“He said you asked him to keep her company while you took some time off.”
Of course he did. Wanker.
“My mother seemed…” His lips twist to the side.
I hate how he keeps baiting me with fragmented sentences that leave me hanging. It’s like he’s waiting to see if I will jump in and… what? I don’t know for sure.
“Different.”
“Different how?”
Nolan shrugs. “Normal. Too normal.”
I laugh a bit. “Too normal? I’d consider that progress, a good thing. Isn’t it?”
“I know you’re going to take this wrong. My intention is not to sound like an awful son who doesn’t want to see his mother get better, but… I don’t want her memory of the incident to come back if it means she could spiral out of control to the point where we could lose her forever.”
“This incident. I don’t understand this ‘incident’ that you and your father seem so determined to keep from her and everyone else. You’re so afraid of me triggering her memory, snapping her out of her delusional state, but you won’t tell me what it is you don’t want her to remember. So how can I tiptoe around some invisible trigger?”
Resting his elbows on his knees, he cradles his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” His head snaps up.
I flinch.
The last time I saw so much agony etched into Nolan’s face was when he told me about his ability to sense other people’s pain.
“My accident. That’s what caused my mother’s condition. She thought I died and something just broke inside of her. She doesn’t remember it. Not once since her mind has gone to its ‘safe place’ has she mentioned it.”
“But if it was an accident—”
He shakes his head. “It was her fault. I still don’t know all the details because my own memory of it is so sketchy. I have these fragments, but when I try to piece them together, they don’t make sense. We were going somewhere. My father was out of town. She needed to make a quick stop.” He shakes his head some more. “I waited in the car. It was taking her too long, so I went to look for her.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. His eyes remain fixed to his interlaced fingers.
“Where were you?”
“I don’t remember where we were. My father said it happened at home. That doesn’t fit with what little I do remember—or think I remember.”
“So he’s lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what happened, Nolan.”
He nods slowly. “I was shot. I lost a lot of blood. I died on the operating table. But they brought me back to life.”
“Nellie shot you?”
He nods.
“Why?”
“My father said it was an intruder. She grabbed a gun from their bedroom. When I walked around the corner at the top of the stairs, it spooked her. She shot me.”
“What did the newspapers say?”
