Chapter Two #3
Oh, but she had.
Children always saw the best in their parents, but she knew she was lacking.
So, she explained.
“I held a mean grudge, and I fear you get that from me. I made him feel like it was all his fault, and it wasn’t, Ethan. I helped destroy it.”
He wanted to ask more.
But he had other things to discuss.
“He wants to see you. I was supposed to walk with him today, but I picked a fight because I do that really well.”
She swung her feet.
“Do you hate him?” she asked.
He sighed.
“It’s not so easy, Mom.”
She stopped him.
“It is easy. Do you hate him, Ethan Jackson Blackhawk?” Catherine asked.
He laughed.
“Oh, no. You just mommed me by using my whole name. I haven’t been mommed for close to forty years.”
That made her smile.
“Just answer the question.”
He didn’t have to think.
“No. I just don’t feel a connection to him. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt one. When I was little, if I remember, I don’t think I had a relationship with him.”
She stopped him.
“You did. When he would come over, right after the affair, you would go with him. He would take you for walks in the woods, and you would come back with handfuls of flowers for me. He said they were from you, but they were from him, too. In his own way, Wyler was trying to be saved. He was reaching up from the pit for someone to pull him up, and I was too angry to be kind to someone suffering. I knew he lost his mother, and I was still cold.”
He stopped her.
“He cheated on you.”
She was honest.
“Did he ever tell you that I flirted with his best friend a lot, trying to make him jealous so he’d pay more attention to me?” Catherine asked.
Ethan came full stop.
Oh, that sounded…bad.
“What?”
She nodded.
“See, he kept that to himself, so you’d let him be the bad guy. You lived with me, and you needed a mom. He knew how valuable that was. So, he carried that burden by making me the saint, and himself the sinner.”
He said one thing.
“Oh.”
Catherine sighed.
“Oh, Ethan, I told you I played a part in it. I wasn’t Saint Catherine. I was more like…grudge-holding Catherine. I stirred the pot, and when he cheated on me, I let the world make him the bad guy. Then, I got sick.”
Ethan was curious.
“If you had better doctors, would you have lived?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No, baby. I wouldn’t have. We all have a time when we’re meant to stop existing. That was my date. I was meant to die of breast cancer. Your father will die from lung cancer. Timothy died from heart disease.”
He was curious.
“How will I die?”
She paused.
Then, she spoke.
“You’ll die and have regrets if you don’t stop holding a grudge. You came back here to be the Shaman. Did you ever see Timothy hold a grudge?”
He shook his head.
“Because they destroy you,” Catherine said. “You deserve better, Ethan. I raised you better than that. I raised you to be good, kind, and honest. I raised you to love with all you have. You married good people. Stop wasting the last days you have with him because you’re angry.”
He said nothing.
At first.
“I wish you’d lived, Mom. If you had, I know I would have been different.”
She hopped off the stone, and moved toward him.
“Ethan, you’re exactly who you were meant to be.
You think you’re flawed, but you’re not.
We’re all here to learn life lessons, and have an experience.
This is your life lesson, EJ. When God, the great spirit, Gaia, Zeus, Hekate, or whatever name they go by, calls you home, there is no surprise.
Your life is mapped out for you, and hopefully, by that end date, you’ve learned all you needed to learn. I learned not to hold a grudge.”
He let her talk.
“You were meant to lose me young. I was meant to give you life for higher purpose. You were meant to have Charlie and CJ. You were meant to adopt Willa. Fate lays the groundwork. Gene was meant to leave so you could marry Elizabeth. Your children have very important roles in the grand scheme of it all—as does your wife.”
He was curious.
“Care to elaborate?”
She laughed.
“I can’t. If we give too much information, we can no longer connect with the people we’ve left behind. The powers that be have limits to their magnanimous behavior.”
He got it.
“Do you watch over me?” he asked.
She sat beside him, and he put his head on her lap.
“Always. You’re my only child. Do you plan on not watching over Charlie, CJ, and Willa when it’s your time?”
No, he planned on doing just that.
Like Timothy, he planned on lurking. Would there be windchimes?
Maybe.
They were effective at reminding him the man was there, and simultaneously warning and annoying them.
“Am I meant to stay here, Mom, and to be Shaman?” he asked.
She played with his hair, like she did when he was a little kid. Running her fingers through it, she braided it for him.
“Yes. This is where you need to be. This is your next chapter, and your family is meant to be with you.”
He needed to know.
“Should I let Elizabeth go home?” he asked. “I’m afraid it will destroy our marriage if I open that door. She’s the only thing that’s never betrayed me. My heart has, my feelings have, but Elizabeth…she’s my one good moment.”
Catherine loved her son, but he overthought everything.
He got that from her.
“No. She won’t be okay without you, just like you won’t be okay without her. The ravens are bound together with love, fate, and a future.”
Well, then, he would have to stop feeling bad about it.
He trusted his mom.
She had never let him down.
“Do you like Gene and Chris? Are you upset I have sex with my brother?” he asked, needing to know. He wasn’t sure what she’d say, or if he’d change anyway.
Catherine was honest.
“Gene was always meant to be yours. You have to let him move fully into the family. He deserves to love everyone, and be loved by everyone. Your past holds him back, and while he’s willing to give you that, it’s not fair to him. Let him fall fully in love with the people you love.”
He listened.
“Christopher is a sweet man, and he loves you so much. When he watches you, it’s with adoration. How could I not love a man who looks at my baby like that? His heart is pure and filled with so much kindness. You picked another good person to fill you up.”
That was good.
