Page 135 of Family Affair

“Yes. When your brother…” Her mouth trembled so hard she had to stop, but with a visible effort she pulled herself together. “When your brother went to that reporter, after he knocked him out, he took the drawing from his apartment. He had given it to me. I kept it right here, all those years.” She approached a small ornate dresser by her bed and pulled out a drawer. “Right here.”

He looked at his mother and tried to work up the anger he knew he should feel at her for setting things in motion: for hiding the drawing instead of destroying it, for approaching Ward. For lying. For asking him to kill a man. For not loving him like a mother should.

He felt nothing except hollow emptiness. “Thanks for telling me.”

He turned to leave. There was nothing else for him to say, and he was suddenly anxious to put distance between himself and this house with its lies and secrets.

“There’s one more thing.” Maureen absently rubbed her fingers on the edge of the drawer where the Pollock drawing had been kept. “Alex knows about you.”

“What? Why did you tell him?”

“No one told him. He has always known. We never fooled Alex.”

Another piece of the puzzle. Another player with a power to change the game. He closed his eyes, and a wave of a hot despair washed over him. Will the secrets ever end?

He let the feeling pass before coming over and taking Maureen by the hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing why he was apologizing.

“No, I should be sorry. For everything, but especially for putting you in a tight spot. Do you think they’ll arrest you?”

“Probably.”

“Are you… will you go to prison?”

He dropped her hand. “Not if I can help it. I didn’t kill Ward and I’ll be damned if I take the blame for it. Don’t expect any more self-sacrifices from me, Mother. I don’t have any more to give.”

She moved away and stood apart from him, looking, taking him in, studying, as if trying to comprehend how this man, difficult and so different from her, could be her own flesh and blood.

He understood her confusion all too well. He had never been able to figure it out.

“Ward was right, after all,” she said out of the blue. “I always had my doubts about what we had done, wondering if it could truly work. And when it had, I wondered if it would last. It did. And it’s still working, the plan he had put in motion. Ward had told me that if it were someone else, any other man, our charade would be doomed. But he knew you would pull through despite such terrible odds. Unbreakable, he called you. He had this blind faith in your abilities, always, since you were a little snot-nosed unruly child. You’re so strong.”

He was taken aback by her sudden vehement declaration. “I don’t feel strong, Mother. I feel tired.”

She nodded. “I imagine you must be.” She turned her back to him. “Go, please. And don’t come again, if you can. It’s difficult for me to look at you.”

If he experienced a pinch in his heart at her rejection, it was gone before he noticed it.

He let himself out the back door and left the property as quietly as he came, pondering idly why he drew a short straw in life and got Maureen for a mother and not someone like, say, Lucy. Maybe if the stars had aligned better, and a nurturing, kind woman had raised him, soft and steady in her affections, he wouldn’t have turned out all twisted up on the inside like he did.

Heneverwished to be special or talented or rich.Just normal.