Page 38 of Dead Vengeance

“Work?” she spits back. “What kind of job keeps you out until this time of night?” I honestly don’t even know what time it is, so I reach into my pocket for my phone while she talks on. “Not a call, not a text. Nothing! What were you doing that you couldn’t get in touch and let me know you’re okay?”

I remember my phone went flat at the hospital a second before I swipe my screen in an automatic motion. But it turns on. It was completely dead a few hours ago, I’m sure of it… “Sorry, Ma,” I mumble. “I would have, but… I can’t explain it—”

“Tell me where you were!” she shouts.

“Work!” I shout back, and I don’t mean to yell, but I hate that this is happening again. Things have been so good between us for months. And like a switch, her reaction’s thrown me straight back into this state of constant stress I’ve lived with for so long.

“Work doing what? At night? When you left early this morning? Tell me the truth!”

I’m so exhausted, not just by today but by all of this, that the words spill before I can stop them. “You need to stop this. Ma, I’m twenty-five. It shouldn’t matter what time I come home. You have to…” The words ‘get over it’ are so close to my lips, but I cram them back down, settling on the softer, if still crushing, “I’m not him. You can trust me. I’m not going to…” Disappear? Get myself killed? Walk out that door and never come back?

I don’t say the last part, but she heard it loud and clear. Her eyes fill with tears, and she walks away from me before they can spill, her shaking hand at her temple while she stands by the window, trying to calm herself down.

I feel terrible. Five seconds in the house and I’ve already made her cry.

I can’t get mad at her because she knows how messed up this is. We both do. And I know she’ll feel awful about this tomorrow if I let her say too much. She’s carrying enough without me doing that.

“There was an accident at work today,” I explain as quickly and as calmly as I can. “The guy they sent me to train with, he got hurt.”

She turns to me, concern battling the grief that’s never far from her eyes. “Were they attacked? By your client?”

I forgot for a moment she thinks I’m doing social work. I guess she thinks my client, Archer, is dangerous. “No. No, nothing like that. It was… a freak accident. It was this old house, and…” If I tell her something as ridiculous as what actually happened, I know she won’t believe me, and she’ll go into a fresh spiral. “A… something fell on him, like some furnishings? I didn’t really see it. Some unsteady bookcase or something. And he got hurt. And we had to take him to the hospital. And you know how emergency rooms are. We were there for hours. I came home as soon as I could.”

She watches me for a while, taking in the story, and my heart sinks that she’s probably already made up her mind to not believe me—that the idea I’m running drugs is so much more natural and reasonable to her.

“Hillingdon Hospital,” I tell her. “You can call them. Raul Vasquez is the guy’s name. You call them to see if he was admitted this afternoon.”

Fresh tears start to her eyes, and her shoulders drop as her voice softens. “Oh, Liam. I don’t need to call them. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you think that.”

“It’s all right.” It’s not, and we both know it. But this is how we do things. This is how we live our lives. Her forever grieving my missing brother, and always, always waiting for me to disappear too. And me, terrified of sending her into another one of her weeks-long depressive breakdowns, where she can’t even get out of bed to wash or to eat. Where every hope I have of living as basic a life as a man who can hold down a job goes straight back out the window.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Her gaze darts away, like a frightened animal trying to hide from whatever she’s thinking. “It’s almost the fifth and…”

The fifth. The anniversary of Jem’s disappearance. The day she makes the call to Detective Peter Marsden, the man in charge of my brother’s case, to ask him for news. The day Marsden tells her there’s nothing. Again. The day she falls apart.

No wonder she’s been so upset. It breaks my heart. I loved him so much. I miss him. But for her… I can’t imagine what it’s like, even now. “Please don’t worry about me, Ma. It’s okay.”

With a relieved tilt of her head, she comes over, takes my hands, and leads me to the sofa. “Tell me what happened today.”

“That was it, really.” I settle down by her side, keen to talk about anything but Jem. “It was… just a job. I was talking to the client, just like I was supposed to, then… then it all went wrong.” I shove my own tears down, but I can’t control the waver in my voice. “I thought he was dead, Ma. It looked so bad. And I was so scared and…”

Her arms come around me, and there won’t ever come a day I won’t melt into them. I know it. It’s not just that she’s my mother. It’s that she’s listening. Through all her own fear and anger, she still sees me. Me and not Jem, even if it’s just for a little while.

When she pulls back to talk, I miss the warmth instantly. “Is he all right now?”

“He’s weirdly all right. I mean… the whole thing smashed down on his head. Then he was fine? But I guess maybe he has a concussion or something, because he spoke for a bit, then he passed out, and even though he looked okay, or his body did, he’s got to have some kind of a head injury, right?”

“Sounds like you did the right thing by taking him to the hospital.” She scoops my hands up to hold them tight. “I’m proud of you, Liam. That you’d make the right call like that.”

The comment’s loaded. All at once, it means the world to me. Because every time she says something like that, it feels like we might have finally made it out—that I will have proved my worth, shown her she can stop worrying now. And I feel happy and hopeful. But I know her words also carry a warning. Don’t fuck up. Don’t ever, ever be like your brother. Don’t let me down.

Maybe my face is showing all my thoughts, because she switches the conversation. “How was the rest of it, then? What was your client like?”

“My client?”

It’s a daft question. I guess I only ask it to stall the conversation. Because I’m not sure how to describe him. How to describe either Archer or all of what happened between us today. Or the weird way I’m feeling about him now.

“His name is Archer,” I venture. “And he’s certainly not as old as I thought he’d be. He’s actually just a few years older than me.”