Mommy's Boy by Fiona Holloway

Author:Fiona Holloway [Holloway, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Swan Digital
Published: 2025-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

14

The lodge has its own version of silence. It isn’t emptiness, but layers of absent movement. Floorboards that sigh even when no one is walking on them, pipes stuttering low in the walls, the distant tick of radiators straining against the cold. Every sound feels amplified because the rest is so hushed. At night, it’s unbearable.

I pad down the upstairs hallway. The portraits lining the walls tilt their gazes downward, endless generations of Drummonds watching me pass. The girls’ door is open a crack. Inside, Sophie is asleep, sprawled diagonally across her quilt, her thumb pressed stubbornly into her mouth. Amelia sits on the floor by the bed, knees drawn up, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looks up when I step in, her eyes wide and alert.

“Mom,” she whispers quickly, before I can even close the door. “I need to tell you something.”

My stomach knots. I lower myself onto the floor beside her. The glow from the nightlight flickers across her serious face.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

Her hands twist in her lap, fingers fidgeting with the hem of her nightgown. “I heard him. Talking to Mrs. Lennox.”

My throat tightens. “When?”

“Earlier. In the hall by the study.” Her voice is urgent, hushed. “He didn’t know I was there.”

I glance toward the door, instinctively checking. The corridor is still.

“What did you hear?”

Amelia leans closer, her words quick, tumbling over each other.

“He said children can be broken into obedience. He said sometimes it takes time, and sometimes… it takes force. But he said all children can be made to listen if you’re patient enough.”

Ice floods my chest. For a moment I can’t breathe.

“He was talking about me and Sophie,” Amelia whispers, her eyes filling. “Wasn’t he?”

I reach for her, pulling her against me, my arms wrapping around her shaking shoulders.

“He doesn’t get to break you,” I say fiercely, though my voice trembles. “Not you, not Sophie. Not while I have breath in my body.”

She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes dark and determined.

“Then we have to leave, Mom. We can’t stay here.”

Her certainty cuts me. I want to shield her from the truth, to soften it with reassurances. But she’s right. She’s so perceptive and aware of the world around her. I nod, tears stinging my eyes.

“I know.”

Her chin lifts, resolve hardening her young face. “I’ve been thinking. There are delivery trucks, right? That bring food and things? If we wait by the kitchen door when one comes, maybe slip out when nobody’s looking. We could hide in the truck all the way back to town. Or wave down a car on the road.”

The speed of her plan makes my heart ache. She’s a child, but she’s strategizing like a soldier.

“It’s too dangerous,” I whisper. “The forest, the snow…”

“Staying is more dangerous,” she interrupts firmly. Her small fists clench in her lap. “He looks at us like… like we’re not people. Like we’re something he has to fix.”

I smooth her hair, brushing it back from her face.

“You’re right,” I admit softly.

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