Chapter 3 A Normal Family
The letter of the day is F. F is for Fucking Fake.
For weeks after the massacre, I stuck to Mom’s side.
I had to be holding on to something of hers, if not her skirt or pants, then her hand, leg, or arm while constantly shifting between terror and needing to put on a brave face for her.
It wasn’t hard to do that because for most of the day, she would lie on the couch next to me while I watched TV.
She’d always refuse to eat. I watched her shrivel up, and the shadows under her eyes were unbelievably dark, as if she wasn’t sleeping at all at night.
No matter how much I held onto her, I still felt she was slipping away from me.
At night, she would fall asleep beside me on my bed, then sometime in the middle of the night, he’d walk in and take her.
The first week was especially violent because I fought him for her.
I scratched his eyes and yanked her hand away, but that only ended in him knocking me out and me waking alone on the floor sometime later with a swollen eye.
The next day when we were once again alone on the couch, she asked, “Remember what I told you? My job is to keep him away from you—”
“But Mum—”
“Shhhhh...” She pushed my hair back then kissed my cheek.
“It’s my job, Killian, as your mother, to protect you, not the other way around.
Okay?” She kissed my hand. “You have to let me protect you, because if I lose you, if you get hurt...” She shook her head, with pain oozing through every curve of her face.
“It would be a fate worse than death. Do you understand me? I won’t be able to take it, okay?
” She swallowed. “Promise me that from now on you won’t try to protect me. ”
No! No, I can’t promise that. I can’t lose you either, Mommy!
I studied her eyes, which had already lost their sparkle, and after too long, I realized that like Nana, Mum needed to hear this from me.
I sighed and with my fingers crossed behind me said, “Okay, Mum. I promise.” She sobbed while pressing me against her chest.
“I can’t lose you. I can’t,” she kept whispering, as if she were chanting some kind of a magic spell. Wishing me to stay safe and alive. Even at my age I knew that wasn't going to happen.
Every night, I fell asleep fast because it was draining to be so paranoid of everyone around me except her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Then I’d wake up stuck in the nightmare of that night.
I’d see their bodies, watch them take their last breaths.
We would almost escape but always failed, and I’d feel the horror of being dragged by those men again.
Although the house was exquisitely big, elegant, and beyond fancy with a complete staff of servants, and our captor gone for most of the morning, we were very aware it was still a cage.
We weren’t allowed to step outside. The many guards constantly walking around the house made this clear.
But it only became obvious to me when I dared to open the front door and the guards yelled, “Get back inside!”
Somehow, that event triggered my obsession with the outside world.
I sat staring out a different window each day and quickly figured out we were no longer in Ireland when I saw the rocky shore along the wave-crashing sea.
The sea was a different shade of blue, much brighter, almost a neon turquoise, while Ireland’s had been closer to gray.
We didn’t have many bright sunny days back home, especially during winter.
The flowers in the garden were a kind I’d never seen and almost too bright.
It was as if we were on a tropical island.
In the mornings, Mum would wake me, bring me clothes to change into after showering and brushing my teeth, and then we’d walk downstairs to the solarium.
The big bad wolf would always be there, waiting for us with his laptop and briefcase full of files, dressed up like a high-end businessman.
He’d greet us by taking her hand, kissing it, and saying exactly the same stupid words every single fucking day. “There you are, darling, I missed you.”
The repetitiveness and fake gentleness got to me pretty quickly. It made me grit my teeth and grimace. He never acknowledged me. While he sat at the head of the table, Mum sat next to him, with me on her other side.
She’d wait ’til he was gone before talking to me again.
Afterward, Mum would need a few hours of sleep, so I would watch Sesame Street in French for two hours while she dozed off on the couch next to me.
I couldn’t understand anything. I felt sorry for Elmo.
He didn’t look okay speaking that fancy gibberish.
If she was still sleeping after that, I’d go stare at the world around us through a new window in the house.
Most of the day, we’d play hide and seek.
With four levels to the house and infinite rooms, it’d take hours to find each other.
Mum taught me stuff I’d need for school.
In the late afternoon, I’d ask her what movie she wanted to watch, then I’d put it on.
Mum was a romantic, so it was always some love story.
At first, I thought it boring, but once I started asking her questions like “Why do you like this stuff?” It got more interested.
Every night, she’d read a book to me. At the time I was obsessed with the Emperor’s New Clothes and the Pied Piper.
She’d wait ’til I was asleep before leaving.
There was no other way since I wouldn’t let her leave me if awake.
The next night, I’d beg her to stay so I could make sure she was safe, but then I’d wake from a night terror, alone, in the middle of the night, and find the door to my bedroom locked from the outside.
I didn’t know what he was doing to her, but she slowly became a different person.
The only thing I could do about it was to grieve the loss of the mother I once had.
A lively lady full of affection who burst with energy and love for me, family, and life.
The dark shadows under her eyes only deepened.
She lost more weight than when we had absolutely no food.
I often found myself in the ironic position of having to remind her to eat, but even then, I never saw her take more than a bite or two.
Over and over again, she’d lie and promise everything was fine.
“You don’t have to worry about me, baby.
He’s actually being really nice to me.” Her eyes would well up while she nodded and widened her lips into a smile.
I wouldn’t respond because I thought she needed to believe she was fooling me.
Even when the shadows disappeared from under her eyes, her smile never reached them again.
