by Laura Drewry
How could Hope do this to them? How could she do it to him? She’d said she loved him, and he believed her. Fuck, he let himself love her, too, and that, all on its own, sucked the breath out of him so fast and so hard he thought he’d suffocate right there.
She’d betrayed them in a way he’d never seen coming.
He honestly didn’t know if he had the strength to deal with the pain he expected to see on Finn’s face, but no matter what else happened, it was Ro’s job to be there for his brother, to try to protect him if he could, so he forced himself to stand up and look Finn in the eye.
The pain was deep, there was no hiding it, but before Ro could do anything, Finn wrapped his hand around Ro’s neck, pulled him closer, and kissed his forehead.
What the fuck? Finn was the little brother here—he wasn’t supposed to be the strong one. That was Ro’s job, and he was fucking it all up.
“Okay.” Liam waited until Ro turned around again, then held his hands up in one of those silent “just whoa” kind of gestures. After inhaling slowly, he licked his lips and directed his focus to Maggie again. “I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way up here for the coffee, so why don’t you tell us why you’re here.”
“Because I—” Maggie stifled a sob with her tissue, but when she spoke again, she just stared at the table. “I had to tell you…how very sorry I am for everything. All of it—everything my Ronan said, everything he hasn’t said yet, and for every single second I wasn’t here. I am so, so sorry. And I know you don’t—” Her voice cracked but she kept going. “I know you don’t believe me when I say that, and I don’t blame you, I don’t, but if you’ll let me, I…I’d like to try and explain.”
Ronan was already shaking his head; he didn’t want to hear this, didn’t need to hear it, but the look both Finn and Liam gave him said they did. So, armed with a fresh tissue, Maggie dabbed her eyes and blew her nose before starting.
Chapter 15
“After all she did, the lies, the death, and the wreckage, I still love her, you know? She’s my mom.”
Jax Teller, Sons of Anarchy
“When I married your father, he promised me we were going to have this amazing adventure, the two of us. That we were going to move to Canada and build a life better than either of our families could have imagined, and I believed him. I was a daft nineteen-year-old girl who’d never left Irish soil and who thought my job in the pub would be the most excitement I’d ever see. But then along came Jimmy O’Donnell, with his blue eyes and broad shoulders, and, oh my, but I was smitten.”
Was she smiling? Ro blinked hard and looked again, but by that time, whatever her expression had been a second ago, it was sober now.
“The first while was everything he’d promised; we had our wee flat over in Port Hardy, I got work as a waitress, and your da worked construction. He’d used all our savings to buy this piece of land out here in the middle of nowhere, and we spent every weekend clearing it and getting it ready to build.”
She stopped, wiped her nose again.
“ ’Twasn’t easy, and Jimmy was frustrated because I was feelin’ a little blue and I wasn’t strong enough to do some of the work, but we got it done. We moved over here just after my Ronan was born, and by that time your da had made a name for himself both as a carpenter and as a fishing guide, so I thought things would get easier, but they didn’t; they got worse.
“Jimmy was gone a great deal of the time, you see, either out on the boat or back in Port Hardy working, and I was here by myself with the baby and a shotgun for when the bears came. And they came a lot back then. There was no phone service yet, so the only way I could talk to anyone was over the radio. I was used to being around people and the noise of a city, you see, but when I told Jimmy I was blue, he told me to cop on, said I was just being a stupid girl, that I had my Ronan with me all day so there was no reason to be lonely or sad. By the time my Liam came along, your da had started to add on to this place and we had guests here more often, which was good because it kept him here, but it was mostly men, and they weren’t interested in talking to me about anything except when their next meal would be ready.”
Ronan pinched his lips together as tight as he could, not only to keep his comments to himself but to stop any kind of sympathy from escaping. He would not feel sorry for her. He wouldn’t.
“I was fiercely tired and anxious all the day, worried about your da out on the boats and about being alone here with two little boys. This was our dream, our adventure; I should have been happy but I wasn’t. ’Twas like I was numb most days, and when I wasn’t, I was pissed off—at Jimmy, at you boys, at the moon and stars, it didn’t matter. My mind wasn’t right, I know that now, but back then I just thought I was going crazy, because nothing ever made me happy. I was sad and empty all the time.”
She couldn’t have paused for more than a few seconds, but it was long enough, and when her red-rimmed eyes finally looked up, Ro moved closer to Finn, as if he could somehow protect him from what they all knew was coming.
“When I found out I was pregnant with my Finn, I wanted to die. I’m sorry, my boy, that was not your fault, but it’s how I felt. I was too embarrassed to tell my doctor that, because he was a friend of Jimmy’s, so I kept it to myself and waited for the sadness to pass. But it never did, and after you were born, it got worse again. Your da was too busy with this place, he didn’t have time to listen to me go on, especially when I cried—and I cried a lot.”
Ro didn’t dare look at his brothers. They all remembered that—how much Maggie cried all the time and how Da always told her to give over, that she was upsetting the boys.
“It was like a darkness that would hang over me for days and weeks, sometimes months, and then it would ease up, but it never fully went away.” It seemed as though she had to force herself to look at Finn, but she did it, and if Ro was going to cut her slack on anything, it was that fact right there. “That night, the night I left…do you remember what happened that day?”
