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“Mum, stop. That sounds all kinds of wrong,” Liam said.
“What sounds wrong?” Neve asked, coming into the living room dressed in her pyjamas and clutching a family-sized block of chocolate. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she gave Liam a watery smile and plopped herself down in one of the armchairs.
“Mum’s trying for an analogy,” Liam said.
“How’s it going?” Neve asked curiously.
“Eh.” Liam held his hand out and waggled it from side to side.
“Oh, you two!” Mum said, but she was smiling even though her eyes looked suspiciously wet. Liam supposed it wasn’t every day that your daughter broke off her engagement because her fiancé had forcibly kissed your son’s fake boyfriend. He couldn’t blame Mum for being a little bit overwhelmed by everything. To be fair, it did sound like the plotline of an incredibly overwrought soap opera. The way today had started out, by this evening they’d probably discover that Riley had a secret twin or something, or maybe Grandma, even though she’d been dead for almost ten years, would make a dramatic entrance in the rain. It honestly seemed like that kind of a day.
“Neve, I’m so sorry about Marcus,” Ambrose said, but Neve shook her head.
“It wasn’t your fault. This isn’t the first time he’s cheated, but he always had an explanation, managed to talk me out of listening to my gut instinct. You’ve actually done me a favour, showing him up for the rat bastard he is.”
“Marcus was an arse,” Grandad chimed in, because apparently the mere mention of Marcus was enough to wake him. “If it was up to me, I’d?—”
They never got to hear what Grandad would do to Marcus, because they were interrupted by the persistent buzz of Ambrose’s phone.
He pulled it out and frowned. “Sorry, I have to take this.” Liam caught a flash of the name on the screen as Ambrose pulled his hand out of Liam’s and hit the answer button.
Mrs. Ahmadi.
“Hello?”
Liam could hear a voice speaking rapidly, and Ambrose stiffened. But as they spoke, Ambrose’s shoulders lost some of their tension and when he let out a sigh, it was resigned. “I’m glad she went on her own. That’s always better. She’s probably been skipping her meds. Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I’m out of town until tomorrow. Will she be all right till then?” A muffled response. “Oh, you will? Thank you so much. Tell her I’ll see her soon, and tell her—tell her I love her, okay?”
Ambrose hung up the phone, and his face crumpled. Liam wasn’t sure if he should ask, but it turned out he didn’t need to. “It’s Mum,” Ambrose said. “She’s in hospital. It’s not—it’s not a big deal. She got a taxi there.”
For a moment Liam didn’t understand exactly what Ambrose was saying. Then he realised he was talking about his mother’s mental health, and that sometime in the past she must have been taken to hospital unwillingly. “Okay.”
“What’s happened?” Mum asked, her forehead creased with concern. “Has she had an accident?”
A quick smile flashed across Ambrose’s face before he ducked his head—both rueful and bitter.
“She has some mental health issues,” Ambrose said, his gaze fixed on his phone screen. “But she took herself up there. So that’s good. That’s really good.”
Liam wondered what it was like to have your mum calling you, claiming you’d stolen some photograph, and not believing you hadn’t. He wondered what a whole lifetime of that felt like, and suddenly understood why Ambrose’s smile had been bitter when Mum had assumed it was an accident. Because Mum thought that most families were like theirs—hell, Liam thought it too. Maybe not with the same privileges, but the same dynamics—people who loved each other. People you could tease and annoy the shit out of, but also count on to have your back when you needed. And where the parents took care of their kids, not the other way round.
Liam remembered being shocked when he was a kid, and someone told him that fish couldn’t see water. That’s what the Connellys were, in the end. They were fish who couldn’t see water, while Ambrose was dying of thirst.
Great.
Now he was doing the analogy thing.
“That’s good,” he agreed, maybe a little too brightly.
“Do you need someone to take you back?” Mum asked, obviously not convinced that it wasn’t a crisis. “I know the roads are flooded, but by the morning it should be clear, and we can get Will to drive you back early or you and Liam can take the RAV4?—”
“If Ambrose says it’s fine, it’s fine, love,” Dad said, and Liam didn’t miss the grateful look Ambrose shot him.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Ambrose said, and stood up suddenly. “I just have to go and use the…”
And he bolted from the room.
Neve pointed her block of chocolate at Liam. “You should go after him.”
“Are we a bit much?” Grandad asked, patting a sleeping Balian on the backside. “We might be a bit much.”
