Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
“Get out of my house.”
Theo’s eyes darkened as he stared down at his mother, all shock leaching away from his body and leaving nothing but rage behind.
“I’m so sorry,” his mom said calmly, holding her hands up as if she were trying to soothe a wild animal. “I had no idea you were seeing someone.”
“That’s because we’re not currently speaking,” he spat through gritted teeth.
“I know.” His mom’s eyes searched his face and she rolled her lips together the same way her son always did before her gaze landed on Audrey, who’d frozen in the entry where Theo had put her down.
She peered around him at Audrey and gave her a weak smile.
“Hi, dear. My name’s Eleanor. It’s nice to meet—”
“Don’t you talk to her,” he snapped. His fists clenched at his sides, and his right hand trembled even more than usual.
His voice trembled just as much.
Eleanor closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath before steeling herself and stepping forward, craning her neck as she looked up at him. When her gaze landed on his scar, her expression softened fully into sadness.
“You look good. Really good. So much better than…” She swallowed and her hands shook as she picked at the edges of her thumbs.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me, and I know you want me here even less.
I’m not going to stay long. I only came and waited to tell you two things.
” She held up two fingers. “Just two things, and then I’ll be on my way. ”
“Give me my keys back.” Theo held out his left hand. “Now.”
Audrey never imagined he could be this angry. Every part of him vibrated with fury, and his color was starting to come back with swaths of bright scarlet sweeping up from his neck and spreading gradually into his cheeks.
His mother lifted a hand, almost as if she wanted to cup his face or sweep his hair away from his brow. But she stopped herself at the last second and let her arm fall.
When she didn’t give him the keys he’d demanded, the scarlet crept all the way up to the tips of Theo’s ears.
He took a single step forward.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you once I was cleared to handle stairs again,” he hissed. “I never thought you’d come here unannounced like this. This is bad even for you.” He thrust his hand out more forcefully this time. “Give them back. And you’d better not have made copies.”
“I didn’t,” Eleanor whispered. She plunged her hand into her pocket.
“You weren’t answering my calls, you weren’t answering my texts, you never responded to the letters I sent—even your lawyer said she wouldn’t give you any more messages from me because you’d asked her not to.
” Her lip quivered as she looked at him, and she bit it to hide it.
“And I was afraid if I stayed outside, you’d just turn around and leave once you saw me. ”
“You’re right: I would have. That’s what ‘no contact’ is, Mom.”
Theo waited.
Eleanor’s breath shook as she finally pulled a keychain out of her pocket, the jingling of the metal oddly jarring in the thick tension between them. But then she hesitated.
“I came here to apologize to you.”
When she didn’t drop the keys into his outstretched hand, Theo grimaced and rubbed his eyes, turning on one heel as he began to pace, limping and strained. He couldn’t seem to stay still, and he covered his face completely with both hands while he moved.
His mother looked like she still wanted to touch him. She took one step forward, her hand lifted.
“Teddy—”
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” he roared, spinning to face her again. “You of all people don’t get to call me that anymore!” His expression twisted in disgust. “That version of your son is dead and buried, his body cold and rotting in the ground with Dad. Your Teddy died that day.”
He looked like he hated himself as soon as the words escaped his lips. But now that they were freed, it seemed as if he couldn’t stop them.
Once the dam had cracked, a flood poured forth.
Theo pointed bitterly up at the scar on his face.
“This is all that’s left of him now,” he rasped.
“I’m a monster. A simulacrum. I’m scraps of broken flesh and sinew and bone barely stitched together into a mass of scars and pain and anguish, a fucking shadow of the man and the artist I used to be.
And you didn’t even have the decency to let me try to heal all the way before you came over here to reopen this goddamn wound.
” He tugged at his split cheek, desperate and resentful, and winced at the feeling of it.
“Do you even have any idea how much I hurt? All the time, every fucking day?!”
Eleanor sobbed once, but before she could fully break, Theo stormed back over to her, face red and finger pointed accusingly. He was so tall, he loomed threateningly over her, and he almost had to crouch to press his face close to hers.
With every sentence he uttered, with every breath he took, his voice rose.
