Page 89 of The Sculptor

My mother swallows uncomfortably. “I came to the hospital later.”

I close my sketchbook and face her. “What do you mean by later? I don’t remember you visiting me in the observation room.”

“You need to know your father,” she starts, flashing me a sad smile, “has his priorities, but he’s only ever wanted what’s best for you.”

Chills break out along my spine. My mother and I rarely have heart-to-heart conversations. This particular night has been off-limits for years. “And what was best for me, Mother?”

Tears well in her eyes. “We thought you both would be better off.” She shakes her head. “You and Duke couldn’t raise him. You were still babies yourself.”

“Mom.” I sigh; her memory has been off since going through chemo. “Jude died.” But even if he hadn’t, Duke and I were young, but we were eighteen. We were adults in the eyes of the law, and we could have raised him on our own. Maybe not perfectly, but we would have tried.

“He didn’t die,” she confesses as the tears stream down her face. “We lied to you.”

“No,” I respond, ignoring the pounding in my chest. “You’re confused, Mama. Jude died.”

She stares at me, and I know in that moment this isn’t her disease talking. She’s coming clean on her deathbed, and I don’t know if I’ve ever hated someone—even my own family—as much as I hate her at this moment.

“Don’t you lie to me,” I plead. “Don’t be cruel. You have no idea what I’ve been through to even be able to say his name.”

Her tone softens. “I can’t even imagine the pain you went through, Ramsey. It was cruel of us, and if I could take it all back, I would.”

My body feels weightless as I look at my mother with urgency. “What did you do? What did you do with my baby?”

Tears stream down my face as her answering sob wracks through her frail body. “Your father and I just wanted what was best for you,” she says again, like she’s trying to believe it herself.

I fight the urge to lash out—she’s sick and trying to make amends, even if it’s years too late for being honorable.

“I find that hard to believe, especially now that you’re telling me the son who I thought I had cremated is alive! Where is he, Mama? Where is my boy?”

She closes her eyes, the conversation weakening her even more than the cancer. “You had so much potential, Ramsey. So much that I couldn’t bear to see you throw it away, not after you told us you would handle the situation.”

“The ‘situation’ was a baby that Duke and I wanted!” I snap, my lip quivering with unleashed emotion. “I still had potential—even with a baby on my hip. Having Jude wouldn’t have changed the person I became.”

“Maybe not,” she says, her voice placating.

It only upsets me more.

“But pursuing that potential would have been much harder for you.”

I flash her a stern look. “I don’t disagree with you there, but it was my choice. It was my path to alter—not yours or Dad’s. Mine.”

Duke and I wanted that baby more than anything. We knew it would be a hard and scary road. But we would have figured it out together.

“I see that now,” she says, placing her cold hand over mine. “I never meant to cause you more pain. I just wanted you to have everything I didn’t.”

I scoff. “Instead, you gave me pain and killed any potential I had.”

A lone tear streaks down my face. “Do you know what it feels like to be alone, Mother? Where the silence stretches into something you can’t bear?”

I swipe at my cheek, not wanting her to see how her and my father’s actions hurt me. They’ve already taken too much. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me break again.

“I doubt you know because you’ve never been alone. You don’t know what it feels like when the silence steals your breath, smothering the life you once had. You don’t know what it feels like to be scared when the baby you carried for nine months is silent. When he should have cried. When we all should have been crying happy tears.”

I shake off her hand and stand. “No, you wouldn’t know silence like I have. You will never know that feeling of having to scream just to remember that you are still breathing. That you’re still alive when he wasn’t.”

I let out a disbelieving chuckle. “I hope the potential I had made you and Daddy proud, because all the fancy schools and lavish flats you gave me meant nothing in my prison of silence.” I can feel the rage surfacing just looking at her. “You took everything from me. Everything!”

“And I’m so sorry!” she wails in agony. “I regretted the decision as soon as I held him. He was so—”

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