State of Nature by Ryan Winfield

Author:Ryan Winfield [Winfield, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780988348257
Google: 0P8fAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 098834825X
Publisher: Birch Paper Press
Published: 2013-11-24T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Going Back For Bill

“Absolutely not,” my mother says.

“You have to let me go and try to find him.”

“I said no, and that’s that.”

“But this is important to me, Mom.”

“Calling me ‘Mom’ won’t work this time, Son. There’s no way I’m sending you off by yourself all the way back to the Yucatan. No way. Not now, not ever.”

I get up from the table and pace the shelter.

“So you’re just going to let him die there, then?”

“He’s probably already dead,” she says.

“We don’t know that. You don’t know that. If there’s even a chance, then I have to go. It isn’t right to abandon him there. It wasn’t right when you abandoned me, and it isn’t right now.”

“I didn’t abandon you, Son.”

“Yes you did!” I turn to her and shout. “You left me down there. You left Dad down there. And you ran around up above watching your precious little drones slaughter humans, and now you’re letting another good man die just like you let my dad die. It’s as if you have no heart at all. At least Bill was there for me growing up, Mom. Unlike you, Mom. He watched over me on the beach. You were nothing but a fake memory given to me by my father, who you didn’t even deserve, by the way. You didn’t deserve him loving you. Not him, not me.”

I’m breathless when I finish my rant.

My mother is looking at me through tears. She appears to want to say a thousand things at once but can’t find the words for any of them. She stands, crosses the room, and hugs me. I resist at first, but then I sink into her arms and sob.

“I’m sorry, Son. I’m so, so sorry. I love you.”

“Why do you love me?” I ask. “Why?”

“Because you’re my son.”

“But I’m also Radcliffe’s son. And when ... when I think about that, I want to jump of a cliff and just end my life.”

“Don’t say that, Son.”

“But it’s true. I don’t want him in the world, Mom. Not in Hannah, not in me. I don’t want him inside me.”

She walks me over to the bed and sits me down. Then she kneels in front of me and looks into my eyes.

“You listen to me now. You are not defined by whoever happened to give you your DNA, Son. You’re defined by your choices. And the choices you make are yours. All yours. And you even wanting to risk going back to rescue Bill tells me that you’re so far from Radcliffe and that entire lot of lunatics he was in league with that you might as well be alien to them. Do you hear me. Son? Are you listening?”

I nod that I do, my throat too constricted to speak yet.

“Now, I’ve known Bill since he was younger than you are. And I’m the one who’s responsible for him being where he is, whether he’s out there alive or dead. So I’ll leave tonight and go see if I can’t find him, okay? I’ll try, Son.

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