Ro saw Finn’s jaw twitch ever so slightly as he shook his head.
“The three of you were out back playing ball; Ronan was at the bat and Liam was pitching. Struck him out, three pitches, and you started making fun of Ronan, telling him he swung like a little girl. It wasn’t anything the lot of you hadn’t done a hundred times before, buggin’ each other the way you always did, but I couldn’t stand it that time. It got inside my head like a bee and just wouldn’t stop buzzin’.”
It wasn’t until she said that that the memory came back to Ronan, not because it had bothered him that Finn called him a little girl—shit, they called one another worse things than that all the time—but because he remembered her walking around the kitchen, waving her hand around her head and muttering about the buzzing when there wasn’t anything near her. He remembered thinking for a second that she was crazy, but then he’d gone off to do something and forgotten all about it.
“You just kept on,” she said, “like the three of ya always did, but something in me snapped that time and scared the living bejesus outta me. It was like there was a voice in me head telling me to shut you up, to cover your mouth until you stopped making noise.”
Maggie’s voice barely got above a whisper, but somehow it weighed the air down, making it hard to breathe.
“I never touched you,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “But I came close, and I tell ya, that put the heart crossways in me chest. I knew I had to get away or I was going to hurt you, and I couldn’t bear the thought of hurtin’ my Finn. I don’t remember all of what I said that night, my boy, but none of it should have been said a’tall. What I do remember was horrid, and I know I can’t ever take it back or make you un-hear it, but I swear to you, my Finn, on my very soul, that none of it was your fault. You didn’t make me leave. ’Twas me; I wasn’t right in the head.”
Scorching fire burned Ronan’s eyes and throat as Finn choked out the question the three of them had wondered so many times over the last twenty-one years.
“Oh, my boy, I wanted to. Every day I wanted to pick up the phone, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand what was going on in my head, so how could any of you? You were all so young. And I knew if I called, Jimmy would cry like he did when I left, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it.”
She fingered the edge of her mug, then pushed it to the middle of the table.
“I took the bus from Port Hardy to Vancouver and walked straight into the first hospital I could find. I stayed there for quite a while up on the psychiatric floor. They gave me med’cine and I talked to people—the nurses, the doctors, some of the other loonies there—and I was getting better, I really was. But then there were cutbacks at the hospital, and because the doctors didn’t think I was a danger to anyone, they let me go, even though I told them I wasn’t ready. And I wasn’t.
“I had no money and nowhere to go, and my medication ’twas fiercely expensive, so I had to stop taking it. I ended up living in the shelters and out on the street, and I’m not tellin’ you that so you feel sorry for me, boys, I’m tellin’ you so you understand why I didn’t phone. I couldn’t have you boys knowing your ma was nothin’ but a bum living on the streets. Year after year I ended up back in hospital a bunch of times, but they couldn’t keep me and I didn’t want them to, because it made it so much worse when they put me out the street.”
Ronan felt Finn flinch, but when he turned to look at him, Finn just shook his head.
“And then one day I was walking by one of those computer and telly stores, like, and hand to God, I don’t know what made me stop, but I did. One of the tellies inside was on a sports channel and they were on about the baseball draft, you know. What did I care about baseball? All it did was make me remember my last day here with you boys, so I started to leave, but suddenly there was my Liam putting on that Detroit jersey, and you were all right there with him. You boys and your da—you all looked so very handsome, so grown up, and I knew then that no matter what had happened in the past, I had to find a way to get right. It was seeing you boys that did that for me.
“ ’Twasn’t easy, and I ended up in my dark place so many times, but after a few more years I met the most lovely doctor in the whole world. She spent so much time talking to me about my depression, helping me find the med’cine that was right, that didn’t leave me feeling worse or sick to me stomach. I went to her clinic most every day and she worked with me, put me on to a couple other head docs who helped me get right. She gave me a job in her clinic and let me sleep in one of the exam rooms for a couple months until I found me own place. Weren’t nothin’ fancy, but ’twas a start. And every day I longed for my boys, but I knew I’d been away too long, and the longer I put it off, the harder ’twas. Cowardly for sure, but I feared you would hate me, as you do, and as you should, and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with that. I just…I couldn’t have it.”
It was on Ro’s tongue to say that they didn’t hate her, but he swallowed it back because he’d spent way too many years convincing himself he did hate her, and he wasn’t about to give that up so easily.
“I swear to you, my boys, what you’ve said about your da…about him hurting you…” Maggie pressed a clean tissue over her face and sobbed the same gut-wrenching way she’d done the night she left, and just like then, not a single one of them moved to comfort her, not even when she lowered the tissue and pressed both her hands over her chest.
“It rips me that my Jimmy would raise his hand to you that way, that I made him do it, and that I wasn’t here to stop him. Sure an’ I’ll never forgive myself for what we’ve done to you.”
She balled her hand and pressed it tight against her mouth as she turned her gaze to Ronan.
“You’ve got every right to be angry with me, my Ronan.”
