Page 99 of I Will Ruin You

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

She nodded. “I’m going to make my husband drop the lawsuit.”

I let that sink in a moment. Jumping up and down didn’t seem right in the circumstances, but it was nice to have some tidbit of good news. “I see,” I said.

“It’s the only way he knows how to deal with the situation,” she said. “To lash out at everybody else, like he—like we—didn’t have anything to do with it. And I think... I think he’s trying to make up for things even if it’s too late.”

She took a breath.

“He’s... he’s a cold man, my husband,” she said. “I love him, and I know he loves me, and that he loved Mark, but he wasn’t very good at showing it. After Mark died, Angus... he’s been doing a lot of soul-searching. But not enough that he hasn’t wanted to shift the blame to others. Good people like you.”

I said nothing.

“We shouldn’t be going after you. It’s wrong. We should be thanking you. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive.”

I didn’t know what else to say but “Of course.”

“I can’t imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t talked to Mark. He was a very, very unhappy young man, an angry young man. He was blaming so many others for how his life had turned out. But we have to be responsible for our actions, don’t we, no matter what has happened to us?”

I nodded.

“Nothing would justify coming here and... and doing what we all know he planned to do. But he was hurting. Someone hurt him here.”

“Hurt him how?” I asked.

Fiona pressed her lips together hard and looked away briefly. “There were things he never told my husband, things he only told me, that he made me swear never to tell his father. He was too ashamed.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

She looked like she was about to tell me, stopped herself, and then tried again. “Abusive things,” she said finally. She reached out and touched my arm. “And I know it couldn’t have been you. If it had been... he’d have taken you with him when that bomb went off.”

“Are we talking some kind of sexual abuse?” I asked.

She nodded. “Mark said it... made him doubt who he was. He felt... like he went along with it to get things in return.”

“Did he say what?”

“No.”

“Ms. LeDrew, did your son say who did this to him? Was there a name?”

She shook her head. “I tried to get him to tell me. He only talked to me about this a couple of times, and when I tried to bring it up later, he shut me down.”

A thought occurred to me.

“Did your son wrestle? Was he on the team?”

“No, I mean, he might have done wrestling in his gym class, but he wasn’t on a team.”

“What about Herb Willow? Mark mentioned his name when we talked.”

“Mark hated him, for sure, but not because of... you know. Mr. Willow just put him down all the time, made him stop believing in himself. And, you know, that’s pretty bad, too, crushing a young man’s spirit.”

“Was there anyone you suspected?”

“No. The closest Mark ever came to telling me was that he called him the lawnmower man. He would never give me a name. There’d be too much trouble, he said.”

Forty-Five