Our Mother the Mountain

33. Ethan W.

Ethan was surprised by his own internal response when mother sat beside him on the room's sofa. Despite living in this manor for almost a year, he was usually plagued with a strangeness, a feeling that something was wrong or different or not quite 'him.' With her presence, he felt everything familiar return to him at once.

She was not smothering, had never been the overbearing mother type, but over the years they had similar-feeling 'sofa conversations.' She would sit the same way as she was now; one arm draped behind the couch, her legs folded up, knees pointing toward her son. Her torso turned toward him and her gaze was on him. It was a semi-protective, semi-comforting posture, one that showed how at ease and engaged she could be. Ethan had always been comfortable to sit how he wished, and his posture betrayed his inclination for isolation, for inward thinking. He sat the same way now. His feet were planted on the floor and he leaned forward stiffly. His hands tucked between his knees, fingers gripping the back of his hands. They would leave their grip, he knew at some point, to worriedly slip over his palms. This particular anxious fidgeting had left him with reddened, sore knuckles more than once in the past.

He gazed at his hands now; they were healed. Not reddened, not sore. Only silvery pin-thin scars that traced over several spots on his fingers and wrists betrayed the onslaught of trauma those digits had endured. He remembered their other serious conversations. First must have been his high-school breakup. There was another when he'd crashed her car after getting his license-Ethan had always been a bit of a daredevil behind the wheel. Then was the conversation before she sent him to live with her sister...after she found out about the cancer the first time.

There was another serious conversation when he'd gotten his acceptance letter for college; he would be moving to California on his own. Once, they had a serious conversation when she comforted him over his and Mia's first breakup-the big one that happened while Mia was in college and moved to Munich. Of all the topics, he realized not only had she not shared her own trauma, but they had never spoken of his father.

Ethan thought that he would be riddled with anxiety, especially with his roving, tracing fingers, but he was calm. Maybe, just maybe, he considered, this conversation was overdue.

"I don't know how to start this story," Dorothy said with a faint edge of saddened humor, "So...I'll ask a question first. What do you know about the Umbrella Corporation?"

Ethan's impassive stare turned into a confused frown-how unexpected. He tilted his head to meet his mother's eyes for a moment, judging her sincerity. She'd never looked more serious. She even looked nervous, which he'd also never seen, not even when she told him her doctors had found something on the biopsy.

Her seriousness, however, consoled him and he returned to staring, now past his hands at the old, but ornate, carpet. A memory surfaced from his high school days. He recalled hearing about the Raccoon City incident, seeing her tear-streaked face as she shakily drank coffee. School was canceled. What else? They had gone to the mall that day together. It wasn't a bad day, overall, but she seemed so overwhelmingly sad at the news.

Why was the memory so vivid? Why was he thinking of Alcina?

"Uh...I know that Chris hates them–Chris Redfield I mean...my...the.."

"The BSAA Captain? I've never met him. Zoe and I have kept in very close contact, I've heard about him," she finished for Ethan. He nodded, and shrugged.

"I know that Umbrella was connected to Raccoon City. I guess other than that, I don't know much about them. Blue Umbrella came after them, to clear their name–the private military contractor." He paused, remembering, "They responded in Dulvey. Sent the BSAA."