Spit flew from his mouth and landed cold on Theo’s cheek.
“Imagine that: a prodigy, tanking his own future and throwing away his family name, just so he could give himself an out to go fuck around with colored glass instead. What a goddamnwaste.”
Lloyd shoved at Theo’s shoulder, and he stumbled backward as he tried to regain his footing. “Do you know how you’ve hurt my sister? Do you know how you’ve tarnished our name? You’re your mother’s greatest failure. You’re the shame of the Redmond legacy, the biggest disappointment this family has seen in generations, and if you keep wasting time on your preciousart, acting just as lazy as yourfather—”
BAM.
Theo didn’t even know he’d raised his fist.
But all of a sudden, all he saw was red.
Lightning crackled across his knuckles and through his arm.
And Lloyd fell to the ground in a heap.
“Don’t you ever talk about my dad again.”
“THEODORE!” his mom yelled as his uncle turned over and wiped blood away from his nose with a groan. As soon as he did, more gushed down his face. “What are you doing?!”
Theo stared at his hand and flexed his fingers over his palm. “Something I should have done years ago,” he muttered, almost to himself.
“You broke my nose!” Lloyd spat bitterly as he turned to look at his sister. “You see? You see what I was telling you? The boy has always been too volatile!”
“Volatile?” Theo huffed. “I always just thought I was creative.” A strange cold sensation ran through his body. All feeling had been replaced with an oddly liberating numbness—and once it spread, he had no desire to stop it.
He could see everything clearly now.
All of it.
He gazed slowly back over at his mother. “You didn’t stop him. You didn’t interrupt. You really think I’m a failure, don’t you? I’m a disappointment. I’m a mistake.”
For some reason, voicing that truth didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.
“Because you called me all the way here to ask me to give up the one thing that makes me feel the mostme, the one thing I love and I’m good at, the thing that makes me feelalive, and you were asking me to do it for you. Not for my benefit: foryours.”
Eleanor’s eyes went wide. “No, Teddy, that’s not what I was thinking. I want you with me. I was asking you to join me, to take an interest in the family bus—”
“IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT YOU!” His mother flinched. “You haveneverhad my best interests at heart, never! I havealwaysbeen your single greatest mistake!”
“That’s not true!” Eleanor’s face turned red. She stepped over and jutted her chin up at her son. “I love you! I gave you the best I could. I put you in the best schools, gave you the best education, sent you to the best therapists, hired the best tutors—”
“You don’t fucking get it! That’s not love. None of that was for me, it was all foryou!” Theo sneered down at her. “You did that to assuage your guilt for never being home because you were a partner at your firm, and for divorcing Dad, and then you put me in therapy because you couldn’t understand why I was so fucking angry all the time and why I needed art so goddamn much. It wasn’t for me, it was foryou.
“Do you have any idea what you’re asking of me? I TRIED TO KILL MYSELF WHEN I WAS AT YALE!” Theo screamed, all sense of propriety gone now. He could control the words as much as he could control his volume. “I hated every fucking second of being at that suffocating school, trying to live up to your preciouslegacy, trying to shove myself into a box that wasn’t made for me—trying to make myself smaller so I would actually fit in your shoes for once. Well, guess what, Mother:I don’t fucking fit.I never have.
“You want me to cut my hair and wear a suit and get a law degree so my image can bolster yours in the society papers, and you want me to parade around and act like you’re the pinnacle of virtue, like you’re the best mother in the whole wide world, the most generous mother, bequeathing me thefamily fucking legacywhen there were stretches of time growing up where I didn’t see you at all for weeks on end, I only saw mynanniesand myfatherbecause my own mother couldn’t be bothered to come home to her husband and her son because her work was far more important.”
Horror flashed over her face, but Theo couldn’t stop himself.
“Yes, I tried to kill myself at Yale. Didn’t they tell you? Diego knows,” he spat. “He came to visit me one weekend and found me passed out on my dorm room floor. He called an ambulance when I wasn’t responsive and they had to pump my stomach. How’s that for your fuckinglegacy?” He pointed accusingly at his mother. “And now you’re asking me to do it all over again? To change my career into something more palatable?
“Do you want me to change my name too? Should I ditch Dad’s shameful, low-class, blue-collar namethat you gave meand take on the Redmond one, just so you can finally put it in the papers that Theodore Henry Redmond the Fourth, Esquire, finally took over the family business so his mother could spend more time yachting in the Seychelles?
“I’m just getting started, and instead of supporting me, you ask me to upend my whole life, my whole identity foryou. To put my art and my ideas and my future on hold for the sake of yours!” He threw his hands up. “But oh no, poor Teddy the mistake, the blemish on your perfect record, the untouchable half-breed is fucking up again. We’d better protect him from himself and intervene as afamily, because if there’s anything the Redmonds think they’re good at, it’s circling the fucking wagons and protecting their own.”
His face twisted in disgust. “Except theydon’t. You didn’t protect me when I was a kid, you didn’t protect me when I was at Yale, and you’re not protecting me now! Here I am, showing up to these stupid fucking family dinners foryearswhen all I want to do is be at home!” Theo ran his hands over his face and frantically through his hair.
Something had broken inside him.
