Chapter Twenty-Six

 

After almost thirty years, Rachael Bryce sat in front of him. “I’m so sorry, Cale,” she said. “I know I hurt you. And I’m ashamed of the mother I was. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

For a moment, Bryce said nothing. “I go by Bryce now,” he said, attempting to keep the hurt and anger out of his voice. “I don’t like to remember what it was like to be Cale.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you? Do you need money? I got married again to a really a fine man. His name is Theodore Clark. He said to tell you he’ll hire a good lawyer, do anything he can to help.” Rachael spoke rapidly, as if she feared this might be her only chance.

“I have a very good lawyer.” He nodded toward Radhauser. “And a detective who is on my side, too.”

Radhauser cleared his throat. “I feel like I should leave and give you two time alone. I can wait in the car.”

“No,” Bryce said. “Please. I need you to stay.”

Rachael wiped her face with her free hand. “I wish things were different. I wish I gave you the family you deserved.”

Bryce stared at her thin lips, watched the movement of her tongue behind her teeth, trying to connect the words with his life, with what he remembered of this mother and his childhood. He swallowed hard against the anger and hurt that kept rising. He had been a little boy, barely older than Scott, and it had all been so unfair. But fairness was for happy people who’ve been fortunate enough to live a life defined by love and certainty. Not the abuse, hate, and ambiguities he’d suffered.

“You were such a sweet boy,” his mother said. “After I joined AA, I wanted to find you and make amends, I swear to God I did.” Her gaze shifted to the back wall, but she kept talking as if she had practiced her speech and now recited the words by heart. “I eventually found out you’d been placed in that school, but when I called they told me you’d gone to college. When I tried the University of Utah they said you’d withdrawn. I kept telling myself you were better off without me and I wanted to believe people loved you...took care of you.” She paused, studied her son. “I used to imagine a woman with soft hands and a kind voice tucking you into bed at night.”

Rage flared hot in his chest. No woman with soft hands tucked him into bed at night or offered him any kindness or comfort. The one woman who was supposed to love him, loved her vodka more. Words were lost to him and he stared at her in disbelief.

As if privy to his thoughts, she shook her head and raised her trembling hand again to touch her cheek. “Alcoholism is a disease.”

He shut his eyes. Under his closed lids, Bryce was at the mercy of the throbbing sound of his own pulse. He felt it in the sides of his neck and the tips of his fingers.

Then, disgusted with himself, Bryce opened his eyes and tried to clear his thoughts, tried to stop the clock from racing backward toward the boundless possibilities of another childhood. The air around him filled with blame. Without any help from this woman who was supposed to love and guide him, he had made some kind of life for himself.

Or had he made even more a mess of his life than she had hers?

His mother, as far as he knew, had never been arrested for child abuse and murder. How unfair was that? She was more responsible for Isaiah Bryce’s suicide than he was for Skyler’s death. Did he really want this woman back in his life?

“...it’s a 12-step program.” His mother hadn’t stopped talking, but her voice entered his consciousness again. “The 9th step says the alcoholic needs to make direct amends to the people we’ve hurt except when to do so would injure them or others. I contacted Jason to apologize and ask his forgiveness. And even though he’d been dead for years, I wrote a letter to Isaiah. But you...I just...”

She turned her head, tears streaming, then turned back, as if remembering he couldn’t hear her if she weren’t looking at him. “I couldn’t find you, but even if I could, I didn’t know how to begin. None of it was your fault,” she sobbed. “You were just a little boy and well...forgiving me...it’s so much to ask.”

Something inside Bryce softened. He’d fought so hard to forget his past, forget who he once was and where he came from that his childhood felt more like fiction than truth. He could have won an Olympic gold medal in the sport of being silent. But what good had it done him? He hadn’t really run away from his past. Hiding from a monster in the living room doesn’t make it go away.

When he glanced up, his mother had flattened her hand, fingers spread, against the window between them. And, instantly understanding what she wanted, part of him yearned to accommodate her, to raise his own hand and press it against the glass, matching finger for finger the hand of his mother. The depth of sadness in her eyes startled Bryce, but his arm hung limp, too heavy to lift. He stared at the lines in Rachael’s palm until she pulled it away, tucked it into her lap. But the moist print on the glass lingered for a long moment before it slowly lightened and disappeared.

“Would you rather I left?” Again, she lowered her gaze, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t want to intrude and make anything worse right now. I know what a hard time this has to be for you.”

Bryce found his voice. “I thought about seeing you again so many times. I thought about what it would feel like to face you. My mother. The woman who abandoned me at six years old.”

Her mouth remained open for a moment, as if the full implication of that was hitting her for the first time.

“And believe me,” he said. “No woman with soft hands ever tucked me into bed at night.” His eyes started to well up. Her reappearance was an array of contradictions. Of light and air infused with something darker, like thunder. “It’s just that I didn’t know seeing you again would be so confusing.”

She looked into his eyes. “It’s not easy for me either. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am...”

The word forgiveness grazed his mind like a bullet. It sped by him, slowed, then speeded up as if it had no idea of its target. Over the years, he thought about forgiveness many times. Thought about forgiving the man he believed was his father. The man who hated Bryce because he was betrayed by his wife. Could he forgive this mother who took so much from him? Forgiveness. The word meandered down long and convoluted paths, but never found its mark.

