by H. P. Bayne
“So what brings the two of you by today?” she asked. “Or did you just want a visit with your mom?” She beamed up at Sully who’d circled the island to stand next to her.
“There’s actually something we need to talk to you about.”
She looked up at him, studied his face for a few seconds. “It’s something I’m not going to want to hear.”
He shook his head. “But it’s something you need to hear.”
Dez glanced behind him. The kitchen table was littered with its usual array of newspapers, flyers and magazines but was otherwise clear, the logical place to have this conversation.
“Maybe we should sit down,” he suggested, receiving a nod from Sully in response.
“Good idea.”
Mara glanced back at the coffeemaker. “Are you sure you don’t want coffee first?”
“I’d rather just get this out,” Sully said. “Is that okay?”
“It depends. You’re not leaving again, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. And nobody’s sick or dying. It’s about something that already happened. About Dad and Aiden.”
Sully’s words proved sufficient to get her circling the island for the table where Dez pulled out her usual chair. The brothers gravitated to their old spots, leaving just one chair—their dad’s—empty.
Or not so empty. Sully’s eyes flitted to it, held there a long moment, long enough for a sheen of tears to form.
“He’s here?” Dez asked, his voice breaking unexpectedly over the last word. His own eyes went to their dad’s chair at the nod from Sully. It looked no less empty.
Never in his life had Dez wanted to see one of Sully’s ghosts. Not until today.
“You see him?” Mara asked. For a moment, she smiled. Only for a moment.
Then she remembered.
“But Sully, you only see them if….”
She didn’t finish. Sully met her eye and nodded.
“No.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“No. It’s not…. It can’t be. He—It was a heart attack. He just had a heart attack. Like his father.”
“You remember how Lowell said he injected Dad with epinephrine to try to save him?” Sully said. “The thing is, that’s not really how it happened. Lowell did inject him, but Dad wasn’t in any medical distress at the time. Lowell… he killed Dad, Mom. He did it on purpose. That’s why I can see him.”
“No, there has to be some sort of mistake, some misunderstanding. Lowell wouldn’t do that. Not to his own brother.”
Dez’s gaze returned to the empty chair, willing himself to see. Hearing it out loud like this again, seeing the impact on their mom, he needed some comfort. They all did. Just to know, to be able to see his dad, even for a moment, it would be enough. Enough to be able to meet his eye one more time, to be greeted by his warm smile, maybe hear a word of encouragement if he was really lucky. That was all he needed. Just one second.
It didn’t come.
Sully could see though. Given the way ghosts often appeared to him—looking very much dead rather than like the living person they’d been—maybe that was worse.
Sully was staring at the chair now. “You’ve never shown me how it happened. Show me now, so I can explain better.” He reached out a hand. Often, if ghosts touched him they could more easily pass along their thoughts. “Dad?”
“What’s going on?” Dez asked.
“He won’t show me,” Sully said. “I think he’s trying to protect me.”
“Sully, no,” Mara said. “I don’t want you to see that either. Stop. It’s okay.”
“But I need you to believe me.”
“I do believe you. I have always believed you. You can see him, and he’s obviously made you aware of why. That’s enough for me. But I don’t…. Why? His own brother? How could he do that? Why would he do that?”
Sully took a breath. Dez knew this was going to be the hardest part, and he thanked God Sully was here to do this. No way would Dez ever get the words out. He wasn’t even sure he could get through hearing them out loud again.
“Mom, Dad isn’t alone,” Sully said. “Aiden’s with him.”
He paused, giving the words a moment to sink in.
They did, partway at least. “You see Aiden too?”
Sully held her eye, nodded slowly.
The remaining colour left her face, but she managed one more word, a question. “Lowell?”
Sully nodded again.
Mara’s eyes filled with tears. Shaking hands came up to cover the bottom half of her face as a sob erupted. Dez slid out of his chair, knelt next to his mom and bundled her into an embrace, holding her there while she cried.
Sully, slumped in his seat with eyes downcast, held onto the rest of the explanation as Dez uttered useless words of comfort into his mom’s hair. No way anything either of them said now was going to help the situation. Certainly, nothing Sully had yet to say was going to do anything but make this worse.
Dez stayed where he was until Mara regained control. She tried to stand, presumably to go for the tissue box, but Dez gently pushed her back down and retrieved it for her. She took one and blew her nose, and ended up needing a second.
“I’m sorry,” came a quietly spoken apology from Sully. “I wish I didn’t have to—”
“Don’t,” she snapped, the one word loud and crisp enough to draw the immediate attention of both her sons. “Don’t you dare apologize to me. There’s only one person who should be sorry, and it isn’t you. The fact the two of you are having to put yourselves through this to tell me only makes me hate him even more.” Her eyes went to Dez as he returned to his chair. The pain was still there in her expression, but a flash of heated anger had superseded it. “Have you confronted him?”
“No. I wanted to—still do—but no. Sully and Eva have been holding me back.”
She nodded, eyes next going to Sully. “And you?”
“Um… I don’t—I mean….”
