Cruel World(3)

He walked down the hall, his sock-feet silent on the oak floorboards, ignoring the long mirror on the wall when he came even with it. He was good at not seeing mirrors now. He’d had them all removed from his room when he was fourteen and barely noticed his gliding reflection when he passed them in other areas of the house.

When he came to the T branching off to the rest of the home, it was empty. Mallory, the housekeeper, had left for the day, as well as Graham, the cook, and Foster the groundskeeper, each retiring to their respective guesthouses a short distance down the lane. The house was devoid of life save his father, Teresa, and himself, the way it was every evening. A word echoed to him that sounded like can’t, and it was Teresa speaking. Her voice would’ve been recognizable to him in the middle of a tempest. Quinn edged closer to the door and saw it was open a fraction of an inch. He stopped, waiting and listening, holding his breath.

“Do you think I haven’t gone over it and over it, Teresa?” His father’s voice, strong but without force, tired sounding, like he hadn’t slept for years and only wanted to lie down. “I’ve lain awake nights weighing it out, turning it over, worrying it like a stone.”

“It’s his life, not a stone,” Teresa said from somewhere to the left of the door.

Quinn leaned forward to see if he could get a glimpse of them through the crack but saw only the darkening window looking out toward the sea cliffs.

His father sighed. “I know that. I feel like I came to a branch in the road of our lives years ago and chose one, and after walking for all this time, it may have been the wrong choice, but now I don’t think I can find my way back.”

“I’m not faulting you for what you did, any parent might have been tempted. The difference being you had the power to make it happen, to hide him away here, to remove yourself from the public eye, where other people wouldn’t have been able to do that. But that isn’t the issue; the issue is he’s sixteen now.”

“I know how old he is,” James snapped.

Quinn blinked. He’d never heard his father truly irritated before. Upset, yes, but bark at someone like that? Never.

There was a clinking of glass, and Quinn imagined his father pouring several fingers of whisky into a tumbler he kept on his desk. He’d seen him drinking more in the last year than he ever had in his life.

“I’m sorry,” James said, his tone level again. “It’s hearing the number that sinks it home, how long he’s been inside the walls I’ve built around him.”

“I know, and I know how you must be feeling-”

“You don’t, you can’t, but that’s okay. You’ve been like a mother to him after the pathetic excuse for one ran away to ‘live her own life’ as she called it. He loves you with all his heart.”

“And he loves you more, Jim. Talk to him. See what he wants. There’s no way you can keep him here forever.”

There was a rustling sound and then a quiet clap, a ream of papers dropping onto a desk.

“The test results came back. He’s not eligible for the surgery.”

Quinn closed his eyes and slumped against the wall. The team of doctors had come to the house the week before, bringing cases of equipment with them. They’d drained massive amounts of blood from his arm while taking digital readouts of his facial structure. They’d even set up a portable X-Ray in the solarium, taking shot after shot of his skull, all the while his father hovering in the background, watching him. But there would be no surgery that they’d spoken tentatively of over the past six days, treading around it as if it were something priceless and breakable. There would be no hope.

“Are they sure?”

“Yes. The Fibrous Dysplasia goes deeper than they thought, deeper than two years ago when he had his last checkup. The bones aren’t brittle anymore after the supplements and medication, but the deformity has grown inward.”

“Inward?”

His father’s sigh again, long and deflating. “Yes.”

“Well, is there any danger-”

“No, they said the bones won’t continue past a certain point, but the reconstruction they were promising won’t be possible.” James paused, the silence drawing out like a tightening wire. “I should have known. I should have guessed.” Emotion clogged his voice, and there was another pause as he drank and set down the tumbler with a short bang on the desk.

“They’ll find something. They’re making new discoveries every day. We have to have faith.”