Maybe it was a trick of the eye, maybe it was a defect of the mind, but she looked exactly like she had that night thirty years ago. Her hair was loose, her mouth was curved in a knowing smile, and she wore what looked like the same damn slip.
It was impossible.
He’d been six, detached from what she was doing, focused on the flickering blue flame of the old electric light designed like a candle on a saucer beside his bed.
It appeared as if she’d walked straight from his nightmares into this very real moment.
But he wasn’t the unsuspecting child who loved his Belle Mère more than he loved anyone and anything, he was a grown man who had decades of intrusive memories playing out her betrayal over and over again.
Belle Mère cried out as if she’d been hit, her hand clamping down on her mouth, fingers fluttering against it in agitation. “Oh!Oh Mon Dieu, ma bon, my wee beautiful boy. Julian, come see! Our sweet boy has come home to us just like was promised.”
Holding onto the railing, she rushed down the stairs.
The closer she got, the further he retreated.
He hadn’t been prepared for this. His father, his brothers—that was the battle he was ready to have, that’s the vengeance he relished experiencing.
Her—he didn’t want to be in touching distance of her, wanted her as far away from him as possible.
Stormy edged in front of him as Belle Mère reached the bottom of the stairs.
The level of aggression Stormy currently displayed was more intense than when they’d fought in the parking lot of Teats and Meat. One thing he knew about Stormy was that she wasn’t easily provoked. For all intents and purposes, Belle Mère had done nothing but greet her long-lost son, but Stormy looked ready to lose her license before she’d let Belle Mère embrace him.
When he looked at Belle Mère now, with less than three feet separating them, it was no longer through the filters of the past. She was still beautiful in some ways, but there was a desiccated quality to her. It hung out around her eyes and mouth, in the claw-like nature of her hands.
What was also crystal clear to him was that she was hungover. The stench of alcohol wafting off her let him know that she must have reached for a bottle of whiskey or bourbon moments before coming downstairs. When he was a child, it was her morning ritual. Taking a bite out of the dog that bit you was as routine to her as reaching over to turn off an alarm clock was to a working person.
His mother’s gaze sharpened as it swung from Stormy to Big Country. She smiled before laughing softly. “Aw, my poorbebe, you still bringing home these dirty untrained bitches, t’inkin’ you can turn them into loyal pets? It’s a nasty habit life ain’t broke you from yet, no?”
Cold rage tunneled his vision, dimming all sensations except the one to reach out, wrap his hand around his mother’s throat, throw her…push her off him,what was she…why was she doing this?He flinched as the memory transported him back in time. His hand twitched as violence warred with the repulsion of feeling her skin against his.Choke her, snap her fucking neck, let her feel helpless and numb, let her see how it feels to struggle and know it won’t save her,the buried part of him raged, fighting to break free from its tomb.
Something pressed against his chest, radiating warmth, dispelling the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that tried to sweep him away. He looked down and saw Stormy’s hand splayed across his heart. It could have been the hand of Buddha the way it banished the chaos within him, allowed him to take a breath, allowed the world to take shape again, sharpen into focus.
There was a sweet coolness weaving through the air streaming from the open front door. A steady rain fell outside, dampening the house’s entryway.
“Hello, you must be Emilia. My name’s Stormy, Stormy Redmond, and I think it’s absolutely adorable that you have such fond memories of Lucas caring for untrained bitches. Curious, though; do the only recollections you have of your son date back to when he was a boy?” Stormy tilted her head to the side, her smile polite. “If so, why is that?”
Big Country would’ve told anybody willing to listen that Belle Mère was born incapable of feeling shame, but right here, right now, that’s exactly what he saw, and for the first time he truly got it, understood he wasn’t obligated to carry around her discarded shame and make it his simply because she refused to do so. He looked down at his mother and knew he could release it back to its rightful owner, free his younger self from the burden of swaddling it inside his soul.
And true to form, Belle Mère resisted acknowledging the damage she’d done. Instead, her eyes narrowed, and she pointed an accusing finger at Stormy. “Thismyboy, I’m his mama, you don’t come in my house—”
“First of all, you’re not,” Stormy interrupted. “I met the woman he calls Mama and she’s a little black woman running things from a mountain top.”
“…Second of all, you got a lot of motherfuckin’ nerve yeah, bringing ya shabby ass in my grands’ home knowing they would’ve burned it to the ground before they let your perversions through the door,” Big Country said.
Belle Mère flinched as if he’d slapped her. “You can’t let this one twist ya mind around,mon fils, there’s a good woman wanting to bring our family back together, you can’t let this one twist ya dick and run ya life.”
He looked at her for a long time, wondering how such a woman got made. Terry would know, Terry understood the heart of evil; but him, he just understood the effects of it. He eased Stormy to his left, not wanting anything between him and Belle Mère now but truth.
“I was big for my age you used to say, ya special boy, wild, smarter than any man you ever knew. You and PaPere had a knock-down, drag-out fight that night ’cause you caught him flirting with Mrs. Jacobs down at the bait shop. Didn’t matter that you regularly spread your legs for profit, power, pettiness, didn’t matter what. You never kept it a secret. But let the ol’ man look the other way one time and you come to my room and do what you did. With all your crazy, never in a million years would I have thought you capable.”
“I was drunk,” she said. She’d tried to use that excuse again and again, PaPere accepted it, he and the grands never did.
“I’d seen you drunker.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “But no worries, I had the grands and Mama. I didn’t have to live with you day in and day out, didn’t have to see you move through life with no consequence for the pain you caused, didn’t have to live with the possibility that you’d hurt me again, though for truth a part of me always feared you’d find a way.”
“It couldn’t of been sobadmy darlin’ boy, look at you! You got more money and education than all your kin combined, you strong, you…why couldn’t y’all see that maybeIhelped make you into the man you are today.”
It was his turn to flinch.
