And whom I have changed into is the man I was always supposed to be.
At least that’s what I’ve been told all my life.
“So I should’ve been direct. Because I owe it to you to tell you this,” she says after a few moments.
“And what is it that you want to tell me?”
She sighs and despite myself, I brace. “What you’re doing is wrong. It’s wrong.” Then, “You need to do the right thing, Alaric.”
In my most curt voice, I reply, “I am doing the right thing.”
“Keeping her trapped is not the right thing.”
At her words, the very first words she’s spoken to me on the subject, I shake a little. My chest vibrates at the impact of them even though I’d braced myself.
Trapped.
I have done that. Kept her trapped and firmly under my control.
Since the day she came into my life.
And the thing is that Mo doesn’t know the half of it.
“You didn’t ask for this, Alaric,” Mo continues. “Four years ago, you didn’t ask to be put in a position like that, to be a guardian to a fourteen-year-old. And not just any fourteen-year-old but her. I remember being so angry on your behalf, you know. When we heard the news, when that lawyer called, I was so furious. I have to admit that I wanted you to say no. I really did. I wanted you to refuse the responsibility. Something — yet another thing — that your father put on you. But you didn’t. You kept this promise like you always have. You’ve kept up the name of this family, kept up its reputation, its legacy.”
“Yes,” I grit out. “Because it’s my responsibility.”
“I know, and sometimes I wish it wasn’t,” she says. “Sometimes I wish you’d refuse. At least, refused this responsibility. Responsibility for her. But you didn’t.”
Mo is right.
I never refuse my family’s responsibilities.
In fact, I embrace them all.
I’ve not only embraced my family’s name, but I’ve done everything that I can to elevate it by doing even more than what my father would’ve done, by going the extra mile, by getting involved with all the right town projects, by achieving excellence in my own work, by getting not just one but two PhDs, countless grants and papers and whatnot.
And it wasn’t easy.
Given my history, I’ve had a lot of naysayers. I’ve had a lot of critics. People who have watched me, underestimated me ever since I took over for my father. People who think I might still screw up. And going away to Italy for three years didn’t help that judgement against me.
Anyway, that’s not the reason that I said yes to taking on responsibility for her.
In fact, she wasn’t. My responsibility, I mean.
And this is my greatest mistake. Or rather my first biggest mistake, before I took this job at St. Mary’s.
My first biggest mistake was that four years ago, I lied to keep her at the mansion.
The night she wanted me to contact Marty and see if he could do something, I told her that he couldn’t. When he already had some measures in place, a new family — some acquaintance of Charlie who came forward at the last minute — which was ready to take over in my stead. But I told him no. I told him that I’d take care of her and that she’d stay in Middlemarch.
And I did all that because I was angry.
Because as I said back then, whenever I looked at her, I saw her mother. I remembered what she did and what had happened. And so I trapped her against her will.
Not that Mo knows anything about all this. I never told her why I do the things I do. It’s none of her business. It’s none of anyone’s business.
And I’m not about to start now.
Doing heart-to-heart chats.
“If the point of this conversation is to tell me how much you pity me, then I’d ask you to spare me. I don’t want your pity and you don’t know why I do the things that I do.”
I hear her sigh again. “You’re right. Maybe I don’t. I don’t know what goes on in your head anymore. You’re not the same boy I took care of, who would just light up whenever I brought him my cherry pies. I haven’t known that boy in a long time. But you can’t tell me what to feel either. What you think is pity is my anger for you. My anger for that boy, my sadness. I miss him, and you can’t tell me not to miss that boy, Alaric.
“Which is why I haven’t said anything. I didn’t say anything or argue with you when you told me to watch over her. When you refused to have to do anything with her. When you buried yourself in work and were hardly home, that first year. Even when you went to Italy. Even when she thought that you hated her. I know you didn’t. You just hated what she represented.”