A Bloody Kingdom (Ruthless People 4)

She made a face at me. “You are really taking the fun out of my gnocchi.”

“Melody!”

“Yes!” she snapped back. “I’m going to be in the shadows, watching you and our kids grow up but never there. And when you think Ethan’s ready, we will leave. I won’t leave you unless you ask me to…I hope you don’t. You are looking at the small things; I’m looking at the big picture. The only way we get out happily is if we get out early.”

“Melody, you’re talking about years!”

“I can wait for you Liam because I plan on living a very long life. With no one searching for me, I can watch over all of you—”

“I need air,” I whispered, getting up and moving toward the door. Like a vampire hiding from the sun, she moved toward the corner.

“No one can see me,” she said again.

Rolling my eyes, I opened the door and closed it behind me.

“Perfect timing, I made your favorite snack,” my mother said to me, holding up the red Jell-O in a glass jar.

“Mother, the world has just shifted under my feet—”

“Let’s talk privately.” She linked arms with me, taking me toward her room. She whispered, “Pretend to still look sad.”

Dear God…help me, I’m surrounded by madwomen.

When I walked into her room, the first thing I noticed were all the photos she had pinned up on her wall. Every family event and school portrait were up there, a lot of them with my father. I hadn’t gone into her room in…I couldn’t even remember.

“I look at this every morning to get me through the day,” she said, taking a spoonful of Jell-O. “It works on most days now, but other days it’s just as bad as the day your father left me. You understand that pain now, correct?”

I took the bowl from her. “She lied. You both lied. However, for her to come up with something like this…it’s the most selfish thing she has ever done. It negates all the good she has ever done as a mother. No good mother could do this…it’s cruel.”

“Don’t speak for mothers until you carry a child for nine months and go through hours of labor just to push their fat head out,” she snapped before taking a deep breath. “It’s hard to see now when you look at Ethan, Wyatt, and Dona. Their pain trumps everything. They’re still young. I ache for them and just when I feel like I cannot bear to look at their faces, I remember your father. He didn’t become the Ceann na Conairte without almost losing everything. You suffered as a child, were hunted so many times—”

“What are you talking about?” Was I hunted?

“Your father wanted you all to go school. Do you know how many times he stepped in to stop snipers, kidnappers, people who hated us so badly and just wanted to spill Callahan blood? The world is cold, dirty, painful, and bloody. Your kids need to know that or else they will die, and I refuse to put anyone else from this family in a grave before I go. My guilt over your father keeps me up sometimes.”

“Guilt?”

She nodded, reaching out to touch his photo. “Remember when I said your father gave me the best gift?”

“Yeah, you never said what it was, though.”

“Control,” she answered. “What Melody did, he planned to do years ago. ‘Just tell me when you are ready to say goodbye and we will disappear.’ He said that from the very beginning, and he would have left everything. We would make it out of this life when no one else in this family could. Each time, he was ready to leave—your sixteenth birthday after you got better, your eighteenth birthday when you were an adult, your twenty-first birthday, even the week after your marriage to Melody—he said we should go, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave you all yet, not after missing so much of you as children. I told myself just a little bit more time. Let’s wait another day, which became another year. Then next thing I know your father’s blood is all over me and he’s gone. No more days of anything. Every last child of Shamus and Margaret Callahan murdered. If your father came back to me today after all these years, told me he did it for me, I’d slap him, yeah, and then I’d kiss him and never let go. For the first time in my life I’m jealous of my own son, because if I could choose, it wouldn’t be Melody who came back…”

She bit her bottom lip and blinked back her tears, placing her head on the wall over his picture. I said nothing; there was nothing I could say. Placing the Jell-O on her dresser, I hugged her. I wasn’t sure if it was her or me who had lost weight, but I didn’t like how tiny she felt.

“Go, Liam, please, it’s been a long day.”

“Ma…okay.” I didn’t know what else to say to her, so I just kissed her head and gripped my cane as we limped to the door.

When I stepped out, Declan was waiting for me, leaning against the wall with a bottle of brandy in his hand and Irish cakes.

“When my parents died, I remember you brought me these…” He forced a smile.

“I remember bringing fruit punch, not brandy,” I whispered.

He shrugged. “I figured you’d want something stronger.”

For the first time, I didn’t want to drink. My mind was too hazy as it was…I knew he wanted to comfort me, but I couldn’t accept it right then.