“Very well. But Tess doesn’t, so whenever we’re together I tell her stories about them.”
“I’d like to hear anything you want to tell me about them.”
Mike took a moment before answering. “My mother was very pretty.”
“Like Tess.”
“Yes, but different. Tess is dark like our father, while Mom was blonde, with deep blue eyes. Like you.” He kissed the top of her head.
“What kind of things did she like to do?”
“She used to say she was the most unmodern woman in the world because she had no ambition at all. She finished two years of college, then met Dad, and …” He shrugged.
“Marriage and children. Sounds good to me.”
“You two would have liked each other. You’re a lot alike. She used to make us lunches with happy faces on the bread. When I got home from school, she always had something homemade for me to eat.”
“What did your dad do?”
“He made himself spend forty hours a week managing a big printing company, but in his real life he cared about two things: his family and sports.”
“You must have loved that,” Sara said.
“With all my might. My first memory is of being in a seat on the back of my dad’s bike—and we were going up a mountain.”
“That sounds dangerous. You wouldn’t—” She stopped herself. “Did your mom like sports?”
Mike chuckled. “Hated them. She wanted to stay home and watch old movies.”
“Oh, yes! We would have definitely been friends. I wish I could have known her.” When Mike was quiet, she knew he was thinking about what happened later, with his parents dying so young, and he and Tess being put into their angry grandmother’s custody.
“I never understood it,” he said softly as he stopped caressing her back. “My mother adored her mother, and Grans practically worshiped Mom. Grans was so good to her. They talked on the phone nearly every day.”
“How did she treat you and Tess while your parents were alive?”
“No one existed for Grans except my mother. Grans didn’t pay any attention to Tess or me or her husband. It was all about her daughter.”
“The accident …”
“Nearly made her insane,” Mike said. “That horrible day when everything changed, Mom had asked Grans to babysit, something she rarely did, while she and Dad went Christmas shopping for us kids.”
“Oh, dear,” Sara said.
“Yeah, exactly. The streets were icy, and their car slid, hit an embankment, and crashed into a concrete wall. They were killed instantly. Grans nearly lost her mind, and she blamed Tess and me for the accident. She said that if we hadn’t been born, her daughter would still be alive.”
While Mike was telling this—and Sara felt sure he’d never told anyone before—he kept rubbing his throat. Gently, she brushed his hand away and kissed his neck. “Tell me what happened.”
Mike took a breath. “A couple of weeks after the funeral I asked Grans for three dollars for some school thing. She was sweeping the kitchen floor. She didn’t say anything, but I’ll always remember the look of hatred she gave me. She glanced down at the broom, then in the next second she hit me across the throat with the handle.”
Sara drew in her breat
h, horrified that someone could do that to a child, but she said nothing, just let him talk.
Mike told her that when his grandmother hit him in the throat, his grandfather had been away, so Mike wasn’t taken to a doctor. By the time his grandfather returned a week later, Mike’s voice was irreversibly damaged. It never fully recovered.
After that, Pru began to take all her anger and hostility out on Mike. And he soon learned to make sure that she did. Whenever she so much as looked at Tess, just five years old, as though she might take her wrath out on the little girl, Mike drew her attention onto himself.
In school, Mike did little but cause trouble. The coach tried to get him to try out for sports, but Mike was too angry to be a team player. Instead, he fought and made enemies of everyone.