It took him longer than he liked to swallow the lump knotted in his throat. “I’m not the only one who’s pissed here, Maggie.”
“Don’t I know it, but I also know it was hardest on you, my oldest: You were always the one who looked after your brothers when you saw me so sad. You were the one who had to be a grown-up before you shoulda been, and I knew even as I left that night that ’twould be you who made sure they were looked after. You thought your da and I were so daft that we didn’t know you took punishment for the two of them as often as you did, that you’d say it was you who’d broken the window or carved that curse word into the bar, when it wasn’t. ’Twas your brothers, but you said it was you so they wouldn’t catch the trouble for it. You’d a done anything for those two, but who did you have to look out for you? Weren’t no one, was there?”
“I was fine.” He ground the lie out between clenched teeth and refused to look at either Finn or Liam, even though he knew they were both staring at him.
“You couldn’t possibly have been fine,” Maggie said, sniffling. “Finn was a handful as a lad, always getting into something, always pushing the line, but he never stopped, because he knew you and Liam would have his back no matter what.”
Finn and Liam both started fidgeting, but not Ro. He wasn’t going to let her get to him.
“It’s called being a family, Maggie.”
“ ’Course ’tis, but who had your back, my Ronan? If what you say about your da is true, then I wager you done what you could to save Finn from a few of those beatings, didn’t ya?”
“What the hell else was I supposed to do, Maggie? He was just a little kid.”
“Aye, but what about Liam? I imagine you took some for him, too, am I right?”
“That was different; Liam’s arm was his ticket out of here, so I couldn’t let Da do anything to jeopardize that.”
“Right you are, my Ronan, you couldn’t, because you were always the protector, whether you were protecting your brothers from me or your da, or whether it was me you were protecting by keeping them two away when I was trapped in my dark place. It’s what you always did. It’s who you are.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Aye, but I do. That day I saw you all on the telly, ’twas you that was crying—not your da, not even Liam. ’Twas you because you knew you’d done your job. I don’t know how you did it, but you’d a done whatever was needed to help Liam get to where he was, and those tears you were crying, those were because you were so proud of him, am I right? That’s what it feels like when you love someone more than you love yourself, my Ronan.”
Ronan clenched his jaw tighter, refusing to answer, but Liam let out a gush of breath as he staggered toward the nearest chair.
“Jesus, Ro, she’s right.” He banged his elbows down on the table and wrapped his hands around his head. Finn slid down the counter until he was sitting on the floor with his knees tucked up to his chest.
“We always thought you were just a bossy pain in the ass,” Finn said quietly. “But you were being the parent because we didn’t have one. How the fuck did we never notice that before?”
“Who cares?” Ro bellowed. “This isn’t about me; it’s about Maggie.”
“Aye,” she said. “ ’Tis, and maybe I shouldn’ta come—”
“Ya think?”
“But when Luka approached me, I knew to be sure that ’twas the Almighty himself giving me this chance, to tell you all how very truly sorry I am for”—she hiccuped on a sob, then shook her head, as though trying to shake more of them away—“for not being the mother you all needed and so rightly deserved, and especially for everything I said that horrible, horrible night. I was sick, aye, but the words still came out of my mouth and into your ears, and no matter how many times I say it, no amount of sorries can ever take that back or make it right.”
“So…what?” Ronan asked. “What do you want from us?”
“Nothin’. I don’t want a damn thing from you, my Ronan. I honestly don’t. I know you’ve got yourself a good life here, and I know ’twas selfish of me to come and intrude on it this way, but I finally realized I’m not gettin�
� any younger, and if there was even the slightest chance that one or all of my boys could find it in their hearts to forgive me, then I needed to take that chance. And if you can’t, I respect that, but at least I know I tried.”
Silence blanketed the room with a weight Ronan had never felt before. Neither Liam nor Finn had to say anything—Ro already knew what they were thinking, because Kate and Jessie had made them soft, and once a man let himself get soft over a woman, he opened himself up to trusting everyone. And that’s where Ronan had made his mistake.
He’d let himself get soft over Hope, and this was what she’d done to him. She’d not only dragged their pain back into their lives, but she’d done it for ratings, and that was just too much. So Liam and Finn could feel bad for Maggie all they wanted; Ronan wasn’t biting.
Yeah, it was awful to hear what Maggie had been through, it really was, but he couldn’t let himself care. Not now. It was going to take every last ounce of strength he had to close up the gaping hole in his fuckin’ heart, the one Hope and Maggie had just ripped open, and he didn’t have it in him to focus on anything or anyone else.
Maggie had been right about one thing—Ronan had never had anyone to help him, not even when she was around, and yet he’d survived. He’d survive this, too, the same way he always did. By himself. By walling that hole up and pushing on.
He had his brothers, he had Jessie and Kate, he even had JD, and they were the ones he cared about. They were the ones he’d keep behind the wall with him. And pretty soon he’d have a niece or nephew to love and spoil rotten.
He didn’t need anyone else. Not his mother and not Hope.
Finn let his head fall back against the cupboard, the bang making them all jump a little. “So what do we do now?” he asked. “We’ve got a lodge full of guests and three days of filming left to get through.”