A mother's love

Chapter 43

Three weeks later Brenda started running. She had to start getting out of the house; as difficult as it had been looking after him, Brenda was finding it impossible to move on from his loss. She spent hours a day looking through the living room window at the street and every day she saw people walking by on the sidewalk or driving by in the cars stopping to look at their house, to get a glimpse of the woman who they believed had killed her son because she had had enough of taking care of him.

"You're being paranoid," was Simon's response when she tried talking to him about it.

He had gone back to work and things between them were worse than they'd ever been. His responses to her whenever she said anything to him were terse and dismissive and he was staying as late at work as he used to when he didn't want to return home when Kyle was still awake. Brenda was sleeping in Kyle's room and had started making as much of an effort to avoid Simon as he made to avoid her. Their marriage was over; it was only a matter of time before it was official. Brenda recognized the look in Simon's eyes when he looked at her, it was the same look that was in Bennett's eyes and that was in the eyes of all the passersby that stopped outside their house.

Brenda found it grotesque not to have her own husband believe in her innocence. She had entered a phase in her life in which she could depend on no one but herself. It was a daunting task that was before her, having been dependent on Simon for so long, but one which she had to confront. She had to get away from Simon; she had needed to for years, from before Kevin's diagnosis, even from before he was born. The years-long ordeal that she had been through with Kyle had imbued her with clarity and resolve; she needed to be strong and take control of her life.

She left the house to go running at 5a.m., before Simon woke up, and returned at 7a.m., after he had left for work. It was dark when she left the house, the streets were quiet and the air was cold. Every morning she passed other joggers and cyclists and not once did she pay any attention to them. When she went running she entered a place within herself where she was concerned with nothing except for the road back to herself that she was on. It didn't matter to her whether people believed she was innocent, that her marriage was over, that she had lost the only child she would most likely ever have. All that mattered was moving forward, breaking away from this life that had caused her so much pain and cost her so much time and making a new one for herself in which she was free from people and their judgment.

As part of her route she ran to the end of the neighbourhood and into the woods, where she ran along the trail and passed the spot where they'd found Kyle's body without stopping. She ran all the way to the end of the trail, which was the point at which she turned around and returned home. Here she took a rest and spent a moment taking in the beauty of the sky starting to become visible through the trees, the leaves rustling as the wind passed through them, and the sounds of the birds greeting the dawn of a new day before she started running again.