Page 51 of Broken Warrior
“I’ll bring them on my next visit. Anything else?”
“Cigarettes.” She giggles. “But obviously she can’t smoke.”
Sounds about right.“Right. Thanks. Is she in her cottage or...”
“It says that she was in the rec room about a half hour ago, she’s probably still there.” The girl grabs a name tag and scribbles my name, the date, and time, as well as who I’m here for on it then hands it over. “You know where you’re going?”
“I’m good. Thank you.” I swear this girl is giving me flirty looks but maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just paranoid and reading too much into everything because I’m anxious about talking to Tate for the first time in months. Not that it matters. I’m very much a taken man even if I haven’t seen my girl face to face in ninety-two days. That girl can flirt all she wants but my heart belongs to Tate Covington.
When I wind my way through the halls and get to the rec room, I find my mother sitting at a table, alone, playing solitaire. She seems so calm, so peaceful. It’s almost a shame that I have to fuck it all up for the sake of my recovery, but I have to do it. This is long overdue.
“Hi, Ma,” I say quietly as I round the table.
She doesn’t look up, just keeps her eyes fixed on the cards. “Finlay.”
Oh good.
I can already tell it’s going to be one ofthosevisits.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Is it ok if I sit?”
“It’s a free country,” she says as she lifts an ace and starts a pile of hearts. “You can sit if you want, makes no difference to me.”
I pull out the chair across from her and drop down with a sigh. Her mood isn’t great but she’s with it today. I should be able to get through this knowing she understands what I’m saying at least.
And she cuts right to the chase. “What are you doing here, boy?”
“I came to talk, to see how you’re doing.”
Ma still doesn’t look up but makes a grand gesture of motioning to herself. “This is how I’m doing. You’ve seen, we talked, now you can leave.”
I scrub a hand over my face, my cheeks a little prickly since I didn’t shave this morning before my meeting. “I have something to say, if that’s alright. I can make it quick but it’s important for me to get this off my chest.”
“You here to discuss your father?”
My hands ball into fists but I shake my head. “I’m not here to talk about Dad, I’m here to ask for your forgiveness, to make amends.”
Her pale blue eyes flick to mine but only briefly before she goes back to her cards. “Sounds like you are here to talk about Mac.”
“No.” I take a deep breath and push down the anger trying to break through. “I’m here to ask you to forgive me for ignoring everyone’s advice and keeping you at home for my own purposes instead of getting you the medical attention you needed. I’m asking for forgiveness for not providing you with the appropriate care you needed for almost six and a half years, for treating you like a burden I had to carry instead of—“
“You should be asking me to forgive you for ripping me out of my home and dumping me here.”Four of clubs on five of diamonds.“You should be asking me to forgive you for ruining my life from the second you were conceived.”Jack of hearts on queen of spades. “You should be asking for my forgiveness for lying in order to steal your father away from me, and then kill him to spite me.”Seven of hearts on six of hearts. “You should be begging me to forgive you for existing, for destroying everything I worked so hard to create and casting me aside like ash in the wind.”
And there it is.
That is exactly what I was expecting her to say, and now that she’s said it I feel oddly at peace.
She used to say those things daily, used to tell me all the time that I lied about what happened to me as a kid and used it to take my dad away from her. My mother blamed me for their failing marriage, blamed me for everything that happened between them, and then blamed me when the club was attacked, for putting thoughts of retirement into Dad’s head that led to the party that led to his death, and I believed her.
I believed her words for years and when I held my dad as he bled out on the floor, when I spent his last few minutes on this earth telling me how much he loved me, how proud of me he was, the only words about my mother a request to take care of her because he couldn’t anymore? I knew she was right, and in order to atone, I carried out my father’s dying wish as punishment.
She hates that I was the last person Dad talked to, the last person he thought about before he slipped into a coma. And she really hates that I was the one sitting at my father’s bedside in the hospital when he took his last breath.
I stole her thunder again, stole her husband from her, and she never missed a chance to remind me about it.
