Page 58 of Beautiful Venom
Helena Davenport was a striking beauty in her youth but now carries the weariness of a life spent in quiet suffering. Her once-lustrous dark hair has thinned and gradually turned silver at the scalp. It’s swept into a simple but elegant bun, a remnant of her former sophistication. Her almond-shaped eyes, icy blue like mine, rarely show emotion, as though the weight of her depression has drained her ability to feel.
She walks silently toward me, her posture always slightly hunched as if burdened by invisible chains. Helena is slender but frail, as though a gust of wind could shatter her. Unless she’s forced to by social obligations, she seldom engages with the world outside her private quarters, where she often remains hidden, staring at the same old book she never finishes or talking to the koi fish in the garden pond.
“Hello, Mother.” I paint a smile on my face and bend down so she can hug me.
Her bony hand taps my back with no emotion. When she speaks, it’s slow, as if every word is a hassle. “It’s been a long time since I last saw you. You grew up and became so handsome.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“Call me Mom like when you were young.”
“It’d be better not to.”
Her shoulders droop, but she doesn’t fight it or even insist on it.
Though her beauty has faded, there’s still a delicate grace to her movements, a hollow reflection of what she used to be. My mother’s chronic depression has rendered her emotionally absent, her once-kind spirit dulled by years of belonging to the system.
I used to think Helena was different. She loved me and showered me with the affection her husband was incapable of, but then she retreated into her shell and left me for the sharks.
At the age of six.
After that, I stopped calling her Mom or thinking of her as a mother.
She’s just another pawn in their game.
“Honey.” She places her hand on my arm and it’s like being touched by a ghost. “Mom is sorry.”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“I know.”
“Do you blame me?”
“No.”
“Are you just saying that to placate me?”
“Of course not.”
Her gaze grows blank, shadows settling within. “You speak just like your father. I don’t like it.”
I pat her head like she did when I was six—after I was waterboarded in Father’s dungeon to near death—and say the same sentence she said to me then, word for word. “You’ll get used to it.”
A sob tears from her throat as I walk past her.
If I were the same Kane from fifteen years ago, I would’ve stopped and consoled her. I would’ve taken her to the garden to watch the koi fish or brought her flowers.
But my ability to excuse her for not being able to protect me or to feel sympathy for her plight has long been stripped from me.
My mother is just an unfortunate woman who got caught in the jaws of power.
She gave birth to a weakling—me—and my father made sure to fix it.
I knock on a dark mahogany door and then push it open.
A drink in hand, my father’s tall figure is standing by the floor-to-ceiling window. He’s dressed in a tailored gray suit, his back straight and his posture upright, unlike the wife he broke.
