instantly recognized as belonging to Sebastian kept me still. Instantly, the panic that had twisted my lungs into a knot loosened enough for me to take a shaky breath.

Adam had called in the cavalry.

Seb’s heavy hands found my shoulders as he crouched behind me, shielding me from the cameras at my back as we finished out the song together.

The crowd was quiet in the wake of the last notes.

So was Miranda.

Her lids had drooped considerably, and her hand was lax in mine. Exhaustion often followed these events swiftly.

I decided it was worth the risk to get her inside.

“Mom,” I murmured, still stroking her hand. “Why don’t we go into the house? You can show Clark your Soapie.”

She brightened a little at the idea of showing off her Soap Opera award, or because she finally noticed Seb hovering behind me.

“Clark,” she said, her voice dry and cracking in the wake of her shouting match. “You didn’t tell me you were coming. I would have put on something special.”

“You look marvellous just as you are,” Sebastian said solemnly, and there was no doubt in my mind that he meant it.

A sob lodged in my throat and made it difficult to breathe.

“We’re going to move slowly,” I whispered to Seb, because Miranda could go off again in a heartbeat if she caught sight of the crowd or the flashes started going wild again. “Let’s try to keep her focused on the house.”

Seb squeezed my shoulders in acknowledgment and gently grabbed Miranda’s other arm so we could both help lift her to her feet. As we were doing so, the low growl of an expensive engine preceded the screech of tires on asphalt and the slam of a car door followed by another punctured the quiet.

It prompted the crowd to start taking photos and videos again, a low murmur building into excited chatter.

I tried to move Miranda a little quicker toward the house.

A moment later, the crescendo reached a peak as a name was passed around the ranks of paparazzi.

Adam Meyers .

I could have closed my eyes in relief, but I focused on steadying Miranda as we hit the path that cut through the middle of the yard and started up it.

“That is enough .” Adam’s voice cut through the cacophony like the clang of a cymbal. It took two seconds for silence to descend, and the quality of it was almost reverent.

This was gold, and the paps fucking knew it.

“This is private property,” Adam said in that crisp British accent that cut the words into bullets and fired them cleanly into the crowd.

“You have sixty seconds to get off Mrs. Hildebrand’s lawn or you will not like the consequences.

In case you doubt me, this is my lawyer, Boone Decker.

He would be happy to speak with any of you about breach of privacy, private property, and taking advantage of someone who is ill without their consent. ”

We had hit the steps in front of the house, and Miranda swayed, almost asleep on her feet, as Sebastian half lifted her over the threshold.

“Can you take her into her bedroom for me?” I asked quietly because there was something I had to do before Adam cleared the way completely.

Seb nodded, his eyes dark with empathy as he pulled Miranda close and murmured sweetly to her in Italian she had no hope of understanding. It seemed to soothe her because she didn’t object when I stepped away to face the music.

The cameramen had mostly taken Adam’s orders to heart and moved off the lawn to huddle at the edge of the curb, but some of them were walking a little slower, lenses raised to catch the last moments of Miranda before I closed the door on the house.

The flashes were bright, even in the late afternoon sun, but I tried not to blink as I lifted my chin and walked to Adam, who stood beside his lawyer with his arms crossed and legs braced, like an admiral used to being obeyed.

“We have called the police,” he said mildly, glaring in particular at a man who was still on the lawn, one foot crushing the pansies I’d taken pains to plant along the cracked concrete path.

“If you’re still here when they arrive, I will do my best to see you are arrested.

You have crossed a line, Mr. Talbot, even for you. ”

“How’d ya know it was me who started this?” the reporter asked with a crooked smile, still filming.

Adam’s voice was a tundra. “It stinks of a rat, and you are king of the Los Angeles sewers, Hank.”

Hank grinned but didn’t argue, maybe because I hit Adam’s side.

Literally.

I pushed into his torso, leaning in so heavily he didn’t have a choice but to raise his arm and curl it around me to keep me from falling. Pressed against him, it was easy to feel the thrum of barely leashed anger coursing through his body.

If he could have, I thought he might have beaten every single person there.

He turned his head to me, kissing my crown before whispering just for me, “You can wait inside. I’ll stay here until the cops arrive.”

“I want to say something,” I said, not whispering.

He stared down into my face for a second, his eyes so green they seemed almost unnatural, a bright and clean colour like freshly cut and watered grass. For a man with so many demons, they were wonderfully pure.

“Okay,” he said, squeezing me closer.

I could tell he didn’t want me out there, that he would have had me secure myself in the house and, maybe, never even be seen by the paparazzi again. So it meant a lot that he gave way to my needs.

“I know most of you don’t think celebrities are real people with real feelings,” I started, taking strength from Adam at my side and Sebastian caring for my mother inside.

“As if fame and money turn people into soulless automatons. Or maybe you think gossiping about them, raking them over the coals, lying about them is simply the tax they should pay for being more successful than you. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

What I do care about is my family. Today, you’ve taken advantage of a woman with frontotemporal dementia, which is a serious and sometimes ignoble disease.

What you witnessed today was the way it can rob a wonderful woman of her reason.

What you’ve done by documenting it with the intention to sell it to the highest bidder is rob her of her dignity.

That is on you. Everyone deserves to be treated with basic human decency, and today, you’ve failed in that. I hope you can live with yourselves.”

I rocked to my toes to kiss the square hinge of Adam’s locked jaw and then peeled myself off him with a slight nod of thanks to Boone before I turned my back on the paps and headed inside.

I had just closed the doors when the sirens came from a distance.

My eyes were closed as I leaned against the front door, struggling to breathe through the emotions clogging my throat. So much pain and sorrow and relief and hope all knotted like hair in a drain.

“I am sorry, Linnea,” Mrs. Ramirez said quietly.