“I would do anything if I could go back in time and change what happened,” his mother said.

“Why did you leave me in that hotel room?”

“I was a selfish drunk who put myself above the welfare of my own child. I’m so sorry, Cale.”

With the sincerity in her voice, pity rose inside Bryce. After all, his life had hardly been perfect—he made his own set of mistakes and in spite of good intentions ended up divorced from Valerie and now in jail.

Radhauser hung up his receiver and Bryce understood this was too personal for him, and that he wanted to give them some privacy.

“Please stop apologizing,” Bryce said.

“I’ll try,” she said.

“We can’t change the past. I mean, I’m glad you stopped drinking and put your life back together. I’m glad you found someone to love. Do you still see my father?”

She looked at him as if seeing a ghost, someone once significant, but now gone. Unable to meet his gaze, she finally answered, talking into her lap. “He’s dead. You know that.”

“Don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending that Isaiah Bryce was my father? We both know he wasn’t.”

Bryce hadn’t meant to sound cruel and was startled by the heartlessness of his words. He merely wanted to face the truth about his life. A relationship with his mother was impossible so long as that huge lie lay between them.

She sucked in a breath. “Your birth father had a wife and three children in Salt Lake. They moved to the east coast just before I joined AA and I never saw or heard from him again.”

“What’s his name?”

“Elliott Cummings. He was an administrator at Kennecott Copper in Salt Lake and used to visit the Wheatley mine when I worked at the Robertson Inn.”

“Did Isaiah know about him?”

“Not at first. But later, after you were born, he suspected. No Bryce ever had brown eyes.”

Bryce shook his head. Shades of Reggie Sterling and little Skyler. “So that’s why he hated me so much?”

“He didn’t hate you. He was hurt and angry with me. It was entirely my fault, not yours. We didn’t have much money and he did the best he could. No matter how many times I got drunk, made a fool out of myself, and ran off, he took me back. It’s not easy to live with an alcoholic and most men would have kicked me out the door without a cent.”

“Did you love him?”

“I was young and stupid and I used him as a ticket to get away from my own messed-up family, but I wasn’t in love with him.”

Bryce laughed. “I meant the other guy. Did you love Elliott Cummings?”

“I was crazy about him and would have done anything he said, or at least I thought so then. But now I don’t know what was me and what was the alcohol. I sure like to believe I couldn’t leave you alone in that hotel if I wasn’t a drunk.” She shifted her gaze to the wall behind his head. “But things happen in our lives, Cale—I mean Bryce, and we try to make sense of them.”

All the pieces of his life broke apart. There was a jab of pain behind his eyes, so quick and sharp he had no time to prepare for it. He dropped the receiver onto the small shelf in front of him for a moment and cradled his head in his hands. When he finally looked up, his mother began to speak.

He read her lips.

“I’m sorry. None of it was your fault.”

It was her resilience and acceptance of the blame for what she did that inspired him to be a person who at least considered allowing her this righting of a wrong. She made no excuses for her behavior. She held herself accountable. He picked up the receiver and smiled at her. “We agreed to stop apologizing, remember?”

“I agreed to try,” she said.

They spent the remainder of the hour talking about their lives, her new husband, how much she loved Jason’s kids, and how she thought about her younger son every time she uttered her grandson’s name. As if to prove it, she pulled a worn, black and white photograph from the pocket of her skirt. In it, a boy Bryce recognized as himself sat on the concrete steps in front of their Wheatley clapboard house. In his lap, he held the pet lamb he’d named Oscar.

Bryce felt an ache so profound he nearly gasped for air. It sneaked up on him, paralyzing him with sadness for all the years he’d lost with Jason, his family, and their mother. If he were honest, he wanted many things for the remainder of his life and continued estrangement from his family was not one of them.

When the buzzer sounded, Rachael didn’t rise with the other visitors. Her knuckles whitened as she clenched the phone as if it were some kind of lifeline. “Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to ever lose touch again. I want to be part of your life, if you’ll have me.”

“The way things are headed, I don’t know what kind of a life I’ll have. I may well spend the rest of it in jail. Or end it quickly with a lethal injection.”

“I can’t believe that will happen. From everything Detective Radhauser and Kendra Palmer told me, I know you’ll be found innocent. We all make mistakes. You didn’t hurt that little boy on purpose. God forgives us. I’m living proof.”

When the guard nodded to Radhauser, he touched Rachael’s shoulder.

She stood and once again pressed her open palm flat as a moth against the clear plastic wall.

This time Bryce matched it with his own, the smooth Plexiglas between them. Their eyes met and held as his fingers stretched over hers. Bryce took a deep breath. The invisible bands that bound him for so long loosened.

“Visiting hour is over,” the guard said.

Radhauser tapped her shoulder again.

She crumpled into sobs.

Bryce watched as the hard-nosed detective, who told him how much he hated drunks, slipped a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. He put his arm around her shoulders, then guided her gently from the cubicle.

For hours after he returned to his cell, Bryce sat on the floor. He pulled the soles of his prison slippers together and gripped his ankles like a little boy. He rocked back and forth, continuing to feel that long, invisible thread that connected him to his mother.