Chapter Eight #3
Heather sucked in a breath. She sensed what was coming next and didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to know what Jim had been through. But she couldn’t stop him from speaking. She could only listen and pray that she was wrong.
“I was feeding her soup,” he said. “She looked at me and told me she couldn’t do it herself, so she wanted me to kill her.”
The scent of the heating coals drifted into the room.
Two houses away, children played outside—a noisy game that had them shrieking with laughter.
But here in Heather’s house, time stood still.
The words repeated themselves in her brain, bending and weaving together until the vowels and consonants made no sense.
And yet a very clear image remained. A dying mother had asked her young son to kill her.
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.” He sagged back against the sofa and rubbed his face.
“I couldn’t do it. I cried and yelled at her and told her it was wrong, but she was relentless.
Day after day that was all she talked about.
She’d figured out how and she even wanted me to help her write a letter so everyone would understand it wasn’t my fault.
She said if I didn’t do this one thing, she would never forgive me. She would stop loving me.”
The last sentence had been a mere whisper. Heather had sensed it more than heard it. She stared at Jim, numb with shock, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. She doubted that he even remembered she was in the room.
“The day they came and put the breathing tube into her, she screamed at me, swearing she would never forgive me. Then she stopped screaming. After that, she wouldn’t look at me except with hatred.”
Heather’s stomach lurched uneasily while cold sweat dotted her brow. It wasn’t supposed to be like this for anyone, she thought in horror. How had he survived the ordeal? How had he turned out so incredibly wonderful when this was his past?
“After that, she deteriorated fairly quickly,” he went on.
His voice had changed, now sounding almost normal, as if he was telling someone else’s story. Maybe that was how he kept his sanity.
“They moved her to a nursing home. By that time, I was in foster care. I visited her every day, but when I came into the room, she closed her eyes. No matter how I begged her to forgive me, she pretended I wasn’t there.
Even at the end, she wouldn’t forgive me.
I remember standing by the side of her bed, sobbing.
I told her that I’d done the best I could, but I couldn’t fix her.
She was my mother, so I couldn’t kill her.
I could only love her and want her to love me back.
I begged her to give me just one look to let me know it was okay between us. ”
He was silent for several minutes, then he continued.
“Finally, I bent over to kiss her goodbye. The doctor told me she probably wouldn’t make it through the night and I begged her one last time to forgive me.
Instead, she kept her eyes closed, and with what I guess was her last bit of strength and ability to move, she turned her head away. ”
He gave a half-strangled laugh that was one of pain rather than humor. “She could only move about a half inch or so, but I knew what she was doing. Rejecting me with that final act. She shut me out forever.”
“I’m so sorry,” Heather said, wishing she had something helpful to say. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so incredibly inadequate.
“Me, too,” Jim said lightly. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
She reached up and was surprised to find her cheeks damp.
She sniffed and wiped away the tears. “What a horrible experience,” she said.
“It’s so sad. I don’t pretend to understand what your mother was suffering, but it must have been awful.
Even so, I can’t forgive her for what she did to you.
You were so young.” More tears rolled down her cheeks.
She brushed them away impatiently. “Sorry, Jim. I don’t think I can help it. ”
His jaw tightened. “I wish I’d been able to fix the situation, to fix her, but I couldn’t. That’s what I regret the most.”
He was lying. Heather knew that with the same certainty that she knew the sun would rise the next morning.
Jim was in pain, not because he hadn’t been able to “fix” his mother, but because she’d made an impossible request and then rejected him for failing her.
What he remembered most was the withdrawal of her love because that was her real death to him.
Then everything made sense. In one of those blinding flashes of truth, she knew why she hadn’t been able to figure him out.
Why he appeared so perfect all the time.
Jim had decided to spend his life making up for what he saw as the failures of a thirteen-year-old boy.
He couldn’t fix his mother, but he was determined to fix everything else in his world.
He was making up for the past. Unfortunately, until he understood he had done nothing wrong, he was destined to search for a forgiveness that could only come from within himself.
There weren’t any dark secrets save the one he’d just shared. He was exactly who he appeared to be—a real, live, genuine hero. He really was one of the good guys, and Lord help her, now there was nothing to keep her from falling helplessly in love with him.