“I fail to see the difference,” he managed to say.
“You want her to be a saint, Constantine.” Balthazar’s voice was quiet, but direct. “When, like the rest of us, she was only a person.”
“She is still a person,” Constantine gritted out.
“You and I both know that isn’t entirely true.” His brother’s voice stayed quiet. And powerful. “One of these days, when she has stopped clinging to what little life she has left in her, you and I will do what we must to honor her. But in the meantime, do you imagine that if she were not in that bed she would applaud what you were doing?”
“I like to think she would.”
“Constantine. The only reason she stopped the downward spiral she was on was because she hit the bottom too hard to get up again. You know this. Our mother was a woman of grand obsessions. First with our father. Then it was her lover.” And his voice was harsh then. For he had taken that lover down. “Then came many other lovers, and worse by far, the chemical inducements they provided her. But the one thing our mother was never obsessed with was her children. I choose to take that as a compliment. She couldn’t take care of us. We could take care of ourselves, and we did.”
Constantine stared out the window, but he didn’t see London. All he saw was Molly. And then, almost superimposed over that face of hers that seemed to be lodged inside him, what dim memories he had of his mother before he’d lost her.
Because Balthazar was right. His mother had always been obsessed. Frantic and fragile. And while it was true that their father had been cruel to her—the way he was cruel to all who crossed his path—it was also true that she had never done much in the way of fighting back.
Not like Molly, who had found a way to stand tall in the worst possible circumstances. Even on her knees she had towered over him. Because that was the difference, wasn’t it? A person either had that flame inside, or they didn’t.
They either stood up or lay down.
He didn’t think it was positive or negative, necessarily, but it did make him wonder why it was he was so determined to avenge a woman who would never, ever have avenged herself if given the opportunity.
And she would never have applauded you, that voice inside him told him harshly. She barely noticed you as it was.
He raked a hand through his hair. “When did you become a font of wisdom?” he asked his brother. Grumpily.
Balthazar laughed. Again. As if laughter was now a staple of his daily life. It was hard to imagine. Impossible, in fact, and yet he kept doing it.
“Right about the time you decided to call me for advice,” he said then. “I suppose we can call this a brand-new day, Constantine.”
When their call ended, Constantine did not fling his mobile across the room. He stayed where he was, staring out his windows until he saw London again. No superimposed faces. No ghosts. No regrets.
And when he did, he took a deep breath, then stalked out of his surgical flat and headed for one of his cars in the attached garage.
He drove out of the city, following a route he knew all too well. He took it as often as he could. At least once a month when he was in London, and he tried never to stay away for more than six weeks at a time.
Knowing full well that if their situations were reversed, his mother would not have maintained the same visitation schedule. In fact, it was likely she would never visit at all. It wasn’t as if Constantine didn’t know this. Of course he did.
But he couldn’t say he’d truly felt it before now.
When he arrived at the long-term care facility where his mother waited, he took the steps two at a time, presenting himself to the duty nurse who knew him by sight.
“She’s doing well,” the cheerful woman told him as she ushered him down the same familiar hallway he’d walked for years, always lit up with that same, enduring thirst for vengeance that had animated his every action since he was twenty. “I do think it’s that Good Samaritan of hers.”
Constantine blinked at that. “I beg your pardon? A Good Samaritan?”
“Oh yes,” the nurse said as they reached the door of his mother’s room. She looked at Constantine with a slight frown between her brows. “She comes in most every week? I know I’ve mentioned her before. It’s been years now?”
“Yes, of course,” Constantine murmured, though he had no memory of any Good Samaritan. But then, would he have listened to anything that didn’t serve that cold knife edge inside him? That intense focus on revenge? “How lovely.”
Constantine supposed it was nice that someone else was visiting his mother. And yet when he walked inside and seated himself in the chair beside her bed, he knew it didn’t matter. People made all sorts of claims about patients in the same state as his mother, and maybe they were right. But not about his mother. As he took her hand and looked down at her, at her still dark hair and soft face, he knew the truth. She was not trapped in there. On the contrary.
She was at peace.
A peace he knew she had never found while she was alive.
His conversation with his brother kicked at him. He looked into his mother’s faintly lined face, looking far more at ease now in her endless sleep than she ever had when she’d been awake. She had forever been falling apart when they were children. As terribly as Demetrius had bullied his sons, he had bullied his wife even more. And when she did not cower or cry enough for his liking, he’d made sure
