Chapter 42: XIX. Ronan-1

"I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it." David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks ---- Chapter XIX – Ronan I marched out of my bedroom with purpose, and Shea followed me. I knew mom would blow up about that, but I had one hell of a retort. Mom was downstairs in the living room. She was sitting on the couch with her coffee, watching breakfast television. She looked up at me when I entered the room, and her eyes widened when she saw Shea following me. Her head snapped towards the door, and then back to Shea. She was quickly piecing things together, and I could see her blood boiling as she glared at Shea. "What the hell are you doing upstairs?" she demanded to know of Shea. "He was being honest with me," I shot back, folding my arms across my chest. "Honest?" she repeated, furrowing her eyebrows. "What are you talking about? What did you tell her?" she asked Shea in disbelief. "He told me," after I figured it out, "that he is a lycan. I know that you knew, Mom. What I want to know is why you lied to me about it." I still couldn't believe that those words were coming out of my mouth, or that this was a possibility, let alone my reality. All the blood drained from my mom's face. I had never seen her look so pale as, I'm sure, all kinds of crazy, dreaded thoughts were passing through her head. Instead of apologising, or explaining to me why she had kept me in the dark about something as big as this, she instead turned to Shea, and asked accusingly, "Why would you tell her that? Why would you involve her in this? I thought you were supposed to care about her!" "I do care about her," Shea snapped. "Sara figured it out and I wasn't going to lie to her anymore. She has a right to know." "I don't believe this. I didn't think this would be a problem. She turned sixteen and nothing happened, and I thought everything would be okay." It was like Mom was talking to herself rather than either of us. "Mom, what are you talking about?" I asked firmly, and yet fearfully. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was still a hell of a lot more about this world, for want of a better word, that I didn't know. Mom's head snapped to me, and she looked at me with fear and shame. I had never seen those emotions on my mom's face before. It was so unsettling that I just wanted to comfort her. Mom didn't always have it together, but right this moment she looked like she was disintegrating. "Sara, please sit down, honey," Mom urged, motioning towards the couch. I didn't feel like passing out on the hardwood, so I took her advice and sat down on the couch. She sat down on the same sofa but left the middle cushion between us. I could see Shea from the corner of my eye sitting down on the bottom step, knitting his fingers together and leaning his arms on his knees as he watched us both. Mom took a deep breath. And then another. And then another. She took a good couple of minutes as she looked like she was in deep thought, thinking of how she was going to break whatever it was to me. I tried to keep my mind blank. If I didn't, I knew it would race ahead and I would only make things worse. Surely what she was going to tell me couldn't shock me more than my boyfriend being able to turn into a giant dog. "I was sixteen when your daddy first asked me out," she told me calmly. I recoiled slightly, not expecting the conversation to turn to my dad. We rarely talked about him. Mom didn't like to, anyway. I didn't know whether to be glad about learning things about him, or fearful about what I might learn. "I said no," Mom continued. "I was too focussed. I was a smart girl who had places to go. I wasn't meant to stay in Providence. But Ronan persisted, and I found myself falling in love with him. He was a senior and I was a sophomore. My naïve heart liked the attention. The years that followed were some of the best, and worst, of my life. I loved your daddy with my whole heart, and he loved me. But I had to sacrifice a big part of myself to be with him, and it was a sacrifice I was willing to make at the time. "I stayed in Providence after high school. Something I never thought I would do. My parents thought I was crazy, and they kicked me out because of it. But Ronan asked me to marry him." Mom smiled slightly, a nostalgic, sweet smile, and I found myself with tears in my eyes. She had never spoken of him like this before. "And before I knew what I was doing, I was an eighteen-year-old bride who thought I had it all figured out. I didn't need college. I didn't need my parents. I didn't need anybody but Ronan, because he loved me, and we would make it work." Maybe, maybe Mom's objection to Shea had nothing to do with the lycan thing. Maybe it was because of her life with Dad. I still didn't know how she knew about lycans, but she just really wanted me to have a different life, and easier path into adulthood then she had had herself. "But I wasn't happy. I wasn't myself. And your daddy knew it. He helped me enrol in the community college so that I could get my degree, and still stay close to home. And I was okay for a while. I was studying, flexing my brain in an environment that wasn't a North Carolina high school. "Ronan supported me whole-heartedly. That was always the wonderful thing about him. Your daddy loved me unconditionally. Anything I wanted, he would go above and beyond for me. Anything bad I could do, every fight, he had already forgiven anything that I could ever do. The way he looked at me, God, it was like he would dive in front of a bullet for me." Mom shook her head as she sighed. "But there were always secrets. Things he wouldn't tell me. Things I couldn't know. If ever I asked a question, asked him where he was going of a night time, he would just kiss my forehead and tell me not to worry. "I thought he was having an affair." My heart dropped, and I saw Shea's shoulders stiffen as he heard the change in my pulse. Oh my God, I had never even considered that Dad could have cheated on Mom. The way she was talking about him, it sounded like … kind of what Shea described, but an affair? "I watched him for months, disappearing off into the woods, and it just made me angrier, and angrier. Who was he meeting? Did I know her? Was there some sort of cabin that I didn't know about where he met her? "So, one night, I did a shot of tequila and I followed him. It was completely stupid and dangerous to go wandering in the woods by myself. I only had a flashlight, but anything could have got me in there. And something almost did. All I remember seeing is this enormous, black, furry beast. I heard it growling, I could see its teeth in the light of my flashlight. And then I heard myself scream. I ran for my life, I ran faster than I ever had, and I remember my foot catching on a root. I tripped and I knocked myself out. "When I woke up, I was in our bed, and Ronan was taking care of me. He asked me what I remembered, and I told him what I saw. And then Ronan told me his secret, one that he had kept from me for the four years that we had been in a relationship. He told me that he wasn't human."