Page 44 of Highlander’s Hope

They looked at each other for a long moment, something connecting them deeper than ever before. “Your mother?” he said.

“Aye. My mother died before I could remember her. My father remarried soon, a sweet woman called Christina, the mother of Owen, Domhnall, and Lena.”

So she had a stepparent as well… Konnor had never in his life talked about this with anyone, not seriously, not with the possibility of connecting with people about this. At school, he’d been this brooding kid who’d rather solve a problem through violence and acting out than by talking. He’d been a troubled kid and surely on his way into the United States penal system. That had been his way of dealing with the violent situation at home, the one he couldn’t change.

It was only when his mom made him join the soccer team at the age of twelve that he’d learned to channel that violence into soccer. He’d even became a team captain, though only for his soccer skills, not for his ability to make friends.

Konnor fiddled with the cup in his hands. “So you have a good relationship with her?”

“Aye. She’s my second mother.”

He nodded. “That’s good. God knows, you’ve had enough trauma to deal with in your life. I wasn’t that lucky. My mom remarried two years after my dad died. A guy named Jerry. We moved in with him pretty quickly, and about a week after that, he started to—”

His throat contracted. He’d never said the words out loud, not even with his mother. They avoided talking about Jerry altogether, but he’d been there, between them, invisible, and omnipresent.

He swallowed what felt like a boulder stuck in his throat. “He beat her,” he spat out.

With an effort, he looked at Marjorie. Her eyelashes trembled, and two tight lines formed around her mouth.

“I was eight years old,” Konnor said. “And I watched him do that, not able to do a damn thing about it.”

“Did he beat ye, too?” she said with an emotionless voice, though her eyes were wet and glistened with the mixture of anger, compassion, and bottomless pain.

“Yeah. But she often ended up taking the hits intended for me.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “Konnor…” she said in a broken voice.

How could his name sound so much like a prayer? How could it resonate in his chest like a painful crack of thunder?

His eyes prickled with burning tears, and he shook his head to shake them off. But too late. The emotion, her compassion, the fact that he was talking about the biggest trauma in his own life for the first time weakened the chains on the door he’d locked the monsters behind.

They spilled out in a roaring, raging, clawing wave of memories that scraped his insides and hollowed him out.

“That’s why I must go back to her.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, a mournful expression on her face. Didn’t she want him to go?

“I couldn’t protect her then, Marjorie,” he said as though he felt the need to justify himself. “I must protect her now,” he rasped.”

“Aye. Of course, ye must take care of yer mother.”

She was an angel for saying that, but he still felt like he needed to explain, to make her understand. “I tried to shield her from him. Once. The first time.”

Tears burned his eyes, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, willing for them to stay back.

She lay her hand on his shoulder blade, warm and heavy and soothing. “Ye were an eight-year-old lad…” she said. “What could ye have done?”

“Something. I should have called the police.”

She didn’t reply, and he looked back at her. Right. The puzzled expression. She didn’t know who the police were. “They’re a law enforcement agency. They make sure there’s order and that people follow the law.”

“Oh. Aye. Ye should have those. The chief punishes those who break the law, steal or murder.”

“Mom told me not to,” he said. “She told me it’s just a phase. That Jerry wasn’t well, and he’d get better. When I grew up, I realized we needed the money. She’d sold our house when we moved in with him, and she quit her job. She’d given him all the savings we had.”

“Could her da or her brothers help?”

“There was no one.” He sighed, pushed himself off the merlon and ran both his palms through his hair. “Just her sister, Tabitha, but I don’t think she ever knew. Not until Jerry died and my mom started therapy.”