‘Yes, and I meant things like get you your favourite food or buy your favourite flowers.’ He knew he sounded childish and petulant, but he couldn’t help but feel blindsided by her request. ‘Not this. Anything but this.’
‘Please. This is for me. It’s important tome.’ She spoke softly, almost wearily.
Fin sat in silence, chewing the request over and over in his mind. Was he really going to be able to say no to a dying woman? Did his hatred for his father really run that deep?
‘Does he know you’re here?’ Fin asked quietly.
‘No. I’d like you to tell him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was my husband for twenty years, and before I die I want him to know I forgive him.’
This was too much. Any ounce of patience Fin had left immediately vanished.
‘How?’ he cried. ‘After everything he did to you. To us?’ Rage was surging through him, uncontrollably taking over every one of his senses. ‘Tell me how, Mum? How can you forgive that? He left us. He leftyouall alone.’
‘I wasn’t alone,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, you were. You used to say it all the time. You’d cry constantly about how lonely you were without him. How unfair it was that he could do this and be happy and remarry and you were stuck by yourself.’ Memories cut through him like razor blades. ‘Do you know how many times I had to listen to you cry yourself to sleep over this? I was fifteen, Mum.Fifteen.All I needed was my mum. All I wanted after he left was for you and I to be together. To create a decent home. Yet all you ever did was pine after him. I wasn’t good enough. Nothing I could offer was good enough.’
‘That’s not true.’ She scrunched her eyes up tightly.
‘Really? Even after I left to go travelling, the only times I’d hear from you were when you wanted to talk about Dad. It was always about him.’
‘I know.’ She shook her head in despair. ‘Don’t you think I look back and wish I could have done it differently, Fin? Don’t you think I look back and hate myself for being thatway?’ Her breathing was growing heavier, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
‘But it hasn’t changed, has it?’ he shouted, forcing himself to stay seated as the frustration threatened to lift him from his chair. ‘Even now, on your deathbed, you want me to call him. Yet it took a complete stranger to call me behind your back to let me know you were sick. How do you think that makes mefeel, Mum?’ His voice cracked as he spoke the last word. All of the years of pain he’d so artfully buried were now free from their hiding place.
‘I didn’t think you wanted me in your life any more. You stopped writing to me when you moved to America. I tried to call a couple of times but you didn’t answer. I just assumed you had started a new life, without me. And you know what? How could I blame you? I was hardly mother of the year.’ She threw her head back as the tears ran down her papery cheeks. ‘And I didn’t call you when I got sick because I didn’t want to burden you. You’d spent enough time picking me up off the floor and caring for me. I didn’t want to put you through any more of it.’
Fin couldn’t speak. The anguish on his mum’s face was almost unbearable, but the flames of anger were still burning brightly.
‘I failed you, Fin. On so many levels I failed you, and it took me too long to see it. I’m sorry, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I don’t want to die with any resentment or any regret. I want to go with a clean slate. So please, will you help me?’
Fin closed his eyes and let his head hang for a moment.
‘Will you call your father for me?Please.’
‘Fine. I’ll do it.’ He kept his voice devoid of emotion; he needed to try and distance himself as much as possiblefrom his own feelings. ‘When? When do you want me to call him?’
The look on her face said enough. ‘You want me to call him now, don’t you?’ He stood reluctantly. ‘Do you have his number?’
His mother nodded. ‘In my address book on the side.’
‘I’ll be back in a second.’ He turned to leave, grabbing the little book and shoving it hard in his pocket. Just as he was about to close the door, he stopped. ‘You were wrong …’ He looked back over his shoulder at the tiny figure, with her hopeful tired eyes. ‘It was never a burden. You were my mum.’
He didn’t even wait for her response before closing the door gently behind him.
*
Just do it already.
Call, tell him the news and hang up.
Fin knew he didn’t have the luxury of time to waste, but it didn’t stop him from standing outside procrastinating. He’d left his mum more than ten minutes ago, and still he hadn’t called.
‘Simple,’ he muttered, pacing back and forth along the main road outside the care home. ‘It’s simple.’ Fin looked down at his phone and hit call.
