Her Legacy

XIX. Ronan

"I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it."  David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks 

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Chapter XIX – Ronan

I marched out of my bedroom with purpose, and Shea followed me. I knew mom would blow up about that, but I had one hell of a retort.

Mom was downstairs in the living room. She was sitting on the couch with her coffee, watching breakfast television. She looked up at me when I entered the room, and her eyes widened when she saw Shea following me.

Her head snapped towards the door, and then back to Shea. She was quickly piecing things together, and I could see her blood boiling as she glared at Shea.

"What the hell are you doing upstairs?" she demanded to know of Shea.

"He was being honest with me," I shot back, folding my arms across my chest.

"Honest?" she repeated, furrowing her eyebrows. "What are you talking about? What did you tell her?" she asked Shea in disbelief.

"He told me," after I figured it out, "that he is a lycan. I know that you knew, Mom. What I want to know is why you lied to me about it." I still couldn't believe that those words were coming out of my mouth, or that this was a possibility, let alone my reality.

All the blood drained from my mom's face. I had never seen her look so pale as, I'm sure, all kinds of crazy, dreaded thoughts were passing through her head.

Instead of apologising, or explaining to me why she had kept me in the dark about something as big as this, she instead turned to Shea, and asked accusingly, "Why would you tell her that? Why would you involve her in this? I thought you were supposed to care about her!"

"I do care about her," Shea snapped. "Sara figured it out and I wasn't going to lie to her anymore. She has a right to know."

"I don't believe this. I didn't think this would be a problem. She turned sixteen and nothing happened, and I thought everything would be okay." It was like Mom was talking to herself rather than either of us.

"Mom, what are you talking about?" I asked firmly, and yet fearfully. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was still a hell of a lot more about this world, for want of a better word, that I didn't know.

Mom's head snapped to me, and she looked at me with fear and shame. I had never seen those emotions on my mom's face before. It was so unsettling that I just wanted to comfort her. Mom didn't always have it together, but right this moment she looked like she was disintegrating.

"Sara, please sit down, honey," Mom urged, motioning towards the couch.

I didn't feel like passing out on the hardwood, so I took her advice and sat down on the couch. She sat down on the same sofa but left the middle cushion between us.

I could see Shea from the corner of my eye sitting down on the bottom step, knitting his fingers together and leaning his arms on his knees as he watched us both.

Mom took a deep breath. And then another. And then another. She took a good couple of minutes as she looked like she was in deep thought, thinking of how she was going to break whatever it was to me.

I tried to keep my mind blank. If I didn't, I knew it would race ahead and I would only make things worse. Surely what she was going to tell me couldn't shock me more than my boyfriend being able to turn into a giant dog.