A mother's love

Chapter 9

Following her disastrous handling of the issue of Brian's mother, Brenda decided that she wouldn't go to see Brian in the library for a few days. She used the time that she stayed away from him to reflect on her approaches to him thus far and the progress that she had made. Meeting his mother had changed everything; there wasn't a moment when she thought about Brian and what he was going through at home that she wasn't seized by panic. She could only see one way forward, the only way in which she could truly help him, and that was to take him. She spent hours a day contemplating how she would do so until she arrived at the conclusion that the best way to do so would be to seduce him. The idea did not sit well with her but she was able to commit herself to it by rationalizing that the worst thing for Brian would be for her to do nothing.

It was a week before she saw him again. She was sitting at her desk in her classroom doing some work when she looked up and saw him standing out in the hallway and looking at her through the corridor windows. She smiled at him and waved for him to join her in the classroom.

"Are you on your way home?" She asked him when he entered.

"Yeah."

"I don't normally see you walking by this way in the afternoon."

"I came by this way to check if you'd still be here."

"Oh?"

"I wanted to apologize for being so abrupt with you the last time."

"No, you were right to get upset; I had no right to go behind your back like that."

"It's just that it's always been my mother and I by ourselves."

"I'm prepared to wait for as long as it takes for you to be ready to open up to me."

"I feel like I'm trapped, I don't think I can ever leave her."

"Do you really think that she won't survive if you're not there to do everything for her?"

"I have been doing everything for her for nearly ten years. I've been wondering lately if that's why my father left, because she's so helpless."

"I thought your father was dead?"

"I lied, it's too embarrassing having an alcoholic mother and a father who'd run out on us."

"None of that is your fault; I'm not going to think anything bad about you because of who your parents are."

"I don't know anything about him; I don't know if we're better off without him or if things would be better if he was still around, or if I'd be better off if he'd taken me with him."

"Have you asked your mother?"

"She'll tell me we're better off without him; she hasn't grown any less bitter about his decision to leave us in all the years that he's been gone."

"You father did a terrible thing by leaving when he knew how much work you'd have to do taking care of your mother."

"Whenever I get mad at him I ask myself if I have a right to be mad at him, since I don't know anything about him."

"You have every right to be mad at him; a parent abandoning their child is unforgivable."

"I asked my mother about the visit that you paid to our house, and she told me that the only person that came to our house was a Christian who wanted to save her soul; that was you, wasn't it? Why did you disguise yourself?"