not dude.”
“I don’t give a shit about that. Who are you—” And then it hit me. I wished it hadn’t. The ice was cracking beneath my feet. “Your mother.”
He glared down at his lap.
I said, “No. I…. That was before me. I didn’t—she was already gone.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think I ever even knew her name,” I admitted. “It’s…. I don’t know. There’s this history. Livingstone. Bennetts. It goes back a lot longer than I do. Always together somehow. Like we’re twisted in with each other.”
“You’re a Bennett.”
“Glad to know you can retain information. Proud of you.”
He didn’t appreciate that. “I’m not Livingstone. Not twisted with you.”
“A rose by any other name,” I said quietly.
“What?”
I shook my head. “It’s… something Kelly said to me once. It’s this weight. A name. Especially our name. Bennett. It’s a crown that we can never take off. No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, I can’t change that.”
“Here.”
“What?”
“Here,” he said again. “Name doesn’t matter here. No crown. No roses. Just… you. Just Carter.”
I laughed wetly. “Again. Say it again.”
He frowned. “What?”
I could barely breathe. “My name. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say my name. Again. Please say it again.”
He said, “Carter, Carter, Carter,” and I remembered him as he once was, a shadow I couldn’t escape. He was there, always there, whether I wanted him to be or not. All those years we were together, his eyes bright and knowing, giving me shit without even uttering a word. And there came a day in the spring, when the flowers were blooming and the trees were alive with green, a day no different than the one before.
But on this day I’d headed out of the house at the end of the lane and realized he wasn’t following me. And I felt it then, a queer sense of loss disguised as irritation. I’d gone back in the house, muttering to myself about what a pain in the ass he was, and found him in the kitchen. He didn’t notice I was there, or at least he didn’t acknowledge me. He was staring as if enraptured as my mother swayed near the sink, singing along with an old song on the radio. Elvis asking if you were lonesome tonight, did you miss me tonight, and my mother was singing, singing, singing, a wolfsong, a lovesong, and though her grief had lessened over time, I could still taste it, the ache in her voice. She loved my father despite all his faults and would miss him forever.
And Gavin.
Oh god, Gavin.
How he’d watched her, his eyes bright and knowing though still lost to the animal within. There was curiosity there, and no small amount of wonder tinged with fear. He was… softer, somehow, the closest to human I’d ever seen him. And I wondered—not for the first time, though it was sharper, clearer—how much he knew, how much he retained. If he knew what she was. A queen. A wolf mother. And if he recognized her as a protector.
He started to move his head up and down like he was nodding. I didn’t know what he was doing at first. It wasn’t until Elvis started singing again that I realized he was moving with the beat of the song. Not dancing, no, but still moving.
It was the first time I saw him as more than a feral wolf.
Eventually he stiffened, turning to look at me, expression almost guilty.
My mother said, “Such a lovely song, don’t you think?”
She wasn’t talking to me.
The wolf turned back to her. He stood slowly before walking over to her. He pressed his nose against the palm of her hand. She chuckled, running a finger along his snout up between his eyes to the top of his head. He huffed at her before leaving her be. He bumped into me as he left the kitchen, and I stood there in the kitchen of the house at the end of the lane, unsure what I’d just witnessed.
My mother said, “He’s got good taste.”
I found my voice. “In music?”
Her eyes were shining. “That too.”
I trailed after the wolf in a daze.
In the days and weeks and months that followed that spring afternoon, I found them together more and more, always with music playing. Sometimes he moved his head up and down. Other times his tail thumped the floor, keeping the beat of the music. And she never asked him to change, never asked him why, why, why aren’t you human? Why don’t you