WHEN WYATT woke the next time, Katherine was there.
Oh, thank you, Goddess, he thought. “Thank you, Kath—”
But then with a shock he saw it wasn’t her.
It was his mother.
A chill swept over him.
She came to the edge of the bed and reached out, and he flinched and then so did she.
“Oh, my boy, my sweet boy….”
“M-Mom?” he asked, wondering if this was some kind of morphine-induced illusion.
“Yes, Son. It’s me. Kevin?” She looked away. “Can you get me a chair, please?”
Kevin. She knew Kevin’s name?
They met while he was out, Wyatt realized.
“You can have this one.”
She shook her head, her graying hair swaying at her shoulders. “No. I want to be able to get close. And my back hurts. That drive. It was a long one.”
“Mom?” Was this real?
“Of course, Mrs. Dolan.”
Kevin moved as fast as he always did, and he helped her sit in one of those awful plastic chairs, but his mother only told him how grateful she was.
Then she laid her hand on one of Wyatt’s. “Oh, my poor sweet Wyatt.”
“What—what are you doing here?” He pushed at the morphine button. If this was real, he couldn’t face it sober.
“I called. And Kevin answered. And he told me what happened. Don’t be mad. I’m a mother. I made him.”
Wyatt flashed a look at Kevin—who looked miserable—and of course he couldn’t be mad, even though a part of him really, really wanted to be.
I love him too much.
For a moment Wyatt found himself swept up in the marvel of it all.
I love him!
A week ago he had been alone. Well, not alone. But without love. No! Not without love. But without a special love.
And now he’s here.
It was unbelievable.
It was magick.
“Wyatt?”
He turned slowly back to his mother. She looked even bigger than he remembered when he’d seen her back home. Could she really be bigger or was it the drugs?
Her eyes were red, and there were dark shadows the color of bruises under them.
She looks like Kathleen Turner, he thought quite suddenly. An older, heavier Kathleen Turner.
“Son, I am so sorry. Sorry for so many things. I know you probably can’t forgive me, but I am saying it, and I will say it a million-million more times. I can’t say it enough. I can’t say it as many times as you deserve for me to.”
Wyatt tried to shake his head, but it was too heavy and he was just too tired. “Mom?” was all he could manage.
“I wanted to do more. I wanted to be better. But your father….” She closed her eyes and when she opened them, they were full of raw pain. “I couldn’t….” She swallowed hard. “A woman must obey her husband.”
“What?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.” It was her quoting voice. Wyatt recognized it, even though it had been a long, long time. He’d heard it enough. “And he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” She closed her eyes again, tightly, pursed her mouth, her lips turning into a thin line. “Everything,” she whispered.
A rage rose in Wyatt then that was huge and red and hot and violent, and he thought his head might explode—erupt like a volcano. Fucking blow to the sky like Mount Vesuvius.
She was going to let her fucking Bible make it okay for her to let his evil bastard father kick him out of the house and his family?
Then she opened her eyes again, and they were so red and the tears ran freely down her round cheeks.
And Wyatt was just… too… tired to be angry.
“Evil” tumbled out of his mouth, unbidden. And, “Lightning should have killed him.” And that was all he had left.
He watched her draw in a deep, long breath, her shoulders lifting, and he was sure she was about to tell him some bullshit like how he shouldn’t say such things, but then she surprised him more than even her sudden appearance had done.
“Maybe so,” she said so quietly he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard her.
He sucked in a breath. What had she just said?
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Yes, I’m right,” he hissed and then once again was just too tired to rage on.
Another tear, impossibly big, spilled from her left eye and landed with an actual sound on the white sheet over his mattress. “Things would have been different had the finger of God killed him rather than changed him into… what it changed him into.”
Wyatt willed the energy to shake his head. Shake it vehemently. “No,” he said with surprising strength. “Not God.”
“I think God is Love. I think that is all that God is. I don’t think ‘It’ hates or gets jealous or punishes and floods the Earth or sends anyone to hell. I don’t even believe in hell because how could a God that the Bible said is ‘agape’—unconditional love—have any conditions?”
“God is love,” he told her firmly. Marveled that he was saying it. “That’s all God is.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Kevin and felt his strong hand rest on his right shoulder and give a gentle squeeze.
“Dad made his choice. He chose to be a vile, mean old man. God didn’t have anything to do with it.” And in a flash of insight: “And he was always a fucking bastard—” Wyatt ignored her wince. “—and after what happened he let ‘God’ be his excuse.”
Then she said it, and it was like a punch to the gut, knocking the wind from his lungs.
“Maybe so,” she said. “But please, Son. Do not speak ill of the dead.”
Dead? Did she just say…?
She nodded. “He died yesterday morning, Wyatt. He had another stroke, and he was gone before anyone even knew.”
The tears began to flow again.
Wyatt tried to get a breath. Tried again. Gasped. Kevin’s hand squeezed again. Wyatt struggled for a breath. Finally got it. “He—he’s dead?”
“Listen, you old bastard! You touch her again and I don’t care that you’re on your fucking death bed, I’ll beat the shit out of you!”
His mother nodded once.
“Daddy’s dead?”
“You are a vile evil old man! That lightning should have killed you. I wish it had!”
“Yes, Wyatt.”
Wyatt looked to Kevin, eyes wild. “Did you know?”
Pain filled Kevin’s face, his beautiful eyes going dark like storm clouds. “I’m sorry, Baby Bear. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell you the night before your operation.”
Wyatt sighed and was just too fucking worn out and pain-wracked to be mad at his big, beautiful loving man.
He didn’t tell me because he loves me.
But he should have told me.
Wyatt shook his head slowly back and forth, once.
“I’m sorry, Wyatt.”
He did the right thing.
Somehow Wyatt reached up and touched that big hand that lay still upon his shoulder.
“No need,” he whispered.
Wyatt looked back at his mother. She was still crying. Crying for that hideous old fuck. And even though there were shadows of guilt waiting around the edges for him—guilt for the last words he’d ever said to his sire—
“Fine! And I have no father!”
—with a mighty, exhausting thought, he banished them.
I don’t have a father….
“Are you okay, Mom?”
And then she did something that surprised him most of all.
She smiled.
It was weak and it was small. But she smiled, and a flicker of light came to her eyes.
“Yes, Wyatt. Because I’m free. At long, long last. I’m free.”