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It was fucking embarrassing.
There was only one rapist in our midst, statutory and otherwise, and it was the man she’d nestled down in bed with every night for the past twenty-four plus years.
Fucking hypocrite.
Watching Kavanagh’s mother go for mine in my front garden earlier was a foreign sight for me. I’d never seen a mother throw down like that for her kid. But Edel Kavanagh had, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I got the distinct feeling that Molloy would do the exact same for our kid.
Jesus.
Wishing I was anywhere but back in this house, I looked on as Shannon and Mam battled it out for the title of Ballylaggin’s loudest screamer. While Darren the dildo tried to wave a white flag between them.
Fucking eejit.
Having Mam’s back in it was not going to win him any favors. He was going to bat for the wrong female. Christ, even Seany-boo, who was only three, knew that Darren was flogging a dead horse with our mother.
I might be fucked in the head, but I’d meant it when I’d said that I was done with her. I didn’t have it in me to forgive her again, not after that evening in the kitchen. Not with the memory of my sister’s almost lifeless body still haunting me.
Him or us, Mam?
“Joey was right,” Shannon cried out, dragging my scattered attention back to the argument ensuing a few feet away from me. “You’re not good for us.”
I felt like slow-clapping, grateful that someone else could see what I did.
“Come on, Shannon.” Darren, the expert at running out on his family, threw his two cents into the mix. “Screaming and name-calling isn’t helping anyone.”
“Then stop sitting there and do something,” my baby sister spat back, fighting and willing our oldest brother to do something he would never be capable of doing for her. Helping her. “You know this is wrong. You know what she did was awful, and you’re just letting her get away with it.”
Shannon was spot-on.
The shit Mam had spurted to the Kavanaghs was horrendous, and Darren was feeding into her bullshit by pandering to her mental breakdown. I might need locking up, but Mam sure as shit needed to reserve the padded cell next to mine.
“No, I’m not,” Darren said, trying to placate. “She knows she was wrong, don’t you, Mam?”
If he was expecting a coherent answer from the woman that birthed us, then he was about to be sorely disappointed. She didn’t have it in her. She was incapable of thinking beyond the fourteen-year-old version of herself that had been thrust into motherhood. Her brain had stopped growing at that age.
The woman was broken in the head.
Same as me.
“Mam, tell Shannon that you know you were wrong.” If I was a better person, I would have felt sympathy for the man. He thought the mother he left behind more than half a decade ago was still inside the shell sitting at the kitchen table. “Mam. Answer us.”
Looking weary, Shannon shook her head and turned away from Mam. Darren, though, continued to watch our mother like he was waiting for some divine intervention.
“Don’t bother,” I heard myself tell her golden boy. “Because she’s broken. You’ll figure that out soon enough.”
“Joe.” Bolting toward me like a wobbly foal, our sister threw her arms around my neck and clung to me. “Make this stop.”
I wanted to. There was a still a part of me alive inside that wanted to fix this for my sister. For the boys. But I was so fucking worn out.
My head didn’t seem to be working right anymore. Whatever the old man had done to me in the kitchen that evening had broken me. The cord that attached my heart to my head had been severed. It had been beaten out of me.
“This is what you wanted, Darren. You wanted her home with us,” I told our brother. “One big happy family.” Hooking an arm around the trembling girl in my arms, I glared at the man who considered himself to be wiser than us. “I hope we’ve met your expectations.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood. Taking one final look at our mother, he turned on his heel and walked away.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore,” Shannon mumbled.
The sound of the front door closing behind him was the only confirmation I needed to know that I was right.
