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The attack stopped almost as quickly as it’d started. At least the physical one. The woman kept raging at me with words about how I’d ruined her life, her family's life, but she had to do it from Xavier's arms because he’d pulled her off of me.
"Mom," Xavier called as he tried to get through to her. "It's not him! It's Brooks, James's son!"
Several things hit me at once as Xavier tried to calm the woman. The obvious part, of course, was that she was his mother, not a wife or girlfriend.
Under most circumstances, that would've been a relief. But at the moment I was stuck on the second part of all this.
The woman thought I was my father.
Chapter 12
Xavier
I practically had to carry my mother into the house because no matter what I said, she refused to calm down just as she refused to acknowledge that Brooks wasn't his father. My younger sister, Sara, had watched the entire scene unfold with wide eyes and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Thankfully, Curtis had pulled the little girl to his side even as my mother had continued to rage at Brooks. Curtis had ultimately offered to take Sara to see Millie and her new foal so I could deal with my mother.
"Mom, stop," I bit out as I led her to the kitchen table and forced her to sit down.
"He's here to ruin me," my mother screamed. She was shaking violently, and her skin was sweaty and flushed with color. Her hair, which had been tied back in a simple ponytail, had become loose and was hanging in hanks around her face. She was wearing a nice dress, which broke my heart, because it meant that she’d gone through a lot of effort to look nice before coming up here with my sister to see me.
Since my mother had seemed to calm down marginally, I went to the sink to get her some water. "He knows, he knows. He's going to ruin everything." My mother kept repeating those phrases over and over again as she rocked back and forth in the chair. I brought her the water and sat down in the chair next to hers. I put my hand on her back and slid the water in front of her.
"Mom, take a couple sips of water for me, okay?" I asked, using the voice I always employed when I was dealing with a skittish horse.
My mother's fingers trembled as she wrapped them around the glass and took a sip of the water. More water spilled down her dress than got in her mouth.
My heart hurt for the woman I was staring at. She was my mother, but in so many ways, she wasn't. The woman who’d raised me had been so very different from the one who now sat before me. It would've been easy to blame everything on James Cunningham, but ever since I’d gotten out of prison, I’d realized that my mother's problems had started long before the Cunningham family had come into our lives. As a child, I’d thought her mood swings had been a byproduct of my domineering father, but as I’d grown older, I'd started to wonder if the highs and lows she’d go through were signs of something deeper. My father had refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong with his wife, so she’d never been seen by a doctor for it. I had finally realized the full extent of her illness only after I'd been released from prison.
"Mom," I began as I rubbed her back. "The man out there is not James," I explained as slowly and calmly as I could. "Do you remember that James had a son named Brooks?"
My mother was still trying to drink some of the water. She’d calmed considerably but was still shifting in the chair, and her eyes were darting from the window that overlooked the front yard to the kitchen door as if she were waiting for someone.
"Where's Sara?" she suddenly asked. Her voice became high as she screamed, "Where's Sara? He took her! He took Sara!"
My mother jumped out of the chair, but I was ready for her and grabbed her by the arms.
"Sara's safe, Mom. She's with Curtis. He took her to the barn. Mom, I need you to listen to me and try to understand. The man outside is Brooks, not James."
My mother's eyes still wouldn't settle on any one particular thing. It was like she was watching every corner, waiting for an unseen attacker.
"Mom, do you have your pills with you?" I finally asked.
"What? Huh?"
I took her hand in mine and led her back outside. She began mumbling James's name as her eyes darted all around the front yard. I didn't see any sign of Brooks or his car. Guilt went through me for what had happened. I needed to explain things to him, but after my mother's unwarranted physical attack, not to mention the way I’d treated him in the barn after our encounter, I doubted he would even give me the time of day.