Sully had evidently reached the part he was going to struggle with, so Dez took up the slack. “Yeah, he did. Two years ago. It’s the reason he faked his own death and why he’s still in hiding. That supposed suicide attempt, when I found him in his tub with his wrists slashed? That was Lowell too. Him and one of the orderlies from Lockwood. And when I managed to save Sully, Lowell had him committed instead, probably made sure they kept him drugged up in there so he couldn’t say anything.”
“Oh, Sully, no.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay now.”
“Why would you have done that? Why would you have gone to confront Lowell by yourself?”
“I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight. Dad tried to stop me, but I was beyond listening. The only thing I could think about was beating a confession out of Lowell. I almost had him too. But then Hackman turned up.”
“Why wouldn’t you have taken Dez with you?”
“I didn’t know,” Dez said. “He didn’t bother to fill me in until a couple of days ago.”
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Sully said. “And I didn’t know what you would do. If I was angry enough to go after him, I knew you would be. Dad died confronting Lowell, and I almost did too. I couldn’t let that happen to you. Either of you.”
“It wouldn’t have happened,” Dez said. “I would have killed him first.”
“Right. And you spending life in prison for killing that bastard was such a great alternative.”
Mara laid a hand over one of Dez’s to cut off his impending argument. “We know now. That’s what’s important.” She turned back to Sully. “How long have you known?”
“About Dad? Since it happened. I saw him in the car with us on the way to the hospital. I didn’t know the details at that point, but I figured it out pretty quickly.”
“And Aiden?”
Sully’s eyes flitted from Mara to Dez back to Mara, and then down to his lap. Dez’s insides tensed. Another confession was coming.
“Almost as long as I’ve been he
re.”
The reply had been mumbled, but Dez heard it nonetheless. “You mean since you were seven?”
Sully nodded, didn’t look up.
Dez pushed away from the table and stood, anger heating up inside him all over again. “Christ.”
A fresh sheen of tears formed in Mara’s eyes. “How is he? How does he seem to you?”
“Do you really want me to talk about this?”
“Please, Sully. I need to know.”
“He doesn’t look physically hurt or anything. He’s just dripping wet. What you need to know about him is he’s stronger than you’d expect. He’s come around a couple of times when it meant saving Dez. He looks out for him, and he does a great job of it.”
Mara nodded, allowing a couple of tears to course unchecked down her cheeks. “My boy. My baby boy.” She averted her eyes downward as a small sob erupted, but she held onto anything else, sniffling back emotion until she could meet Sully’s eye once again. “Is he here too? With your dad?”
“They’re together. They’re almost always together now.”
She managed a smile, her eyes drifting to the empty chair, searching it out. She held her gaze first at a spot that would have been Aiden’s approximate height at his death, then moved it up to what would have been the level of Flynn’s eyes had he been physically there to meet it.
“I love you both so, so much,” she said. “I’ve never, not for one day stopped thinking about you.” She glanced back quickly to Sully before returning her visual attention to her husband’s chair. “They can hear me, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. They’re smiling.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
Mara took another long moment to study the space, as if hoping she’d see something herself. At last, she returned her eyes to Sully. “Why didn’t you ever say anything during all those years? About Aiden, I mean.”
“I always knew how broken all of you were about him. At first, I didn’t know I only saw homicide victims, so I didn’t realize what happened to him was anything but an accident. And at first, I was uncomfortable talking about the things I saw.”
Dez tried to get a handle on his annoyance before responding. He knew he’d failed when his words came out sounding more accusatory than questioning. “You knew we weren’t like your other foster families. You knew we wouldn’t be assholes about it. You didn’t think we’d want to know?”
“I tried, okay? At first, I didn’t know how to talk about it. The idea of bringing it up to any of you made me really anxious. By the time I’d been here a year or so, I decided I’d try to tell you. But I didn’t know how to say it without hurting you worse, so I talked to Lowell one day when he was over keeping an eye on me. I told him what I’d been seeing. I wanted to ask him to help me talk to you guys, but he kind of went crazy.”
“What do you mean, ‘went crazy?’ ” Mara asked.
“He accused me of lying, of seeking attention. He went off on me. Said I was making up this ghost based on information I’d learned from you. Said I’d only make things worse for you if I told you. I insisted, that I was really seeing Aiden. I described what he looked like when I saw him. Then Lowell hit me.”
“Hit you how?” Dez asked.
“Punched me. In the head.”
The anger already building inside Dez’s insides bubbled. “Hard?”
Sully nodded. “Sent me across the living room. There was a bump after, but under the hair where it didn’t show.”
“Where was I when this happened?”
“You weren’t there. I think you had a football tournament or something. Mom and Dad went to watch you, but I had a stomach bug, so you guys couldn’t take me along. They called Lowell to come stay with me while you were out. After that weekend, he and I went out of our way to avoid each other.”
Everything clicked in, Sully’s lifelong distrust of Lowell. “So that’s where it started. Why the hell didn’t you tell us?”
