and down her cheek. I wiped it away quickly with my thumb and then held her face in my hands so she was forced to look at me.
“Honor, there is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect and special and wonderful. No matter what anybody else says, or does, you have to know that is true about you. You are the one that decides how you feel, Ok? You make you matter. And I think you are the greatest eleven year-old in the universe and my opinion matters too.” She laughed at that with a watery smile. “I love you, Ok?”
“Ok,” she mumbled, throwing her arms around my neck. “I love you too!”
And then my eyes were brimming with tears.
A knock at the door and Smith walking into the room tore us apart from each other. Smith looked back and forth between us before deciding that whatever had caused the tears must have been a good thing because his face softened and a sweet smile turned his mouth.
“Honor, your mother would like to spend more time with you before she goes,” he instructed. Honor stood up and gave me one more confident smile before disappearing into the hall.
I stood up too, wanting to follow her before my mother got her alone again. Smith stopped me with a raised hand though and asked me to wait.
“Mallory talked to you this week?” he whispered.
I nodded and then stole a glance at the door just in case my mother suddenly appeared.
“Please let her try,” he begged in a rumbling whisper.
“Ok,” I said quickly. “I told her Ok.”
Smith immediately relaxed, his face smoothing out to happy. “Good, Ivy. That is good.”
We both moved toward the door before I said, “Have you thought about homeschooling Honor?” My voice was as quiet as I could make it without having to resort to smoke signals to communicate with Smith.
“After last week, I’m seriously considering all-girls school,” he sighed. Smith ran a rough hand over his face showing me how much he realized this problem was going to cost him.
“Please don’t do that. It would crush her,” I pleaded. I grabbed onto the sleeve of his navy blue oxford and gripped it tightly. “All-girls could be…. could be rough…. Could be traumatizing. It would push her right to my mother.”
He thought over my words carefully, taking them in, chewing on them and then visibly deciding that they were helpful. “Homeschooling? You really think I need to remove her from society completely?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “Not completely. But enough so that you can keep an eye on her and help her mature. She will never be like my mother. She has you. It won’t happen to her. But it won’t stop either, what happened last week will never stop. She has to learn to…. handle it.”
“What is this Ivy? What has its claws on my little girls’ life? On your life?” Smith’s voice broke on his last question. I could see how sickly worried he was for Honor, how desperate he was to protect her from our mother and everything she represented. “Is it something I can stop?”
“It’s uh,” I obviously couldn’t reveal my secret twice in the same weekend. “It’s just bad genetics. Honestly, Smith. Just think about homeschooling, please?”
He nodded his agreement and before he could ask me anymore questions or before my mother spent one more second alone with Honor, I bounded down the steps and rejoined my family.
Homeschooling, although dreadful, would protect Honor. And right now that was my only goal in life. I wondered how different my life would be if I had someone to protect me.
And then I thought about Ryder and how desperate he was to help me.
So maybe my bad did balance out after all.
Maybe I did have someone special looking out for me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The next day at school I felt this weird mixture of strong hope and eternal despair. My situation was depressing. Nix was scary as all hell. And he was back early from Greece. My future loomed bleak and ominous on the horizon.
But Ryder gave me this smile when I walked up to the school this morning that was secret and meaningful and…. possessive. His eyes grazed over me from head to foot as if he were searching for something physically out of place. And then his powerful silver eyes met mine and held them, connected me to him and transferred some of his indomitable strength to me.
I could smile then. Breathe again.
And it was because Ryder knew