A mother's love

Chapter 37

The house was perfectly still and perfectly quiet, the only sounds that could be heard was that of the ticking clocks and the light rain outside. Brenda stood in the living room looking out through the rain speckled glass of the window at the flashing red and blue lights of the police car parked in the street outside their house. The two policemen that were in charge of Kyle's case had paid them what would most likely be their final visit to inform them that they hadn't made any progress in determining who had kidnapped and murdered their child and that, barring an astonishing stroke of luck, there wasn't likely to be any further progress in the case. Brenda received and reacted to the news in the same state of numbness she had been in since they had found Kyle's body. It didn't matter that they weren't able to find the person who'd done it; it wasn't going to make learning to live with his death any easier.

The police's theory was that Kyle had most likely been kidnapped by a paedophile who had killed and disposed of him because he had been too problematic. Brenda had been at home with him when he'd gone missing. The shame that she felt when the detectives asked her "What were you doing when he went missing?" and she answered "I was sleeping" was unbearable. She didn't deserve the judgment that she was subjected to but there was nothing that she could say in defence of herself. Nobody would care that she barely got four hours of sleep a day that she only got by stealing short rests whenever she could; they wouldn't care that for eight years she had been taking care of him all by herself without anybody's help, not even that of her husband. She was and would forever be known as the woman whose child had been murdered because she had fallen asleep in the middle of the day when she was supposed to have been watching him. Brenda saw the judgment in all of their faces, all of the neighbours who were conveniently busy whenever she called them to ask if she could come over with Kyle came to the house to express their condolences and in every one of their faces Brenda saw judgment. She left it to Simon to entertain them; she didn't care for their company and she felt it was the least he could do after being completely absent during the worst of times with Kyle. Simon didn't think the contempt that she was showing to their guests was appropriate and one afternoon after she'd left in the middle of one of their visits he went to speak to her after their visitors had gone. She was in their bedroom sitting on the edge of the bed facing the wall with her hands gripping the edge of the bed tightly.

"These people are coming here to share their condolences; we should sit with them together for at least..."

"I don't care about those people's condolences; I don't want them here, I want them to stay away and leave me alone."

It wasn't long before Brenda stopped seeing sympathizers altogether. She wanted only to be alone, just as she had been for all of the years that she had been taking care of Kyle. She'd made it clear to Simon when she'd first told him of Kyle's disappearance that he was to keep his distance from her; she wanted none of his support and would deal with the situation on her own and in her own way.

Simon had walked the two detectives to their car and returned to the house to find Brenda standing in the living room and staring out of the window with blank eyes that only showed signs of life when she got angry or displayed disturbing flashes of paranoia.

"They said they'd call if anything came up but reiterated that we shouldn't get our hopes up," he said to her back.

"They think I did it, everybody does, they think that I couldn't take it anymore so I killed him," she said to him without moving.

"Nobody thinks that."

"That's what you thought when I told you."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did. I saw your face when you came home after I'd called you and told you, it had 'What did you do?' written all over it."

Simon walked up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders to reassure her that no such thought had ever crossed his mind but they were quickly and resolutely shrugged off. Brenda could not have been clearer with her body language about what she wanted, which was for him to be nowhere near her. The sound of his footsteps as he walked away from her brought her peace. She wished that she could stay that way forever, inside a protective chrysalis of silence and stillness in which she was safe from her husband's disingenuous grief, from the looks of neighbours that had grown from being judgmental to increasingly accusatory, and, most importantly, from the truth.