“But there are laws,” I exclaim. “He couldn’t have taken everything. If you had divorced him, a judge would have awarded you something, surely.”
Mama shakes her head. “He had connections. He claimed that no judge in the land would side with me against him. If they did, he would go to the Crown to have the decision overruled. He believed thatIhad broken our vows, that I was responsible for the catastrophe that our marriage had become. And he still wanted a fucking son. He said the tinsmith could give him that.”
“Fuck him,” I hiss.
“Believe me, I called him every degrading name I could think of, cursed him with every foul word I know, and he shouted awful things right back at me. In the midst of it all, he revealed that he’d left you in the forest that night, when you were a baby. That’s when I snapped. The way he talked aboutyou—I couldn’t bear it. I won’t repeat it. But that’s when I…” Her mouth works, and her hands clutch the shawl convulsively.
“You don’t have to talk about it any more.” Gently I pry one of her hands from the garment and take it in mine. “Thank you for telling me. And thank you for what you did.”
She lifts her gaze, hope dawning in her eyes. Her expression reminds me of the way Beresford looked last night when he realized that the truth hadn’t killed my love for him. “I would do anything for you girls.”
“I hope that’s still true, because I need your help.” I squeeze her hand. “If you’ll trust me, I’ll tell you everything as we work. We have to hide some remains before the servants come up to the house.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t,” I say with a faint chuckle. “But you will.”
She follows me to the kitchen door, and I push it open.
For a moment she stands motionless, taking in the scene. Then she points to Beresford. “Is he dead?”
“No. He’s alive. And he loves me, Mama, more than I realized. He would never hurt me, but he did deceive me.” I point to the skeleton. “Thatis what we must get rid of. And then we have to scrub this place until it shines.”
“You’ll explain as we work?”
“I promise.”
“Very well then.” My mother takes off her shawl and begins rolling up her sleeves. She glances down at my husband’s body, her eyes resting briefly on the huge cock lying against his thigh. “You know, there’s one thing I forgot to tell you on your wedding day.”
“And what’s that?”
She gives me a wink. “Congratulations.”
I tell her the story while we wrap up the original Beresford’s skeleton in a sheet and carry it along a hedge, out to a field where we hide it in a clump of berry bushes. My husband can bury the bones later. Right now, the point is to get the remains out of the house.
Next we scrub the kitchen table and the floor. Mentally I make a note to commission a new table at the earliest opportunity, but our current priority is erasing the visible signs of the carnage. Anything else will have to wait.
Throughout the telling of the tale, I can sense my mother’s emotions shifting from temporary acceptance to horror, then to grudging comprehension, then to cautious empathy. I leave out the part about my foray into the woods. Mama doesn’t need to know that I called aloud for the Barrow-Man by name. It would only cause her alarm, and she has enough to grapple with. Like me, she has to cope with the fact that my husband isn’t human. That he isn’t from this world at all. That his true form isn’t even humanoid in shape.
It sounds insane to confess all of it aloud, and yet somehow it helps me confirm to myself what I decided last night—that no matter what shape he was born with, I will accept his chosen identity, the name and form he has selected as his own in this world. I wish he hadn’t selected the form of a rapist and a killer, but that original body is gone now, and isn’t it best that he chose someone wicked, someone who didn’t deserve to live? That way, the erasure of their soul and the theft of their body isn’t a tragedy—it’s a kind of justice.
MyBeresford can redeem the handsome face and burly form that were once used for evil. He can be generous with the murderous miser’s fortune, using it to spare others from deprivation, serve as a patron to local businesses and farms, and provide the people of the region with amusement and community at his dinner parties.
I tell my mother all of this, everything I’m thinking. She is quiet, speaking only to offer practical suggestions as I clean around Beresford’s unconscious body. I wipe some of the blood off him, but he needs a bath.
Eventually we roll him onto another sheet and drag him aside so we can scrub the floor where he lay. He continues sleeping, snoring faintly, but by the time we’ve finished cleaning, he’s beginning to stir.
My mother goes to the sink, rinses the rags we used, and wrings out the excess water. “I’ll take these home and launder them myself. If I can’t get the blood out, I’ll burn them.”
“Thank you.”
She and I look at each other, each holding the weight of the secrets we kept from each other.
She knows that I inadvertently rescued a shape-shifting creature, that he’s been eating the souls of unworthy locals, and that I love him despite his deceit. She understands where the creatures I’ve been summoning originated.
I know the circumstances of my birth and my father’s bargain. I know that she killed him for risking my life when I was a baby, and for planning to leave us destitute. Who am I to judge the mother who has loved me unconditionally and done terrible things to keep a roof over my head?
She always cared. My father never did.
