A mother's love

Chapter 13

Brenda grabbed her car keys and flew down the steps from her second storey apartment to the parking lot below. She couldn't afford to waste any time in getting to Brian when he was in such distress. He wasn't crying as much as he had been on the phone when she reached him. He was standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, looking lost and hopeless. Brenda rolled down the passenger side window and told him to get in. He was still crying; tears were dripping down his face, his cheeks were red and he was trembling, but the worst of what she had heard over the phone had subsided. With nowhere else to go she took him back to her apartment.

Being alone with Brian in her apartment, Brenda was in a position where she could do with him what she wanted; the temptation in front of her was almost unbearable. She very quickly put such thoughts out of her mind; Brian had called her because he was in serious need of her, helping him needed to be her only concern.

The phone call that she had received from him was what she had been waiting for since they had first started talking in the library. She had had to wait with excruciating patience for him to reach out to her for help and she would not betray the trust that he had finally placed in her. He was still trembling by the time they got to her apartment, he walked in and stood still in her living room, looking every bit as broken as he had when she'd picked him up. Looking at him standing in her living room she realized that the worst of what she'd heard over the phone had not passed, it had only momentarily receded and would soon return. In preparation Brenda placed her hands reassuringly on his arms.

"Brian, I am so sorry, nobody should ever be the victim of such cruelty, what those children did was just...it was inhumane."

"They've been doing it for over a week," he said.

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"I didn't want you worrying about me any more than you already do."

"I worry about you because I care about you."

"I don't want to be your sympathy case; I want you to believe that I'm capable of dealing with all of the things that I have to deal with, that I'm not just some weak, pathetic..."

The collapse that Brenda knew was coming happened. She put her arms around him and held him tightly.

"There, there; it's okay," she whispered to him.

His tears ran down the side of his face and onto her neck. She felt his fragility acutely. The tangibility of it frightened her, enough to make her start shaking. She had wanted this responsibility, and holding him crying in her arms she felt the seriousness of that responsibility as acutely as she felt his fragility. She held onto him without loosening her grip until his crying had subsided enough for him to breathe with some regularity, at which point she withdrew slightly from him, wiped his tears away with her thumbs and kissed him on his forehead.

"The bathroom is through that door, go and wash your face, okay."

Brian went to do so, and when he returned from the bathroom Brenda was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him with a glass of juice ready for him on the table. He sat down next to her without looking at her, lifted the glass tremulously to his lips and took a small sip from it.

"I'm not looking for a sympathy case, I'm not, but our ages are not the only difference between us; there are things concerning you that I'm going to worry about that you may not like, if we're going to be together you're going to have to accept that."

"You're not my mother though, I already have a mother, she's not a good mother but she's still my mother."

"I don't want to be your mother; if I did we wouldn't be doing what we do every afternoon in my storeroom."