21. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA #3
I gritted my teeth, a defensive hiss escaping my lips as I stumbled backward. My spine collided hard with Silas’s chest, and my hand shot out to grip the wall so I didn’t collapse.
Fiona got over her astonishment quickly, but instead of stepping back, she stepped inside. She crossed the threshold of the house and pushed the heavy wooden door shut behind her, the latch clicking into place with a grim finality.
I was successfully trapped, and the walls immediately shrank. This was my version of a living, breathing hell.
Even if I had wanted to speak to her, I couldn’t form words.
So, with erratic breaths, I grabbed the tarnished brass door handle and twisted it.
The door flung back open, and I shoved my way past her, clipping her shoulder while storming outside.
I gasped for fresh air, the overgrown yard becoming a sanctuary against the barrage of emotions swirling through me once again.
Silas was right on my heels, his presence a protective shadow behind me.
“Callum, wait! Please, come back!” Fiona yelled, her polished heels sliding and slipping on the gravel as she hurried out behind us.
I made it halfway down the weed-choked driveway before I stopped.
The panic causing me to flee had evaporated, incinerated completely, and was replaced by a sudden, overwhelming, and volcanic eruption of pure hatred.
This was too much at once. First Ewan’s ghost, carving at me through the memories held within four walls, and now her.
I had no composure left to maintain. No fucks left to give.
I spun on the gravel, my boots digging into the dirt, and marched toward her. Her face paled as I towered over her.
“How dare you tell me what to do!” I screamed, the raw, agonizing fury tearing at my vocal cords. “You have no right! You don’t even have a right to step foot near me! You left me in that fucking house! You walked out that door knowing exactly who you left me with! ”
Fiona flinched, holding her expensive handbag to her chest like a shield, and looked around nervously, as if worried the neighbors would hear.
“Callum, please. Try to understand. I couldn’t take you with me because I couldn’t afford it.
Please just talk to me. You have a younger brother, Callum. I had another son.”
“I don’t have a brother!” I roared, the betrayal compounding into something lethal.
She had started over. She had given another child the life I was denied.
She had bought him clothes, fed him, and kept him safe, completely abandoning me to a monster just because she couldn't afford the dead weight.
A bitter, suffocating disgust coated my throat.
She thought a shared bloodline would make me forgive her.
“I have three amazingly brilliant sisters, and that’s no thanks to you!”
“I am your mother!” she cried, her voice pitching up indignantly.
The tone at which she spewed that word was the spark that ignited the powder keg. I saw nothing but blinding red.
“No. Cindy Donovan is my mother.” I hissed, stepping so close she had to lean back against the porch railing.
My voice may have been low, but the venom lacing it told of nothing but finality.
“Cindy is the woman who held me while I screamed. Cindy is the one who fed me, who clothed me! You…you’re nothing but a coward. ”
I didn’t stop there. Twenty-one years of a deeply rooted betrayal and the bloody truth came rushing out.
“While you were off starting your shiny new life, I was fighting for mine.” I gestured toward the decaying house.
“I was starved, Fiona! For days I didn’t have a single crumb because he was too drunk to buy groceries.
He would beat me until my ribs fractured.
Hold my head underwater until I passed out.
And the police department? His buddies in blue?
They let his shit slide every single time I called for help, because he wore a badge. ”
Tears streamed down my face, but they were bred from fury, not sorrow.
“You are nothing to me, and neither was he.”
“Callum, I —”
“Save it!” I interrupted fiercely.
“You missed out, Fiona,” I said, the rage finally burning out, leaving behind a cold, untouchable steel.
“You have no idea who I am now. Fuck, when I was a kid, lying on the floor, bruised and bleeding by his hand, I used to wish you’d come back for me.
Used to pray for you to save me. But I realized a long time ago… you weren’t worthy of me.”
I looked at the rotting house, then at the woman who left me to die inside it.
“I have a great life,” I said steadily, my voice ringing with absolute truth.
“I have a beautiful family who stepped in to raise me, and I married into another great one. I built my own family with my husband, and you have absolutely no place in my world.”
I turned my back on her, lacing my fingers through Silas’s and holding tight.
“Don’t ever contact me again,” I threw over my shoulder as I headed for the rental.
I didn’t wait for a response, we drove away, leaving the ghosts in the dust where they belonged.