The Ending I Want(60)

My heart is breaking for him. For the boy who just wanted his mother.

My life might be as it is now, but my mother loved me and cared for me, as a mother should.

Liam should have had that, too.

“The money Grandpa gave her for me, she was spending it on drugs. When Grandpa would question my lack of clothes or the wear on my shoes, I would make up lies to cover for her. I lied because she was my mother. I loved her. And I guess…I was worried about what would happen if my grandpa found out where his money was being spent. I didn’t want him to walk out of my life. The weekends I spent with him at his house were…important to me.”

“I don’t think he would have left you. It sounds like he loves you a lot.”

“Yeah.” He gives a sad smile. “I know that now. But, back then, I was a kid who didn’t know better. Just before she died, my grandpa grew suspicious. He turned up early one Saturday morning to pick me up, and he caught her drug dealer boyfriend leaving the house. My mother always made sure not to have him around when my grandpa came for me. She didn’t want him figuring out where his money was going and cutting her off. But Grandpa saw him. He’s not a stupid man. That’s when the problems began. I remember my grandpa asking me questions about Russ, my mother’s boyfriend. I tried not to give anything away, but the seed of doubt was there…and I guess he figured out the rest.

“The following weekend, my grandpa came to collect me, but he came early again, said he wanted to talk with my mum in private before we left to go to his house. I was told to go to my room. But I sat on the landing and listened in. They were arguing. Grandpa told her that he knew she was a junkie. He said she either stopped using, cleaned herself up, and dumped her dealer boyfriend, or he’d have Russ arrested, and he’d take me from her. He told her that he wouldn’t have her putting me at risk like she was. My mother told him that he couldn’t have me. Grandpa said to her that no court would stop him because of her drug use and the danger she was knowingly placing me in. My mum called his bluff. Told him to get out, that he would never see me again.

“I remember the panic I felt when I heard him leaving the house. I ran down the stairs and out of the house after him. I caught up with him at the garden gate. I pleaded with him not to leave. I could see how much it was hurting him in that moment. I didn’t want him to leave. I was hanging on to his jacket, but my mother pried me off of him. Before she dragged me inside the house, my grandpa knelt in front of me, took my face in his hands, and told me that it would just be this one weekend that I wouldn’t see him. He promised me that he’d be back the following Saturday to pick me up. Told me that he loved me, and he’d always take care of me. Then, he hugged me, and he got in his car and left.”

I discreetly wipe away the tear on my cheek. “He came back,” I whisper. “He kept his promise.”

“Yeah, he did.” Liam’s expression softens. But then his eyes harden. “But I didn’t see him for three months. My mother kept her word and wouldn’t let him see me. I knew he was fighting her for access. I saw the letters from the lawyers. I might have been ten, but I knew he was fighting for custody. And…I hated my mother for keeping me from him.” His voice catches.

I look at him, and I can see the agony clear in his eyes.

“I told her I hated her.” His pained gaze comes to mine. “I argued with her a week before she died. I told her that I hated her for keeping my grandpa from me. I didn’t speak to her for a whole week. I ignored her, pretended that she didn’t exist. And then…she didn’t anymore.”

I catch another falling tear, rubbing it away with the back of my hand. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“My last words to her were my fault. They were in anger, yes, but a part of me meant them at that time.”

“You were ten, Liam.”

He lifts a shoulder, like that doesn’t matter. “My mother died, thinking I hated her. I never got the chance to tell her that I didn’t.”

“She knew you didn’t hate her,” I say the words softly.

In my opinion, his mother didn’t deserve his love. She didn’t deserve him, period. But he did love her…still does, I think, and it’s important to him that she knows that even though he thinks she doesn’t.

And I understand needing those you loved who are gone to know just how much you loved them. How much they meant…still mean to you, and just how sorry you truly are for everything.

I’m willingly, without regret, giving up my life to show the ones I love how sorry I am for the way I hurt them.

“She was a lot of things…but she was my mother, and I did love her.”

“She knew, Liam,” I emphasize the words to push them home. I want him to know this.

He shakes his head, like he’s clearing it of those thoughts. “Things were crap in those last three months without my grandpa around,” Liam says quietly, the ache painfully evident in his voice. “I mean, they were never particularly great before, but they got bad. Grandpa cut my mother off financially after she’d stopped him from seeing me. I know now that he was trying to make her see sense. But cutting her off meant he cut me off. I didn’t eat well in those three months.” His eyes slide to the ground. “The money she did get from the government would go straight into the needle that went into her arm.