“This whole time, this whole fucking time, you haven’t been respecting my wishes. You still kept trying to get in touch with me, kept trying to talk to me, kept sending your assistant to talk to Imogen, and now you’ve had the audacity to come here? To my own home?”
“I’m sorry, Theo, I—”
But he cut her off with a scoff and shook his head as he turned away from his mother, the disgust written across his face only deepening.
“No. No, you couldn’t leave well enough alone, even when I said no more than once because I just wanted some goddamn peace in my life for one fucking moment, all right?
” He splayed his hands out in front of him.
“I just wanted to be left alone, without expectations, without having to deal with all of our family’s shit and you couldn’t even do that!
And now, today of all fucking days, you dare to interrupt my weekend with my girlfriend because you want to talk.
” He threw up his hands and ran them through his hair. “IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT YOU.”
A tear streamed down his mother’s cheek.
“IT HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT ME!” Theo’s face reddened as he yelled.
She made no move to wipe it away.
He kept pacing, his limp growing more and more pronounced as he became even more agitated.
“Do you even get it, Mom? No. No, you’ve never gotten it, not really.” He took another step forward. Eleanor held her ground, but she looked so sick, Audrey thought the woman might throw up. Frankly, she felt nauseous herself.
This was something she wasn’t meant to see.
But Theo continued. His control had long since snapped, his eyes clouded and unfocused as he spiraled.
“It’s always been about you and your career, it was never about me or mine, or even Dad’s! He was never good enough for you!”
“Theo, that’s not at all what happened,” Eleanor finally managed to interject, her voice an odd, trembling timbre cutting through her son’s. “That’s not at all true.”
But he wasn’t done yet.
“You certainly didn’t love him enough to even try to stay,” he spat. “He died loving you, still loving you even after all those years, after you threw him away like garbage, and I never even saw you shed a tear when he was gone.”
“Do you really think I didn’t love your father? That I don’t still love him?” Another tear slid down Eleanor’s horrified face when she bit out the words. “Is that what you really think?”
“That’s what I think and that’s what I remember, yes. You didn’t bat an eye at his memorial.”
Eleanor swallowed and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
A sob wracked her chest, and tears flowed freely from her eyes now.
“Theo.” She held her hands out in front of her, pleading.
“I never stopped loving your father. If you think I’m not also grieving, you couldn’t be more wrong.
” She lifted a perfectly manicured hand and wiped away her tears, but it did little good.
They wouldn’t seem to stop coming now. “And I’m sorry for giving you the impression I didn’t care.
I loved Henry. I loved him so much, we just weren’t good partners.
Our divorce had nothing to do with a lack of love. And it had nothing to do with you.”
Theo had frozen in his tracks, tears streaming silently down his own cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice them.
His mother took a cautious step toward him. “And it’s not your fault, what happened that day. It’s mine.”
He shook his head and took a step back from her. All the blood had drained from his face again, and it was his turn to look sick. “No. No, that’s—”
Eleanor put a hand over her heart and sobbed. “It’s mine. It’s my fault. Everything is. I should have stopped Lloyd. I’m the one who called Henry to come get you. If I hadn’t, things would be different.”
Theo opened his mouth, but his mother held up a hand to silence him.
“I had just lost the love of my life—and I almost lost my son along with him. I didn’t have enough tears left to cry for Henry.
I already spent them all on you when you were in a coma, thinking you were going to die too and blaming myself for everything that happened.
I never should have asked those things of you that night.
And afterwards, I didn’t have the capacity left to feel anything, much less make space for the grief we’ve both been processing over the last few months. ”
She sniffed and wiped at her face again. “I’ve made mistakes, Theo. I’ve made so many, and God only knows how many I’ve made with you, most of all. I want to make it right. I want to know what I can do to make it right.”
Theo’s chest heaved, and he looked at his mother with such pain, such anguish, his face just as twisted and conflicted as his emotions were. He looked like he wanted to yell, to scream, to cry, to break down right there on the floor of his house, all at once.
Eleanor took a step forward and lifted his massive, trembling right fist in both of hers. He didn’t fight her when she touched him this time. She gently pried open his fingers and slid the set of his keys into his hand.