Page 36 of Family Affair

She gave him a look full of reproach. “Easy for you to say.”

Easy for him to say? “Maybe y’all need to start looking for jobs.”

Maureen didn’t get his attempt at humor.

“I’m not talking about jobs,” she cried, and watery tears slid down her checks in neat little streams. “Don’t you realize that we’re about to re-live the Frank disaster all over again? All the sacrifices I made for this family, foryou, will have been wasted! All the secrets I kept, I’ll have kept for nothing!”

He experienced no compassion. He never asked her to keep his secrets, and he struggled to recall any sacrifices she could have made on his account. Whatever the case, his mother had never been motivated by love and compassion, only by money and prestige.

Yes, he held a low opinion of his parents and refused to feel ashamed for his attitude. Some rips could never be mended.

“You are wasting your time here, Mother. There’s nothing I can do.”

“You won’t do what Ward wants?”

“No,” he said, and the word was steel. “Never.”

She sniffed and plucked a tissue from a nearby box. Dabbing at her eyes and nose – God forbid she actually blew it or made some other bodily noise – she asked, “Have you thought of another way?”

He shrugged and dropped into a chair opposite her. “What other way?”

She tapped her index finger on her compressed lips. “What if he disappears?”

“Ward?”

Leaning forward she started speaking in a breathless, urgent tone. “Yes. If he disappears, no one else will ever know.”

“Mother, what are you implying?”

She wet her lips and twined her hands. “If you can make him disappear…”

“Disappear as in how?” he whispered.

“As in forever,” she whispered back.

“Kinda hard to pull off with a guy who preached for decades at one of the largest churches in the area.”

“It can remain shrouded in mystery.”

Cade leaned back and crossed one foot over his knee, a pose Maureen deemed offensive in polite society. “Out of curiosity, did you really think I’d kill Ward?”

She visibly flinched at his frank language. “You’ve seen combat. You’ve done… things in the field.”

His composure shuttered. “How do you know what I have and haven’t done?” he shouted at her, so angry he felt hot, burning as if from fever. Something broke inside him, some important part that defined him as a man, as a human being. Damn it all, who did she think he was?

With an enormous act of will he shoved his turbulent emotions aside and concentrated on getting through this jolly little visit with his mother.

“You’ve watched too many movies, Mother. I saw action, and I did some prettyroughstuff in the field. But there is a big difference between what happens during a military op and a premeditated murder.”

“I know the difference, it doesn’t matter!” she shouted, too, and Cade reared back. Maureen never shouted. “What matters is that youcankill a person. You know the mechanics and you have the guts.” Her face twisted in a mask of ugly, violent anger.

Cade scraped his palm down his freshly shaven face. “Mother, have you lost your mind?”

“This is a good way to put it: yes, I’m losing my mind! My entire life is crumbling around me! My husband’s life! Don’t you care about us at all? You refuse to save our family’s honor because of some childish hang-ups!” The budding hysteria lent Maureen’s voice a shrill quality.

“Honor? It’s always been about the money.”

“Do you really hate us that much? We are your family.” She broke into a fit of hoarse coughing. She used to smoke but quit years ago. He wondered idly if she really did or merely hid it better.