“It’s not something you’ll understand now, my love. One day, you’ll understand and maybe then you can forgive me.”
“Take me with you,” I begged her. She placed a kiss on my forehead, lingering there for longer than normal, before she stood again.
“I can’t. Your father needs you.”
“No, I need you,” I cried out, my sobs echoing throughout the hills. I tried to hold onto her but she was out of my grasp. I fell to my knees, the pain of the dirt grinding into my skin as I looked up at her walking away from me as my knees bled. She took one last look at me, her mouth opening for a brief moment as if she wanted to say something, before it closed again and she picked up her suitcase and walked away from me.
I screamed out, I cried for her. My wailing echoing all around me as I felt my chest tear in two.
“Mama!” I screamed again, as I felt arms on me, pulling me away. I screamed out again, “Margaux!”
I awoke with a start, my arms feeling tight as I came to. I looked around the unfamiliar room, only to see I was in a basement. My memory of what happened slowly seeps back into my consciousness. My arms were restrained, as were my legs. I looked down to see I was strapped to something, the darkness of the room was making it hard to see. I tried to shuffle free, but the leather straps on my wrists and ankles were making it hard to move. Out of my periphery, I saw movement and I twisted my head to see what it was.
It was her.
Maurelle.
“There’s no need for a show, you could just kill me and get it over with.”
She cocked her head to the side, assessing me, as if she were trying to figure out something.
“Who is Margaux?”
The name startled me, no one knew who she was, I’d kept her hidden from everyone, including my ex-wives. Had I called out her name in my dream?
“She’s nobody.”
“Come now, detective, a grown man doesn’t cry out like that in a dream for no reason.”
I hated that she heard that, or that I had that dream while I was strapped to whatever contraption this was.
“She was my mother.”
“What happened to her?” she asked. “You say her name with anger, or perhaps it is disgust.”
“She left me when I was a child.”
“And it had a lasting effect on you, did it not?”
“Of course it did,” I spat. “What of it?”
“Do you know why she left?”
“Does any man know why a woman does something?” I countered.
The smile on her face was genuine, but it felt as if she didn’t do that a lot.
“You speak as if she were in the wrong. Maybe she left for a reason, to keep you safe.”
“I guess I’ll never know,” I told her.
“Is she why you became a cop?”
She was moving around me like a shark circling its prey. I was catching whiffs of her perfume, a floral scent that reminded me of my youth.
“Maybe.”
I didn’t want to admit that she was, that I had become a cop so I could look her up and try and find answers as to why she left me with my father.