In the Spring, things took an unexpected dark turn.
One morning, she approached the dining table with me, then he took her hand and kissed it.
She bent down and lightly kissed his lips, and with rosy cheeks, she sat between us, smiling.
I wasn’t the only shocked one in the room, he was too.
His and my gaze crossed for three seconds, but while he was obviously instantly exhilarated, the knife of betrayal broke through my chest past my ribcage and into my heart.
As usual, I sat down, not speaking a word, and only looked at him from the corner of my eye.
It was the first time they’d had a normal conversation in front of me.
It was all muffled to me because my mind kept drifting away, so I had no idea what they were saying, but watching Mum eating and talking to him without a care in the world…
it was as if she were hammering a big nail into me.
So much was happening inside me. The rage didn’t allow me to look at her for long.
I was screaming my head off in disgust while judging her, and they didn’t realize it.
It was as if I were a ghost. While Mum and this evil piece of shit seemed to be falling in love, my world collapsed.
Questions raced through my mind. Had she begun to believe her own lies?
I couldn’t really blame her if that was the case.
Our reality was a nightmare that weighed so heavily on our minds and demanded so much of us.
Of course she'd find it easier to lie to herself and forget the past and the hellish reality inside that beautiful house. Hell, I wished I could forget. But what about Da? What about our dead family? It wasn’t right to forget them, not when they’d been the best part of my life.
I couldn’t. If Mum could forget all of them, what was going to keep her from forgetting me?
The image of them kissing each other poisoned my memories of her and Da.
She seemed to have almost the same glee she’d had with my father. The two images merged in my mind.
My only consolation was that her smile didn’t reach her eyes, but still, it crushed me.
Breakfast lasted an eternity. Despite everything, I’d never felt so alone.
I kept thinking how our biggest problems in Ireland had been affording food.
Despite remembering the pain of hunger and the stress, I much preferred it to the life we were living.
It didn’t make sense, preferring to starve versus being alone and doubting Mum’s love for me all the time.
A heat entered my chest and stopped my heart, then a chill spread over me.
The loneliness from being erased and forgotten by her…
I wanted to die. He should have killed me.
What a fool I’d been, thinking I could protect her, always thinking the challenge would be to overpower him physically. I’d never contemplated that her heart also needed protection. And now I lost her.
He’d won. He’d found a way to kill me in a worse way than he had the rest of my family—by erasing me from her world.
After taking everything else away, he took her from me. As soon as the thought solidified in my mind, a craving took over. I wanted to stab him to death, but all I had was a butter knife. Throughout the whole meal, all I did was stare and caress the elegant handle of the knife.
Yes, I had only turned six a month before, but I wasn’t a fucking idiot. I knew I didn’t have the physical strength to kill him.
I hated that I had to wait.
For days after, the nausea didn’t allow me to eat, even when my empty stomach started eating itself again. The night terrors of me screaming for Da and Nana returned. I’d wake covered in sweat, as if the skies had rained on me.
Then, one morning, she entered my room. My body was sweating and burning, yet I couldn’t stop shaking from the chill, a continuous cold.
She had to carry me to the bathroom because as soon as I tried to stand and walk, I collapsed.
I had no energy, and I didn’t care if I also died. The days blended together.
Never would she have left me alone while sick when we were back home, but in that house, with him, she did. I’d wake in the dark, alone, feeling worse than death, and cry myself way past exhaustion.
“We need to move on, Killian,” she explained after he left one morning.
“I’m sorry. I know that this must be hard on you, but…
I need to move on.” I simply stared out the big window at the clear blue sky.
It was irritating how clear it was. It should have been cloudy and gray like it often was back home.
“If things don’t start changing, we won’t survive him, Killian. Do you hear me?” Her tone was full of desperation to get through to me. “I need to let go of everything else to keep you safe, to keep both of us alive.”
But I couldn't look at her, not with the memory of all of them lying on their stomachs, bleeding, assassinated in the forest just because this son of a bitch was obsessed with her.
How could she expect me to forget? I wasn’t sure if she’d continued to speak or how much time passed before I was aware of her again. Was it the same day? I had a headache that didn’t allow me to fully open my eyes. Any speck of light blinded me like lightning.
Once again, my entire body was covered in sweat, my clothes drenched when I found her sobbing, then her voice cracked.
“Killian, pleeeeaaase. Please. I’ll do whatever you want, but please.
” The volume of each word made me wince.
The sound stabbed at my ears. When I looked into her wet red eyes, I hardly recognized this woman.
Yes, she was crying, but her hair was shining.
Her clothes were new and expensive. I ignored all of that and stared into her green eyes.
“I can’t lose you. Do you understand me?
Can you hear me? Killian? I can’t lose you too.
” A relief filled me. She had not forgotten me.
She was doing all of this to keep us on his good side, to keep us safe.
At least, that’s what I told myself before reaching for her hand.
“Okay, Mommy.” My voice was so weak because my throat hurt so badly. She gathered me in her arms and hugged my head, pressing my cheek against her chest while rocking me.
“Tá mé i ngrá leat. Okay? Don’t you ever forget that.”
“I love you too, Mommy.”
“Things are going to change for the better. I promise. You’ll see. I’ll find a way to make it better, Killian, but you have to stop being this sick. Okay? Cause you’re scaring me. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”