“I should have drowned you at birth!” Catherine hurled the words angrily at him. “I should have taken you to that cleaning basin and drowned you in it.”
Margaret cried now. Fresh tears fell from her cheeks at the horror of the words, but Theodore felt merely numb at his mother’s insults. He had heard it all before. He had learned how not to feel the pain of them.
He thought he could feel nothing anymore, but he had been quite wrong. Margaret coming into his life had showed him what capacity he had left to stillfeel.
“Did she do that to you?” Theodore addressed his wife alone. “Maggie… the back of your head.”
“Leave!” Catherine wailed. “Leave now! I will not let you take her. I shall save her from you.”
“No,” Margaret whispered. Without words, she made plain who had done it. She looked at Johnson behind him.
A fury took over Theodore. It was as if he could feel the thunder that sometimes overtook the clouds was now welling up inside of him. Calmly, with quiet fury, he turned back to look at Johnson.
The man’s hand didn’t shake, his dark eyes staring back at Theodore, peering over the barrel of the gun.
“Leave, be gone, demon, you – ah!” Catherine screeched as Theodore pulled back his hand and punched Johnson hard in the nose.
There was an almighty crack of bone as Johnson went down. His nose was broken, the blood pouring at once as Theodore stamped on his hand next. Johnson cried out, dropping the gun, allowing Theodore to snatch it up fast. Unconscious, Johnson could put up no further fight.
“You shall not win,” Catherine wailed once more, her voice moving.
Theodore whipped around to see that Catherine now stood over Margaret.
“You shall leave us. You shall run now, or… or I shall hurt her.” Catherine raised her hand.
It looked rather pathetic now, her hand held high over Margaret’s head.
Theodore had learned to fear her hits as a child, but not now. If he needed to, he could stop that strike.
“You will not hurt her,” Theodore warned. He didn’t match the animation in his mother’s voice but kept calm and dark. He moved toward the pair of them, just as Catherine raised her hand higher.
“Another step, and I will – no!” She broke off as he caught her wrist, stopping that hand from falling on Margaret.
“Hurt her… lay another finger on her…” Theodore said, his voice deathly now. He saw the fear in his mother’s eye.
Perhaps I can be like my father after all.
The terror he saw in those gray eyes made her no longer look like steel, but meek.
“I will make you pay for it,” Theodore warned. He then threw her wrist backward, forcing Catherine to stumble away.
She gripped her wrist, rubbing it continuously, checking for a wound, even though Theodore knew he hadn’t gripped hard.
“Maggie.” He dropped to his knees in front of Margaret and untied the ropes. “You’re bleeding.”
“Theo.” The moment he loosened one of her hands, she reached out toward him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
“For her. For what she put you through.” Her breath hitched. “It should never have happened.”
Her hand clutched tightly onto his jacket, the blood smattering across his lapel, though he hardly cared. As long as she was safe, he would have taken his whole suit being a complete mess. He took her hand and turned it over, kissing just above her wristand holding his lips to her for a few seconds longer than he should have done.
She whimpered, a soft sort of moaning sound, showing how much that kiss meant to her.
As much as it means to me.
“It’s not your task to apologize for it.” He released her ankles then took her out of the chair, turning her in his arms so she was safe, and he was between her and his mother. “I never expected an apology fromher.”
