Once armed with an explanation, Church would probably browbeat Sullivan into a meeting, and the two of them would put together how Ghost’s absence and the whole debacle with the Krayevs meshed with whatever Sullivan’s actual case was, and Tobias would be left on the sidelines, begging for scraps of information.
Because Church was more of a hero than he gave himself credit for being, he’d save the day. But that didn’t mean he should have to.
A couple months ago, Church had finally succeeded in getting his abused mother to leave his father, and she was living with Church and his boyfriend—and eventual fiancé, Tobias suspected—Miller. The custom woodworking shop he was starting with Miller was going to have a grand opening soon, so they were working hard to get that set up. Church was taking a couple of carpentry classes, too.
Church had a lot on his plate, was the point.
Plus, Miller hadn’t walked away from the Krayevs unscathed, and Church would open a vein before he’d let Miller get hurt again. Even for Ghost. It would shred Church on the inside to make that choice, but Miller would win. It was right that Miller would win, especially considering that Tobias was here to handle the situation and was more competent than a baby rabbit, no matter what Church thought.
He sent back: still no word.
Technically, it wasn’t a lie, but he wasn’t proud of the hot, shameful rush of vindictive pleasure at being the one with information to withhold this time.
Back at home, Tobias used the relative quiet to catch up on schoolwork. Actually, a more honest way to phrase it would be to say he spent a miserable couple of hours trying to catch up. He read the same paragraphs in his textbooks repeatedly before turning to his biochemistry study guide instead, only to stare at the words uselessly for twenty minutes.
His phone rang, but the number wasn’t one he knew, and his pulse ticked up a speed. “Hello?”
“Is this Tobias Benton?” Not Ghost. The caller was a woman, her voice tremulous and cautious.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Tobias frowned. “Yes. May I ask who’s calling?”
There was the huff of a forceful exhalation in his ear. “Yeah, sorry. It’s me. Ashley Benton. Your, ah, your mother. Can we talk?” She paused, but it was tiny, little more than an allusion to manners, not that he could’ve summoned a response in that time anyway. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. “I just want to talk. Maybe it’s rude to call, but you weren’t responding to my letters and I... I didn’t know what else to do.”
He stared at the wall. Listened to her breathe. Tried to breathe himself. “What do you want?”
“Just this. To talk to you. To...maybe get to know you.”
He shook his head, remembered she couldn’t see it, and said instead, “Why?”
She didn’t respond for a minute. Then, “Because you’re my son. Because I... I love you.”
“Are you—are you joking?”
“Do you think I would go to all this effort to mess with you?” Ashley—he refused to think of her as his mother, absolutely refused—sounded affronted, and he found himself laughing.
“I don’t know what you’d do. I don’t know you. I don’t know you because you threw me in the garbage. Your definition of love could use some work, Ms. Benton.”
He was getting loud. He swallowed.
It was a while before she spoke again. “I was sixteen,” she said quietly. “I was terrified and I’d just given birth alone and I had all these hormones...and I was sixteen. I know I did something unforgivable, and I’m sorry, you can’t imagine how sorry I am, but...”
She kept going, but he wasn’t listening. His imagination had conjured up a picture a frightened teenage girl alone at night, an infant clasped in her arms, maybe still bleeding from giving birth in whatever motel she’d rented for the night so her parents wouldn’t find out. He imagined the panic she must’ve felt.
Don’t think about that.
“I lost more than half my life so far to prison,” she was saying. “And I know it’s what I deserve, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to do with me, but I can’t undo it if you don’t give me a chance. That’s all I want. A chance to make it up to you. That’s all I’ve wanted for years, it’s why I keep making these attempts even though your parents are—”
Leaving aside his bewilderment that she thought she ever could undo what she’d done, that it was possible to make such a thing up to a person, his brain stuttered to a halt as she kept talking.
“Wait, what? What attempts?”
Ashley hesitated. “I’ve been trying to contact you for years, Tobias. Didn’t they—didn’t they tell you? No, of course they didn’t. Who’s the fucking perfect parent now?”
Her words became aggressive, stabbing things in the space of a finger snap, and he tuned her out. It was easy; his heart was pounding so painfully loud that he couldn’t hear anything over it. He’d...he’d thought the letter was a one-time thing. That his parents had opened it, read it, and then decided not to share it because the contents would be poisonous for him somehow. It wasn’t an excuse, and it was still wrong, but he’d thought it was once. A rushed choice born of anger or fear, one perhaps regretted when a cooler head prevailed.
But years?
“I have rights,” she was saying, still too hard, still too painful. “Sure, she kept her word, huh, in the literal sense, but we both know she didn’t follow it in spirit, damn it, she knew
