Chapter 32 #2
“If that’s true,” he said, low and taunting, “then your father was right about you.”
I schooled my voice into bored disinterest as I asked, “Which part?”
The smile that curled his lips was cold and cruel.
“That you're soft. Strong men know better than to ally themselves with those who are weak. All they do is hold you back.” He threw a meaningful look at the barn.
“Penwell ought to be helping us right now, but he’s doing what he always does: dodging work and shirking responsibility.
Kindness and earnestness don't account for much when there's work to be done.”
But Penny gave me hope.
It was hard to hang onto in the face of what was coming, but he so often had enough for both of us, and I was happy to borrow from him.
That was too much truth for Merrick and, frankly, another quality he would fail to see the value of.
It was becoming clearer why Penny always fell so short of the elder Oliver's expectations.
He wanted a workhorse, not a brother. Not a person with a gentle heart and a smile that made my insides melt.
“He makes me happy,” I said at last. “My future looks brighter with him in it.”
Merrick shook his head. “You should know there’s no kind of future for a man like him.”
I came around the plow and took the horse by the bridle.
It defied my understanding, how two men raised in the same home could have turned out so differently.
The similarities between them began and ended with their physical resemblance.
Penny was warmth and light and care, while Merrick was nothing more than cold, calculating manipulation wrapped in human skin.
“I don’t get it,” I said, my eyes focused on the swirl of white on the old mare’s nose.
I regretted broaching the topic before it even came out of my mouth, but I forged on.
“What happened to you? You have a family—a loving family—and it could have been a good thing if you had ever acted even marginally like they weren’t an inconvenience to you.
You have a brother who looked up to you, who wanted nothing more than to be worthy of your kindness, and all you did was grind him into the dirt every chance you got. ”
I’d witnessed the shift in Penny’s perception of his older brother. There was a part of him that admired Merrick when this all began. Even when he knew he’d never measure up to the elder Oliver’s expectations, Penny defended and made excuses for him.
It changed when we got to Ashpoint and every lie Merrick had ever told was laid bare. Penny’s admiration became hurt, and the hurt grew and festered into resentment until forgetting the “half” before “brother” felt like an unforgivable insult.
Penny played at being past needing Merrick’s approval, but I could see the pain buried under all the anger. He still didn’t understand what he’d done to make Merrick hate him enough to want to kill him, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him he hadn’t done a godsdamned thing but exist.
“And the worst thing?” I was still talking, almost without realizing.
Overflowing with frustration on Penny’s behalf.
“He’d put it all behind him if you asked.
If you apologized. Do you know how badly he wants that?
How devastated he was when he found out who you really are? What you’ve done to this family?”
I would have done anything to have what Merrick had growing up. I would have given up everything for the chance at that kind of stability. I managed to find a taste of it for a time, but even that bit of family hadn’t lasted.
“I left the Bone Men looking for something like this,” I pressed on, “and you already had it. But you walked away instead of being here for your family when they needed you. You could have had a great life, but you threw it away for a cult. Why? What did they offer you there that you didn’t have here? ”
“How do you suppose I felt?” Merrick’s words came out near enough to a shout that it made me jump. “Desperate for approval from a father who had moved on to a new life with new children? Penwell had all the love he could have wanted because he took what was owed to me.”
His face was red again, and his shoulders were bound up so tight it looked painful. “The way our father spoiled him, looked at him like he could do no wrong. And I was there, forgotten. Replaced. Penwell didn’t need anything from me. He already had everything.”
For maybe the first time, I felt bad for Merrick. I knew what it felt like to be replaced, though losing my father’s attentions to a cult of death wasn’t exactly equivalent. Regardless, I knew that hurt, that betrayal, and it wounded me even now.
But the late patriarch of the Oliver family was nothing like my father. By all accounts, he’d been a reasonable man who loved his family, and that had to count for something.
“You’re punishing Penny for your father’s failings,” I said, earning a derisive snort from Merrick. “He didn’t cause any of this.”
“He didn’t put a stop to it either,” Merrick said.
“He was a child.”
He bared his teeth and snarled, “So was I.”
“And yet, instead of addressing it with your father, you ran away to mine, a far poorer example of a man whose only use for his child was as a tool to be discarded when it lost its edge.”
I had read enough in my father’s journals to know how he felt about his protege. Never good enough, never cunning enough, never measuring up to his ever-changing standards. He’d despised Merrick as much as he’d despised me, and Merrick knew that.
Maybe my father was preparing to cast him aside, too, before he was arrested and executed. Maybe his death had saved Merrick from losing the perceived affections of a second father.
Either way, the heart of it all was that Merrick’s view of Penny had been clouded by his own pain. I knew there’d be no changing his perception or assignment of guilt, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying.
“For having known Penny his whole life, you’ve managed not to know him at all.” I met Merrick’s eyes, unflinching in the face of his seething ire. “My father never really knew me, either. Little wonder you two got along.”
Turning away from him, I urged the horse forward.
Merrick dodged the plow as it passed him, slipping in the mud and nearly landing flat on his ass. He grabbed the handles to steady himself, and his next words ground out of him like barbs. “I’m nothing like you.”
Marching forward, I called over my shoulder, “You're right.”
He had nothing to say to that.