Page 82 of The Other Side of Green

“Go and sleep. You can call Lyra later.”

I nodded but I knew I’d call her first. I had to tell her I was sorry about what Luca had done, both then and now, and that I was sorry for whatever the future would bring.

In the end it went to voicemail, so instead I spent a few minutes looking for a laboratory who could do the quickest turn around DNA test known to man. It was going to take weeks. I tried to tell myself weeks didn’t count in the face of forever. Eventually I must have fallen asleep still clutching my cell.

I woke to murmured voices from the front room. Too low to be good news, they had me jumping out of bed, still fully dressed. Still unwashed from precinct grime.

“You need to tell him, Ruth.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“He might go, and this time never come back.”

“Or maybe he will stay.”

Mom and Phillipe lapsed into silence.

“What’s not easy?” I said from the doorway to the living room.

Mom smiled, forced and awkward. “Jack, you’re awake. Come and sit. Can I get you something to eat now?”

Hmm. Something felt off. Very off.

“What is it?” I addressed my question to Phillipe who looked slightly less suave than earlier. “Is it Luca? Has he been charged?”

Lyra wouldn’t forgive me. I knew she’d try, but she wouldn’t. The three of us were going to destroy one another with this cycle we were on.

“No, he’s been released on bail. His story corroborates what Ruth has always said; that your mother was under attack and the intruder stepped in.”

I nodded slowly. This felt very much like a non-resolution.

“Jack, what happened at the funeral? Since then you’ve been all over the place.” Mom patted the seat next to her and I sat down, leaning forward onto my knees.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“You never want to tell me anything, but most of the time I know anyway.”

I rubbed at my bed hair. “Not this time you don’t.”

“Well, I’m listening.” She patted my hand but then let it go.

“Lyra’s mom, Bernice. She’s got this crazy idea that… that.” I gazed on Mom’s face, I just couldn’t do it to her. Couldn’t sully our already pathetic past with further drama.

“That she used to sleep with your father?”

I closed my eyes as the bottom fell out of my world. My chest tightened, paralyzing as a band of steel wrapped around my ribs. “You knew?” I muttered toward the ceiling as my brain pulsed with a suspected aneurysm.

Mom’s hand landed on mine, squeezing tight. “He was a bad man, Jack. The worst, and she wasn’t much better. They deserved one another.”

“Why the hell did you put up with it?” I snapped my eyes open.

“Because of you, Jack. I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” My laugh echoed with emptiness. “Protect me? I was protecting you, getting hurt all the time, never knowing what one moment from the next was going to bring.”

“I’m sorry, Jack.”