Because he loved him too.
It was true that he made him feel whole. Chris brought a lot to the table.
All of his mates did.
“And as for Callen, he grew up into an amazing man. His next book is dedicated to me. He hasn’t shown you yet, but he put my name in the front, thanking me for being his mom.
Don’t tell him I told you, but he wept doing it.
Imagine how much he must envy having what you had, even if it was for only twelve years.
He never had that. Charlene would leave him alone in a cradle, and never hold him.
If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s him—not you. You were loved more than anything.”
Tears filled Ethan’s eyes.
She was right.
Honestly, he never thought about that. He’d been oblivious about how he bitched and moaned about losing Catherine, and Callen never said a word.
Yet, he’d never even had a Catherine. He’d only had pieces of what he’d been given out of pity.
That put it into perspective.
“It felt good to share you with him,” he admitted. “He loved you when he was a child. You saved him in your own way, and I never realized how he needed that.”
She smiled.
“I aways wanted more kids. Having him as my child was a gift, too, even if he wasn’t of my body. Now, as for you having sex with him…”
He waited.
Oh, this should be interesting.
He’d be lying if he didn’t say he wondered what his mother thought about their relationship.
“Natives have different rules. They have different beliefs. Had I married Lance Running Wolf, your fate line would have changed. You would have shacked up with Callen, adopted kids, and you would have become the Shaman. He still would have written books, but your life would have been here, not in DC. You wouldn’t have been a Fed.
You would have been a psychologist with an office and a practice. ”
He laughed.
That was interesting, because he could see it happening. He loved Callen, and psychology.
“Really?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Elizabeth would have married Chris. She would have had six kids, and she would have kept being a Fed. Gene would have been her partner in the field, and he would have married a nice man.”
That hit hard.
Ethan was sad.
“I wouldn’t have married him?” he asked, suddenly realizing that would have sucked. He felt whole because of Gene, and their relationship.
She shared.
“You would have when Callen died. You would have married him when you were much older. He would have come out here to work on a case, and the two of you would have met. All of you would have met, but just the timeline would have been different.”
Ethan picked up her fingers, and kissed her knuckles.
“Thank you for that, Mom. I needed it.”
She reassured him.
“I raised a good boy. Be yourself, Ethan. He’s a good man. Everyone loves him. Forgive your father. Take the last few months with him and heal.”
He was curious.
“Does he really not make it?”
She shook her head.
“Nobody ‘makes it’,” she admitted. “We all die. He fights for a while, but we all have that expiry date. I wasn’t lying about that. I hope you dream walk with him. I’d love to talk to him one more time. We both need it.”
When they heard windchimes, Ethan knew who it would be. His grandfather had gone suspiciously missing, giving them time, but there was no doubt he was lurking.
“It’s time,” Timothy said. “You need to go back, Ethan. You have choices to make, and they are important ones. You still haven’t made up your mind about being the Shaman. You say you have,” he admitted, helping Catherine up, “but you’re still questioning it in your heart.”
When Timothy tucked Catherine under his arm, Ethan got up too.
“You need to make amends with your father. He gave you life, and while you owe him nothing, you owe yourself everything. Love is more powerful than anger. Haven’t you learned that being married to all the people you’re sleeping with, son?”
Yeah, he’d let that slip his mind. Ethan was robbing them of the decent part of him by being rage-filled.
Catherine blew her son a kiss.
“I love you, and when the next child comes, you’ll name him after me.”
He was confused.
“Your name is Catherine. There’s another kid?” he asked. “A him?”
They began stepping back.
“Kennedy James Blackhawk will be special, too, Ethan. Don’t forget to kiss him for me,” she said, giving him all she could to hold on and fight.
“We’ll see you again,” Timothy said. “Your wife is about to pick up a case. Get ready. She’s going to need her profiler for this one,” he admitted. “I’ll be there to watch over her, but you need to be there too.”
And with that, they were gone.
“I love you, MOM!” he shouted into the smoke, and as he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his tipi. In fact, he was in the burial grounds, and Demeter was behind him.
The big man was close by, and he looked freaked the fuck out over it too.
Yeah, that he understood. The woo-woo shit was enough to make anyone creeped out, but it grew on you at some point.
“Hey, are you in there?” he asked Ethan.
Ethan turned his head.
“How did I get here?” he asked.
Demeter was trying to protect the man, but still keeping his distance as if Ethan was…haunted by something.
Still, he explained.
“You just walked out of the tipi, into the trees, and down the path without talking. I was asking you questions, and you said nothing to me like I wasn’t there. I was about to call backup. You came here, and put those flowers on the stone.”
Ethan looked over at it. There were some flowers from the yard. He must have picked them for his mother while he’d been walking. They weren’t far from the white roses that Elizabeth had left for her yesterday.
“Did I say anything at all?”
He nodded.
“You just said, ‘I love you, Mom’,” he admitted.
That made him smile.
Yeah, he was absolutely becoming the Shaman, if only to see his mother again, and to be at peace. Coming home was something he’d always fought, and now, in this moment, he was going to stop doing battle with it.
It was time.
He was back, and it would take time to see what happened here, but he was looking forward to it.
Without.
A.
Doubt.
“We have to get back to the cabin. Elizabeth is about to catch a case. I need to get to FBI West.”
Demeter said nothing, but his face said it all. He didn’t want to know how Ethan knew that.
Also, Ethan needed to make amends with his father.
Because Ethan Blackhawk might not listen to his grandfather or father, but he would always listen to his mother.
ALWAYS.
Catherine knew best.