Page 112 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

“I understand their compulsions. Their distortions. The frameworks they build to rationalise the violence.” Kenny kept calm, despite his pulse ticking up. “I understand the mechanisms that drive them… but understanding is not the same as condoning.”

“Of course not.” Margaret nodded, like a teacher satisfied with a student’s response. “Because they’re still human, aren’t they? Not monsters. They’re… damaged. Misdirected.”

Kenny lifted a brow, measured. “They’re physically human, yes.”

“And if they’re human…” she tilted her head, voice laced with something that might’ve passed for compassion, “then surely, they’re still redeemable. Still… forgivable?”

“That depends on many factors.”

“Such as?”

“Accountability. Willingness. Insight.”

“But not on the justice system.” She tutted. “No, not the judges who pass sentences like they’re divining truth. They get it wrong all the time.” She paused. “The real judgment, after all, belongs to Him. Doesn’t it?”

Kenny didn’t respond. Her phrasing was too deliberate.The shift in cadence too clean, as if memorised and rehearsed until it became belief.

“And Roisin…” Margaret lowered her pitch as if invoking something sacred. “She was a mother, wasn’t she?”

Kenny said nothing. Scrubbed and sealed from the early reports, the truth of the Howells’ children locked in the basement and cupboard had found its way to the surface, eventually. Not through official channels, of course, but through whispers, trial transcripts, and the insatiable appetite of the press. Most of the narrative had focused on Mable, Aaron’s sister, the one who took the unforgiveable path despite years of therapy. The name Cain Howell had remained buried under red tape and shadows.

Where it belonged.

Margaret’s lips curled. “I knew her, you know.”

Kenny’s heart ticked once. But he kept his expression neutral.

“We were in the same church. As girls.” She drifted her gaze past him, fixing on something he couldn’t see. Maybe her past. “Hard pews. Endless sermons. Repetition until you bled belief. Roisin sat beside me every Sunday. Reciting verses with a sneer in her mouth, even then. Always rebellious. She questioned everything. Wanted tointerpretthe Word. As if it were hers to shape.” Her smile was tight, contained, as if carved in bone. “Whereas I… I listened. Obeyed. Conformed. I hope you know that, Dr Lyons. I’m agoodChristian.”

Kenny adjusted his posture. Shoulders relaxed. Hands still. He knew what she wanted. Not confrontation. Nor accusation. She wanted to speak and to be heard. To hold the room. That, too, was its own kind of ritual.

“I saw what Roisin really was long before the trials. Before the newspapers gave her a crown of thorns andpainted her in blood. Before the masks. Before the roses. I saw it in her eyes when she stood up and spoke during youth study, twisting parables into prophecy. She always believed she was special. Chosen.” Her lip curled. “That’s what made her dangerous.”

A pause.

“She dared to call herself amother.” Margaret gritted her teeth. “After everything we endured. After what they did to us. I never believed she could have children. Something in her… seemed broken. Like her womb would reject her. I wonder what sort of children shecouldhave. How they might have turned out. Were they as…damaged. Obedient.”

Kenny’s pulse stuttered, though he kept his expression blank.

“I followed her story. Watched the coverage. Read everything. Not for the gore, but to understand. To trace the path she took. And if it was her fault. Or that of who she had married.” Her eyes drifted, far away. “But then again… we were all maltreated, weren’t we?” Her gaze snapped back to Kenny. Clear. Intent. “And you study people like her. But do you study the soil too, Dr Lyons? The ground they’re grown in? Those that come after?”

Kenny didn’t move.

Because this wasn’t a confession.

But it was circling one.

“I study all the conditions that contribute to a person crossing the line,” he said. “From impulse to action. From fantasy to follow-through.”

“Because they all start like you and me?”

Kenny lifted his brow. “I wouldn’t place myself in that category. But if you mean we’re all born with the same neural architecture, the same vulnerabilities, then yes. At afundamental level, the machinery is similar. What separates us… is what we choose to do with it.”

She paused her idle stroking of the silver cross at her throat.

“Choices.” She nodded. “Yes… I suppose that’s the word we cling to when everything else slips through our fingers.” She took a breath, held it as if she didn’t trust the air. “And when you speak of ritual… of blurred morality… of delusion mistaken for belief… I wonder…” She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head. “Do you think people are born evil, Dr Lyons? Is it genetics? Or… do they become that way? Through influence and circumstance?”

Kenny kept his posture relaxed, but inside, every instinct coiled.