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He inhaled sharply. “You should huv told me from the start what’d really happened. With Jimmy.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She closed in on herself, shoulders hunching to make herself seem smaller.
“You do. He abused you when ye were a wee girl. I figured it out, you see.”
She flinched at his words. “So, what?”
“That’s why you really wanted me to kill Flora, and why you stayed married to Blake all those years, because you’d loved him. Jimmy. And you were willing to wait to find out who’d murdered him.” She squirmed because he’d got it right. “It wasna for money or anything. You were biding your time. And his illness made him vulnerable and gave you an opportunity. To demand he finally tell you.”
She shook her head, laughing under her breath. “Do you know? After Blake’s death, well, his first death cos it sounds as if the next one is not far off… I found all sorts of papers he’d kept. He’d had all of his men swear themselves to secrecy about Jimmy’s killer. Signed away their right to speak about it and everything.”
“You hated their love for one another, didn’t you? Blake and Flora. Despite the decades and distance.” He’d seen that love only recently, undiminished, as strong as ever. He was happy for Flora. He wished with all his heart that Logan and any other children they might have, then their children’s children, would only ever know a real love like that. True love.
“Love, hate?” she murmured absently. “I’ve felt very little for such a very long time. Those are foreign concepts to me now. The truth is, I wanted you to kill Flora because I knew they’d clobber you for motive. You’d go down easy as anything. I didn’t think you should’ve had life as easy as what you have had it. I just wanted to see you suffer even a tenth of my pain.”
Oh, how little she understood about pain. His pain was oceanic, so much so, some days it threatened to drown him even as he sat still in the open air. The only person to ever really stand up for him had turned out to be a raping bastard. None of his family had ever loved him. Not really. Nobody had ever truly loved him, not until Flora.
Even though his mother still often spoke like a girl, with a mouth full of stupid lies, he saw her for what she really was. She’d lost her innocence so very long ago, then eventually, her ability to feel, her sanity, and now finally, her freedom. She’d always loved bad men. From the day she was born, sired by a bastard who’d got his student pregnant. Then the half-brother who took her innocence when she was wee and then left her for the spoils of war to cope with her loveless life alone. Making her reckless, aware before her time… worshipping a false idol, much like himself. Abuse comes in many forms. Caelan’s had come in the form of a man who said he’d be home, but never was—a man who preferred to play the hero, rather than a father. Caelan recognised that now. Any man who seeks to show himself in a perpetual shining light is not a man. He is a coward hiding behind glory, trinkets and tall stories—for all men are vulnerable, beneath. Even Caelan. And he would allow his own son to see that, to know, it was okay to be a human being—to suffer, love, hate, fail, rise, cry… and suffer some more.
Despite all her hardships and misfortunes, ultimately, his mother had made her own choices.
The same way Caelan had made his.
He watched her as she waited for him to say his final piece, maybe berate her, growl and curse, whatever made him feel better. He’d rehearsed a thousand things he might say but now he was here, all he felt was devastation. For the person she might have been if she’d not had the beginning she’d had. And it didn’t matter what she tried to convince him of, because he knew Jimmy had corrupted, poisoned and destroyed his mother—priming her for the next abuser in a long line, the precedent set. It had taken Flora’s terrible experience with his uncle for him to realise, finally what it was that drove his own flesh and blood mother to do the hateful, spiteful things she’d done.
“You did one thing right,” he said, “leaving me with Harold.”
“Did I?” Her grubby face gurned in response.
“I’m the man I am because of him. So as much as you hate ma freedom and everything I’ve achieved, ye inadvertently caused it, ye daft bitch.”
“Maybe so,” she said, lifting her nose to sniff the air.
Perhaps that was how she knew what time of day it was, by scenting what meal she was due to be subjected to. In that room, nothing but the floor cleaner could be detected. Oh, and the smell of her. Urine and decay. She looked disappointed it wasn’t mealtime yet.
“What does Blake say about being a grandpa?” she said suddenly.
Caelan thought it was a wonder she’d thought to ask. She seemed in her own little world.
“He was fair pleased, Ma,” said Caelan.
“Good,” she said, “good.”
Still, no smile. No light in her eyes.
“Do ye get any other visitors? Any phone calls.”
She shook her head.
It was sad.
So sad.
“Nobody from the old days?” he asked.
“Nobody.”
“Not even bought a burner off one of the bent screws?”
