Bar Red's Redemption ✔

c h a p t e r. 35

"Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb."
― Sue Grafton

chapter 35

Bar could excuse his mother leaving him, he really, honestly could. Given the chance, he'd leave himself.

But she didn't just leave Bar. She left him with Talmai.

She left her son-- her baby with a wife-beater, with someone who abused him, with someone who Bar had to stay around to protect his baby sister from.

She left him.

He stayed in that house, he stays there and he protects Gwen.

But she couldn't have stayed for him? She couldn't have protected him?

Why is that not okay for a mother to do, but okay for a seven year old to step between his father and toddler sister and take a couple fists to the face?

Why wasn't she there-- why hadn't she been there for him?

He needed her.

His whole life, Bar needed her.

But she was just... she was just here? Without pain, without worrying that her ex-husband was busy turning her son into a monster by beating that dark side out of the him and into who he became?

How could she have done that? How could she have left him like that?

"Oly," Clementine grabbed his hands, a worried expression on her face. "What do you m-mean? I thought your mother was dead."

"She is-- my dad, he told me she died... She died but she's here. Look," He pulls out his necklace from under his shirt, the dog tags gleaming next to the gummy bear that Clementine had given him and his mother's name fully visible. "That's her name. She looks exactly like my mom."

Clementine stared at the dog tags and Bar's anxiety exploded, leaving him behind to put out the flames left in it's wake.

"I know I'm probably being crazy," Bar stepped back, running a hand through his hair. "Shit, I'm stupid, forget this--"

"Oly," Clementine grabbed the brute in a tighter grip, holding him to her. "How many times do I, do I have to tell you that I'm here for you until you believe it? I believe you, that's your m-mom."

"Really?" Bar raised an eyebrow, looking down at the little goddess as she nods before looking back over to the woman. "What... what do you know about her?"

"Not a lot. She doesn't talk a-about her family much but she lost her brother and dad around the same time a couple years back. She's been working here since I, I was little." Clementine said.

Bar felt like someone punched him in his gut. She's been in his town... she's been not even a twenty minute drive away from him his whole life and he didn't know?

His mother got to see Clementine grow up, but not her own son?

How is that fair?

"It was my Tio Bash and Abuelo," Bar swallowed, still feeling the lose. "They were... they were all the family I had before Gwen was born. They were all I had."

They were all he had because his dad is a deadbeat and his mom was dead. Now, he learning, that she left in a completely different way.

Clementine pauses before she asks, "Do you want to t-talk to her?"

"Talk to her?" Bar says a little too harshly, his hand coming up to hold his throat as the air suddenly seemed too thin, his body too weak. "She doesn't-- she doesn't want to talk to me. She doesn't want me."