“I held a mean grudge, and I fear you get that from me. I made him feel like it was all his fault, and it wasn’t, Ethan. I helped destroy it.”
He wanted to ask more.
But he had other things to discuss.
“He wants to see you. I was supposed to walk with him today, but I picked a fight because I do that really well.”
She swung her feet.
“Do you hate him?” she asked.
He sighed.
“It’s not so easy, Mom.”
She stopped him.
“It is easy. Do you hate him, Ethan Jackson Blackhawk?” Catherine asked.
He laughed.
“Oh, no. You just mommed me by using my whole name. I haven’t been mommed for close to forty years.”
That made her smile.
“Just answer the question.”
He didn’t have to think.
“No. I just don’t feel a connection to him. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt one. When I was little, if I remember, I don’t think I had a relationship with him.”
She stopped him.
“You did. When he would come over, right after the affair, you would go with him. He would take you for walks in the woods, and you would come back with handfuls of flowers for me. He said they were from you, but they were from him, too. In his own way, Wyler was trying to be saved. He was reaching up from the pit for someone to pull him up, and I was too angry to be kind to someone suffering. I knew he lost his mother, and I was still cold.”
He stopped her.
“He cheated on you.”
She was honest.
“Did he ever tell you that I flirted with his best friend a lot, trying to make him jealous so he’d pay more attention to me?” Catherine asked.
Ethan came full stop.
Oh, that sounded…bad.
“What?”
She nodded.
“See, he kept that to himself, so you’d let him be the bad guy. You lived with me, and you needed a mom. He knew how valuable that was. So, he carried that burden by making me the saint, and himself the sinner.”
He said one thing.
“Oh.”
Catherine sighed.
