Page 60 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
She allows me to squeeze her hand and gives us both a thin smile. “I was young, and you know Vivienne—she was adamant that I wasn’t ready to be a mother, and even now, I think she might have been right. But it was purely my fault and mine alone that Maxen didn’t know. I accept responsibility for that.”
Lyr watches our hands meet and then part. “But you have known since before now?” he asks me. “Since before I knew?”
I want to hang my head, but I don’t. I deserve this and I’ll look him in the eye and endure whatever pain or anger spills out of him as I tell the truth. It’s the fucking least I can do. “I learned the truth two years ago. Abilene—your cousin Embry’s wife—was the one to discover the real story through her grandfather’s personal effects. She used you to blackmail Embry into dating her, and Embry did it, to keep you and Morgan safe. But he did eventually tell me.”
“Maxen wanted to tell you. Wanted to meet with you.” Morgan takes a deep breath, and I wish I could tell her right now how much I appreciate her honesty. “He wanted it right away. The moment he learned, he called me and asked to meet you. And I said no.”
Lyr flinches. It’s the first real sign of emotion he’s shown all evening. “Why?” he whispers.
“Because—” Morgan presses her lips together and looks up at the ceiling, and I see that she’s close to tears. “Because all I ever wanted was for you to grow up free from knowing the truth about your birth. Because I love you and I didn’t want to hurt you. And I know all of that wishing and wanting seems so abstract as to be meaningless right now, and I know at your age all you can see is the unequivocal truth and the too-many ways that you’ve been failed. That’s natural, to see the failures of the adults around you and call their reasons weak. Perhaps they are weak, but—and I know you might also scoff at this—when you have a child in your life, it’s like everything flips upside down and turns inside out, and reasons that seemed weak or dishonest before are suddenly so powerful. I’m not saying they were right,” she finishes, tears openly brimming at her eyes now, “but they were powerful. I love you, and I wanted to protect you from the sins your father and I had committed.”
Lyr doesn’t answer but he looks down at his feet, processing what Morgan has said.
And again, that spike of pride. I like that he thinks before he speaks, that he’d rather listen than talk. It’s exactly how I’d want my son to be if I’d raised him myself.
“We failed you, Lyr,” I say. “And maybe we still are. We didn’t tell you the truth and we didn’t protect you from Abilene and we are both ashamed. I hope you can forgive us, but you have every right not to.”
“Both of you did lie…for a long time. And so did Aunt Vivienne and my mother.” A slight hitch in the word mother, as he remembers how that word is now complicated for him. “And Embry. And I wish you hadn’t. I wish you hadn’t lied. I wish—” and my heart breaks watching his face fracture into feelings he can’t control. “I wish I’d never been born.”
The fire crackles behind us, and outside the moon glimmers on the lake for a watery moment before it disappears back behind the clouds. And Lyr’s words are worse than any screed, any insult, anything else that could have been flung my way. I had been prepared for his anger, but I had never thought to prepare myself for this—that he would transmute his anger into something so painful for a parent to hear.
“I’ve thanked God for you every day since I learned the truth,” I tell him softly. “Yes, it’s unusual—all of it is unusual—but that doesn’t make it bad. It doesn’t make you bad.”
He rubs his thumb across his forehead in a gesture so like my own that my heart twists. “But now everyone thinks I’m bad. That I have…I don’t know, that I have webbed toes or something.” He moves his hand away from his face to gesture vaguely, and the movement is so aristocratic, so disdainful, and he goes from looking like me to being all Morgan. “Inbred. That’s what they were saying online. That I’m inbred.”
I can feel Morgan glance at me and I know exactly what she’s thinking, because I’m thinking the same thing. That I don’t know how to fix this for him, that I brought him into this world and now I’ve exposed him to every kind of judgment and insult simply by creating him. It’s a gross feeling to have failed my child so utterly, and I mean gross in both ways—viscerally disgusting and also large, huge, occupying the center of my chest and my major muscle groups. My shame has never been thicker, never been so viscous inside my mouth and heavy in my lungs.
“Egyptian pharaohs married their sisters for centuries,” Morgan says. “And they didn’t have webbed toes. Same with the Incas and Hawaiian royalty. Taboos are social constructs that vary from culture to culture and are created to reinforce selective behaviors—you should know that from watching Nimue do her sociology work. Just because your parentage is considered taboo doesn’t mean you are defective as a human or worth less than anyone else. You are worth everything to me.”
The naked emotion in her voice is plain to hear, and Lyr looks down at the carpet again, as if trying not to cry.
“And I’ve seen your toes,” she says, clearing her throat and trying to sound composed once more. “They’re fine. You’re fine. You’re a straight-A student, completely healthy, completely normal. You get to choose what this means about you and how this defines you, and I don’t care if you hate me forever, as long as you promise never, ever to hate yourself.”
He peers up at both of us through his long eyelashes, eyes green and wet. “I don’t know what I can promise right now,” he says after a minute, his voice both vulnerable and guarded all at once. “But I suppose I can promise to try.”
“Thank you,” Morgan replies thickly, carefully wiping the tears away from her eyes so she doesn’t smudge her mascara. “That would be enough.”
“Will I—I mean…” He chews on the inside of his lip a moment. “Are you going to try to be my parents now? Am I going to see you again, President Colchester?”
I grimace a little at the title. “Call me whatever you like, Lyr, but please don’t call me that.”
“So I should call you dad?” I hear the defensive note in his voice, the bitterness threatening to break through its trammels.
“I would never ask that of you, as much as it would make me happy. But you can call me Maxen, if you’d like, or Ash.
Ash is what the people closest to me use.”
“Ash,” he says slowly. “I think I can do that.”
“And I’ll be around as much as you want me. I’ll talk about you as much as you’ll let me. You can move into the White House tomorrow with me as far as I’m concerned. I’m not ashamed of you, Lyr.”
My words stir up something potent and artlessly emotional in him; he finally does start crying.
“I’m here as much or as little as you want me,” I finish. “I’m yours as much or as little as you want me. We’ve taken so many choices from you, but this is one you get back.”
He swallows, still crying, and stands up, and I know exactly what he wants. I stand up too, and for the first time in his life, I pull my son into my arms and hug him. For every milestone and year I missed, for every other person’s arms he’s felt holding and carrying him, for every empty, bitter moment he felt today when he learned the truth and had to endure it alone.
I hug him. I close my eyes, press my face into his already strong and heavy shoulder, and I thank God for this unexpected grace. This undeserved mercy.
