“You called me for help,” Hael tells his mom, and she starts off on him in French, yelling and screaming. “Why do you always call me for help if you’re not going to leave him? Why am I even here?”

“Hael,” Marie pleads even though it’s pretty obvious that she has no idea what she’s pleading for. Instead of turning to his mother, Hael’s eyes find mine again. This time, when I put my hand on the gun and push it so that he’s aiming at the ground instead of his father, he lets me. “He isn’t a bad man, he just … you know how he gets when he drinks.” She stops talking, letting her head hang, red hair waving around her shoulders. Her heavily accented voice is melodious, but her words are beyond sad. She can’t be much older than Pamela, just another young Prescott mom who never got to be a child herself. I feel so fucking bad for her.

“Are you going to kick him out?” Hael asks, turning to face his mom and slipping the gun back in his waistband. He curls his arm around my waist and drags me close, holding me to him like I’m his one and only lifeline in a storm. His eyes blaze as he stares his mother down. “You’re not, are you? You just wanted me to come and stop him from beating your ass, and then that’s it. I’m a referee and nothing more.”

“You are my son,” Marie whispers, and then she repeats it in French, “Tu es mon Fils.”

“Let me take you somewhere else,” Hael suggests, but this is an argument he’s had with his mother on the phone numerous times, begging her to stay somewhere else, at Aaron’s at the very least. It wouldn’t be entirely unheard of for the GMP to come for Hael’s mom. At this point, I think our tentative stalemate is the only thing that’s prevented them from moving on us. “We can find you somewhere better to stay, somewhere nicer than this shitbox.” There’s a long pause there where Hael holds his breath and his mother finally lifts her eyes up to look at his face. “Maman, please.”

Marie looks over at Martin and then back at her son.

“Je n'ai nulle part où aller,” she murmurs, and Hael makes a sound of frustration.

“She says there’s nowhere else for her to go,” he explains, cursing in French for a moment before sliding his hand over his face. He squeezes me even more tightly against him, and I put my palm over his heart, feeling it thunder inside his broad chest. “But Maman, there is. We have places for you to go. You don’t have to stay here; you don’t have to suffer like this.”

Tension stretches between Hael and his mother, and I look over to see Vic’s normally stoic face soften slightly as he turns away. We understand what it’s like to be betrayed by a mother. Shit, we all do. Every single one of us has been betrayed by close family.

Every single one.

The ties binding our hearts seem to tighten and knot, drawing our souls closer together even as we stand in that janky ass yard in the middle of the second worst neighborhood in Springfield. There used to be a high school here, too, almost twenty years past, but it’s long since been shut down, so … Prescott High it is for Four Corners residents.

“Okay,” Marie says after a moment, and Hael nearly startles in surprise.

“What?” he asks, blinking furiously for a moment. “Quoi?”

“I’ll go with you,” Marie reconfirms, lifting her chin. Her bruised and battered face speaks volumes; the tremble in her pale hands says even more. She’s afraid. But she’s more afraid of losing the last shred of her son’s respect than she is of Martin. “I will go.” She mumbles something else in French that I don’t quite hear.

Hael tugs me forward and then releases me so that he can take his mother in his arms, tucking her tiny body under his chin as I stand close and Martin starts to scream obscenities from behind us.

Shock of all shocks, we hear a knock on the door a moment later.

Our police detail has heard the commotion.

With a sigh, Hael exchanges a look with me and we lead Marie into the house. I’m the one to answer the door and explain the situation—but only after righting the coffee table and one of the chairs.

The officers decide to wait on the porch for us as Victor guards the back door, keeping Martin out while we pack up some things for Marie. While Hael helps his mom, I peek into his room and see that he managed to pack up most of his things before the move to Oak Valley, including all those superhero comics and graphic novels. There are boxes here and there at the apartment, stacked in the third spare bedroom, but I never quite put together what might be in them.

“Blackbird,” Hael says, drawing my attention around. I bite my lip in embarrassment at having been caught scouting out his room, but Hael just takes my head between his hands and kisses my mouth. “Thank you,” he breathes, but for what, I’m not sure. I hardly did a damn thing.

I decide to ask what he means by that and Hael pauses, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Marie,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment. “What she said to me in French … Je vais le quitter car je vois à quel point tu l'aimes. Quand je vous regarde tous les deux, je n'arrive plus à faire semblant. It means … she’s leaving because she sees how much I love you, that when she looks at us, she can’t bear to pretend anymore.”

He stands up and releases me, but my cheeks are blazing and I’m not quite sure what to say.

In the end, I say nothing, and we lead Marie out to the Camaro. For now, we take her to Aaron’s place. Since it’s a well-known fact that we aren’t living there and haven’t been for months, it’s fairly safe. Especially located as it is between Fuller and Prescott, half-normality and half-Havoc territory.

Hael gets his mother set up in the master bedroom as Aaron and I wait in the living room and the rest of the boys sweep the yard and the upstairs, just in case. You can never be too careful in a gang war.

“I miss this place,” Aaron tells me as we lean together, shoulder to shoulder.

“Me, too,” I say, but then I think about Marie living here and not being afraid and making pralines in the kitchen, and the feeling of missing the house doesn’t seem quite so strong anymore.

“She’s asleep,” Hael says as he comes out of the room, rubbing at his temple with two fingers. “We’ll leave some guys to watch over the house, but I’d feel better if she wasn’t alone.”

“You can’t stay,” I tell him, and it’s not just because I’m being selfish. It’s because Ophelia knows the truth now: it doesn’t matter which part of Havoc she gets ahold of. If she can capture a single one of us in her clawed fingers, then we have no choice but to serve her whims.

“Aww, missing me already?” Hael asks, giving my hair a tousle as Oscar comes down the stairs, Victor emerges from the direction of the laundry room/weed bathroom/and garage area, and Callum slips in from outside. “No, I’m not staying here, but I might call my aunt or something. She lives in New Orleans.” Hael pauses briefly and sighs, like this isn’t the outcome he wants but the outcome that might be necessary. “I think my mother should move back home. She’d be happier in Louisiana; she only ever came here for Martin.”

“If she’ll go, we’ll buy her a plane ticket,” Vic agrees, and then, with one, last look at the house, we leave out the front door and pile into the cars.