Page 46 of A Sorrow of Truths

Her surprise is clear. As is the look of pity she bestows. That, and the sound of hoof beats landing heavy somewhere close by, make me frown. I look up the paths, watching as Charlie comes slowly along the beaten down ground, both him and his horse seeming as drowned as the soil is around us. He’s another thing I need to deal with, talk to perhaps. Or maybe I don’t. Why should his opinion on my life be of consequence?

“Mom,” he says, coming to a standstill. “Sir.”

I nod and look over the frame of the horse, as he talks with Beatrice about something. Childish things presumably. Mother and son dialogue. Probably irrelevant to any reality other than the life he’s been offered because of my guilt.

Still, the disinterest makes me dismiss the thought of conversations with him and wonder if I should have told Hannah more, or gone with her. Maybe I should. Maybe that would have made her decision making about me easier. In fact, it was fucking dumb of me to offer her space now I’m processing the thought. I should have done what needs doing immediately, not caring for the guilt involved in it, and offered her everything I am.

“Sir?” I look up at him, unsure what he’s said. “Mom said you wanted to go for a ride? I can saddle up the filly and-“

“No. I have things to do.”

Moving away, I duck through the door and make my way down to the east wing. I don’t have time for children today, nor do I have the patience for dealing with feelings I doubtless should have dealt with long ago. The thought makes me stop by the orangery, eyes cast out at the loan figure of him heading back to the barns. His head hangs low, the weight of the rain on his shoulders as heavy as the torment he probably holds every day because of circumstance.

At least Beatrice has been there for him, held him through the years, taken the gift of a parentless child and offered him some protection against the actuality of his existence. I couldn’t. Didn’t want to, or was unable to tolerate the thought of another man’s child under my roof even if it was the right thing to do. It’s never been hidden from him. He knows his real mother is here, but the carcass of her unresponsive frame wasn’t much use to a child in need of a maternal instinct.

I turn and head back in the direction I was aiming for again, remembering the time I caught him in there with her on his own for the first time. Five years old and he just stood there, staring, as little emotion on his face as I’ve always had on my own. Learnt behaviour presumably given both Beatrice’s and my analytical approach. It’s still there now when he visits her, as if he feels nothing for her. I’ve never even asked him how he does feel about it all, or if he understands how easy it will be to end the turmoil we’re all under.

My cell vibrates silently, as I push on the door into the room. I pull it out of my pocket and check over the messages, part desperate for it to be the one I’m hoping for. It isn’t. It’s Malachi. The same Malachi that gave her the ability to do what she did to herself.

I grumble to myself and slide it back into my pocket, not in the slightest ready to communicate with the man who put the life of the one person I care so deeply for in harm’s way. For the moment, I’m nowhere other than concentrating on this in front of me and trying to find a defensible and justifiable reason to do what I want to do.

All this time, and all the times Beatrice has suggested it, and never once have I recognized it as rational or acceptable. My truths were more important than her death. I’ve wanted to wake her, and then shake the fucking life from her again just to put that power back in my hands rather than have her hold this wedding band around me any longer.

A son that wasn’t mine.

He was something so pure and strong when he came into the world, the wreckage of his broken mother not holding him back from his first shouts at life. I held him, loved him within a second’s worth of heartbeats, and saw my future reflected in his eyes. Everything, for a day, was clear. Every reason to be whole was there and waiting for me. Life. Love. A new purpose and determination to be everything he needed to me to be. Perfect. Indisputable.

And then that power was taken from me by way of blood tests.

Not mine.

And yet now, because of my personal feelings for another woman and a life I could have with her, all those sorrows and all that pain is being overridden. They mean nothing alongside the fear that haunts me at the thought of not having her with me. I need that. Want it. Love. Comfort. A chance at all of it again. I miss her even now, can feel her lips on mine, her skin on mine. I want my damn walks in parks, my mornings waking up together and my nights entwined in hope rather than the constancy of numbers and processed evaluation of facts.

My gaze lands on the machines littered around the space, all of them doing their constant tasks of keeping this body breathing and its organs functioning. Why shouldn’t I have that life I want? What lies here is a lie. A farce of a marriage. A child that isn’t mine. And a house that I hate because of those two falsehoods. This whole damn life I’ve been living in is an untruth.

And it’s only a few switches.

Simple.

I stare at them, glare, and then move forward. There’s nothing else to do than that. I have the paperwork in place, signatures from two state senators and the medical advisory team to make sure the deed is legal. Not that it ever wasn’t in reality. If anything should be deemed illegal, certainly immoral, it’s been me showing reasons to keep her on the damned machines. The governing bodies liked that, though. They sanctioned Grayson Rothburg testing her, trialling the others – attempting to find cures for problematic scenarios the world has to deal with daily. Questionable potentially, but what the people don’t know doesn’t hurt them, and those same people will scream for the drugs these trials have provided one day. I’ll be a hero in the eyes of the masses. And the thought of how the drugs evolved will be dismissed as inconsequential.

Switches.

A few turns.

I’ll be a widower then. Free.

Lacking truths, but free.

“Sir?”

I blink at the sound of Charlie’s voice behind me and stop my hand moving, guilt and culpability sweeping over me like a goddamned storm. My eyes close, throat swallowing down the curses that want to rain down hell into the space around me. “Yes, Charlie?”

“Mom told me you’re sad.”

A dark and troublesome chuckle forms in my throat. Sad? I never knew sad before Hannah. I knew anger and rage and depression, but not sadness. It’s true now, though. I am sad. I am miserable and wretched with the thought of both what I have to do, and what I will not be able to do if I don’t do it.

Swallowing again at the thought, I continue looking over her perfectly still body and lodge my hands in my pockets rather than aim them at switches I was about to turn. Sadness. This is all a sadness. It is for me, and it is for Charlie behind me. We’ve been nothing but stalled in life, him and me. Waiting for me to achieve something. Both of us.