Page 54 of A Wedding at The Cornish Garden Café
‘I’m so sorry, Wyatt. That’s awful.’
He shook his head. ‘It was just one of those things. I was quite sensible. I knew how to make a sandwich and how to help Parker brush his teeth.’
Remembering these simple things now made his heart swell. His little brother, with soft blond hair and big brown eyes. With his easy smile and eagerness to follow Wyatt everywhere. What would it have been like to have grown up with Parker around? To have known what it was to have a brother?
‘But you were still a young child, Wyatt.’ Edith seemed to have straightened up as if bracing herself for what was to come.
‘That day in the street outside the shop, we were talking about the park and then a friend from school came along and I got distracted. Parker…’ He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, the one hand slipping from Edith’s as he did so. The events played out like a movie in his mind, and he felt the tears seep from the corners of his eyes.
‘It’s OK, Wyatt. I’m here.’ Edith took his hand again and squeezed it.
‘Parker ran out into the road. He’d spotted a cat and he–he loved cats.’ Wyatt opened his eyes and looked at Edith, grounding himself in her presence. ‘He didn’t see the car.’
‘Oh my god!’
‘He was so small. It flipped him over the bonnet, and he-he was gone. My beautiful little brother was gone, and it happened in seconds. And it was all my fault.’
‘No!’ Edith shook her head, her eyes wide.
‘I should have been watching him, but I was distracted and I let him go.’
‘You didn’t, Wyatt. You were a child yourself. It was your parents’ responsibility to look after him, not yours.’
Wyatt sighed as if all the energy had abandoned his body and he slumped over his knees. ‘The paramedics said he was gone immediately and didn’t suffer. But Mum… she came out of the shop and her scream… I can still hear it. She… she told me straight away it was my fault, and she has never stopped.’
‘Oh Wyatt…’ Edith moved closer and slid her arm around his shoulders. ‘No child is ever to blame for an adult’s negligence. I am so sorry that you’ve carried this all these years.’
‘I let him down, Edith. If I’d been watching him properly, he could still be here. Or I could have run after him and pushed him to safety. I could have?—’
‘Wyatt! This is survivor guilt. You have carried this all your life, and if you’d had some therapy, you’d have learnt that it wasn’t your fault. A child is never to blame for the behaviour of an adult.Never.Can you hear me?’
Wyatt met her gaze and nodded, but he still couldn’t quite take it in. ‘Mum… She still blames me. After Parker died, she drank heavily, and Dad and her argued a lot. But they muddled through, and somehow, we lived together until I had the chance to come to university overseas. I jumped at it. I saw university as a fresh start, a chance to be who I wanted and not the man whose brother died when he was a kid. Who was responsible for not looking after his baby brother when he should have been.’
Edith placed a hand on his cheek and stroked his skin with her thumb. ‘I wish you’d felt you could tell me this sooner. I would have been able to understand you better.’
‘I’m so ashamed. I let my family down, and there was no coming back from it.’
‘You have nothing to be ashamed of but your mother and your father…’ Edith’s brows met. ‘They have a lot to answer for.’
‘They were who they were. Dad’s been gone for years now, and Mum… she got cleaned up and met her second husband, but she’s always reminded me of how I ruined her life. It was up to me to hold everything together and to be there for her.’
‘This has overshadowed your life, Wyatt, and it’s time to change that.’ Edith pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. ‘You are a good man. You are kind and gentle and hardworking, and you have to let this guilt go. Your mother has taken enough from you over the years, like some kind of emotional vampire, and it ends now.’ She sighed and shook her head as if it was all too much to take in. ‘But I do think some counselling might help you work through all this, Wyatt. Would you consider that? I can’t stand to think of you struggling with such a heavy burden on your own. I’m here for you, of course I am, but I’m not a professional, and I think someone with qualifications in this area would be better able to help you realise that this wasnotyour fault.’
Wyatt gazed into her eyes, and relief flooded through him, warm and soothing. Edith wasn’t judging him or hating him like he’d feared she might. She was being kind and calm and offering to help him. ‘You don’t think I’m awful?’
‘Wyatt, you’re amazing.’
‘But I left you… with no explanation. I hurt you.’
‘You did. And that won’t go away overnight, but at least now I understand why you couldn’t tell me. Why you were struggling. Now that I have that information, it helps me to see why you acted the way you did.’
He inclined his head. ‘I thought I was protecting you from it all. Keeping you and my New York life separate helped me to compartmentalise.’
‘That’s exactly what you were doing, and when those two worlds threatened to collide you had to walk away from one of them. I suspect your mother had her claws so deeply into you that you couldn’t see a way to escape her.’
‘I feel responsible for her. I always have.’
‘But you’re not.’ Edith squeezed his hand. ‘You never have been, and you’re not now. As you said, she has a partner to be there for her, and she’s an adult, anyway. People don’t have children to have someone to take care of them. That’s crazy. Hopefully, some therapy will help you address that too.’