“He told me if I said anything, either about Aiden or what he’d just done, he’d say I was lying. He told me I’d get sent back into foster care because no one would ever believe me over him. It never occurred to me he’d killed Aiden. For years, I just thought it was his warped way of trying to protect you guys from more pain. In a way, I could understand that, and it helped remind me to keep it to myself. This family is the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the first really good thing I’d ever known. I would have done anything not to lose it, even if it meant keeping secrets from you or dealing with Lowell. I knew how close all of you were to him. He was blood. I wasn’t. I believed him. I didn’t want to hurt you or to get sent back to foster care, so I did what he told me.”
Any anger at Sully Dez had left dissipated. He returned to the table, laying a hand on his brother’s head and giving it a gentle shake before sitting back down. “We would have believed you, Sull. I sure would have.”
Mara extended a hand along the table, palm up. Sully met the invitation, placing his hand in hers. “We all would have believed you, kiddo,” she said. “I’m so sorry you didn’t know that.”
Sully heaved a sigh, the sound of tension releasing. “I’ve held onto this for so long. I never thought I’d be able to say it out loud. I never knew how you’d take it.”
“After all these years, how could you not have known?” Mara said. “Sweetie, you’re my son. Not my foster son or my adopted son. My son. I love you with all my heart. Your dad and your brother always felt the same. If we had been asked to choose between you and Lowell, it would have been you. It would always have been you. You hear me?”
A tear wove its way down Sully’s cheek, wiped away with the back of his hand. He nodded.
“Yeah, goes for me too, jerk-face,” Dez said.
The childhood slight got the result he’d been after, drawing a burst of laughter from Sully.
Mara gave his hand one last squeeze, then stood and headed for the counter. “I think we need that coffee now. Then we need to figure out what we’re going to do about this.”
Dez got up to help his mom.“We’re already working on it. Lachlan’s in on it, and he’s giving us a hand. We’ve got an idea, but I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan.”
“What’s the plan?”
“It involves Gerhardt.”
Mara finished removing the lid from the coffee canister and dropped it a little heavily on the counter. “The maniac from Lockwood who tortured your brother? That Gerhardt?”
Dez offered her a tight smile. “Yeah. That one.” He explained what they’d learned about the Circle and Gerhardt’s apparent involvement with Lowell in the use of the experimental drug. “He knows Lowell’s secrets because he was a member of this demented little club when Lowell was directed to kill Aiden. We’ve got a solid in with Gerhardt, one we can play on to hopefully get him to turn over info we can use to bury Lowell. His six-year-old son disappeared forty years ago, and he’s never stopped trying to find out what happened to him. If we can find the boy, or if Sully can see him and get some answers, we can use that to get us what we need. Sully can’t go to the police with what he knows, but Gerhardt can. What’s more, they’ll believe him, no question.”
“He’s got some pretty horrible secrets of his own to hide,” Mara said. “I’m not so sure he’ll be willing to go anywhere near the police.”
“We’re counting on it his son means more to him than the possibility of being found out,” Dez said. “If he’s obsessed enough to put his patients’ well-being on the line to try to find the kid, I’m hoping he’ll do whatever it takes if we can give him a way to get what he’s been after.”
Mara nodded, her expression suggesting she agreed with the argument. Dez sure did. If, God forbid, it was Kayleigh, he’d move heaven and earth to find her. The possibility of jail or job loss would be meaningless next to a chance at uncovering the answers that would bring her back to him. Mara, as a mother herself—and one who had lost a child to tragic circumstances—
would understand.
Mara crossed her arms as she regarded Dez. “You mentioned you’ve got some reservations,” she said. “What are they?”
This would involve another reveal, one which wasn’t really Dez’s to tell. He glanced over at Sully, waited until he met his eye and nodded his consent before turning back to Mara.
“We found out recently Gerhardt is Sully’s biological father.”
“What? How?”
“My neighbour, Emily,” Dez said, explaining what she’d told him about Lucky Dule’s tragic stay at Lockwood and the manner of Sully’s birth inside the institution.
Once he’d finished, Mara remained still and silent for a few seconds, processing, thinking. Then she returned to Sully at the table. He’d let his hair fall across his face in a way that told Dez he’d withdrawn somewhere inside himself, the way he often did during the discussion of painful subjects. Mara didn’t say anything, just wrapped her arms around him. Sully remained frozen for a moment but then returned the embrace. A quiet sob sounded in his throat as Mara, still standing, folded herself protectively over him.
Another wave of guilt hit Dez as he recalled the abrupt, careless manner in which he’d thrown the truth at his brother. Sully hadn’t spoken about the impact on him, other than the sadly expected questioning of his own character and soul given the nature of his genetic makeup. Now Dez could see just how much the truth had shattered Sully—a truth Dez had tossed out in anger as if it meant nothing.
Dez studied the tiles that made up the kitchen floor, one he’d helped his dad install a decade ago. It hadn’t changed much in all that time, the soft pattern and colour barely faded by the sunlight that frequently bathed the kitchen. But so much else had changed.
Those had been easier days. He’d been in his final year of high school, looking forward to the possibility of following in his father’s footsteps on the force. Sully had been fourteen, a kid whose dark past had been blessedly saturated by light, thanks to his place in a stable, loving family. Mara and Flynn had never truly gotten over Aiden’s loss—an impossibility—but they’d found a place to put it, enabling them to move on with their lives. Most importantly, Flynn had been alive.