A week went by before I went to see my mother again.

Icy rain pelted against the window glass, drab black hangings replaced the pastel blue silks, and the fire crackled and warmed us from the cold drafts. My mother sat before me as we drank tea, reading off a letter that had arrived from a local seigneur who could not make the funeral for some reason or another.

The steam from the cup eased the heaviness of my eyes. I had found no reprieve from the nights that cast over me a dark shadow—the night-mares everlasting. Catherine was exhausted as well, due to the turmoil and heavy traveling she endured, which gave me reason to leave her at Varlemont. I was relieved, as that meant I could get some time more or less alone. Exhaustion overtook me when I stepped foot in the courtyard on my arrival, which caused me to spend most of the day hours recovering.

For as long as I could remember, my mother had been a stationary figure, confined to the walls of her apartments, resting in bed, or taking slow walks in the garden. After the death of my father, my mother seemed to me more awake and active than I had seen her in a long time. I didn’t think she was content, as her eyes and face shared the same drawn countenance as mine, but her active participation in the management of the estate in my absence gave me hope for a future, though I imagined it would be a slow road.

When I was young, I enjoyed my mother’s reading to me, but the letter went on for far too long for my liking, filled with rambling common pleasantries, saying how good of a man he was, how great a loss we must feel, and how they would keep us in their prayers. I frowned down towards the cup. It made me sick.

“Well, that’s very nice,” she said and smiled before folding the letter and placing it on the small table nearby. “We must write back soon.”

I hated that game we played. How we danced around all the things my father said, all the things he did to us, to spew pleasantries or feign ignorance. I might have also adopted the same passive and submissive façade to make my life bearable and, at times, believed in the lies I had to tell myself, but once I saw him dead, I did not think him a gentleman. For once, I wanted my mother to admit it.

“But he wasn’t a good man,” I said, glancing up from the cup. “Right, Maman?”

She stared at me.

“Don’t say such things.”

“But it’s true,” I said in a soft voice.

“Stop it!” She said hushed but harsh.

“There’s no reason to lie about it,” I said, “not anymore.”

“Stop it!” she said again, “your father has just died!”

“Thank God,” I said in a barely audible mutter.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She put her cup down hard on the table before she came towards me. Her face level with mine.

“Don’t you ever say anything like that again!” She said sharply, her brows furrowed, “You never know who will hear you.”

My heart sank. I avoided her eyes. I missteped, and I knew it: “You’re right, Maman, I’m sorry."

She turned away from me and called for the staff. A few maids filled in at her command.

“Clear the dishes, Monseigneur le Comte is finished.”

She smoothed her petticoats with her trembling, pale hands before she left me in the room alone.

While I buttoned up my waistcoat in the morning, a servant came to the door to inform me that my mother had requested to see me immediately. It was odd, as I already planned to call on her, as per the usual routine of things, but I thought little of it. I assumed I merely had to do some penitence for the comments the day before, and then we would forget it ever happened. I agreed and told him I would be there soon.

My mother stood like a wraith silhouetted against the window in her deep mourning dress and fair features. A light rain pattered on the glass still, a grim remnant from the night before, as she stared out to some point in the distance with a hand near her mouth. She was alone, no breakfast on the table, and her ladies gone. She didn’t turn to me when I walked in.

“Maman?” I said, believing that she didn’t hear me walk in, “Is something wrong?”

She didn’t move but kept her sight out the window until she turned her head. She let an arm drop to her side, handkerchief in hand, and her eyes red again.

“Where’s the laudanum?”

“What?”

“I will need it back.”

She turned fully to me. A cold wind passed through me, the words not coming to my mind, but once I processed the question, I feigned a disarming smile: “I don’t know what-”

“It is sinful to lie,” she said, twisting the handkerchief in her hands, “I noticed a bottle missing from the chest. At the time, I assumed I misplaced one—that is, until your father asked if I had given one to you. I was angry with you, but I assumed you wouldn’t steal from me unless you were having some sort of problem you didn’t wish to discuss.”I swallowed. She only knew I had taken it; I reminded myself, that was all.

“I shouldn’t have taken it without permission,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“So,” she said in a firm but unaffected voice, “where is it now?”

“It’s gone.”

Not a lie, I thought.

I searched her face. I thought there was no possibility that she knew anything. She was just angry, which was justified, and I would brave chastising about it, though I didn’t know why she would only bring it up months later. Her expression twisted, gaining a red tinge, which made me think she would start crying again, but she didn’t.

“How?”

I shrugged. “I used it all.”

She walked quickly away from the window to the other side of the room and covered her face with her hands.

“Maman,” I said following her, “I’m sorry, truly, but I don’t believe it warrants this reaction.”

“Do you think me a fool?” She said uncovering her face.

“What are you—"

“You lie and you lie and you lie!” She screamed and rambled in a frantic voice, “I should’ve known. The physician thought that maybe—and I should’ve known. You and your blatant high disregard for your father’s spirit—you and your nature and I didn’t—I couldn’t— I can’t —”

“What are you talking about?” I yelled back, my hands shaking, unable to make out her words in her wet voice.

“You know what I’m speaking of!” she seethed.

“Then say it!”

“I won’t say anything so vile.”

A grave air grew between us. We understood each other. I became cold and empty inside. She was never supposed to know. No one was supposed to know anything. That wasn’t the plan. Her eyes held the terror and disgust I imagined she would have. I held in my mind that my father’s death would mend the invisible rift between us all, but I saw the rift grow wider right in front of me, one that could never be mended. It would’ve been better to be dead. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t convince her otherwise. I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. It was over.

I stepped towards her, but she moved back.

“And if I did?” I found myself saying, “How terrible would that be?”

“How can you say such a thing?” she seethed. “You have committed the gravest of sins.”

“Because I hate him!” I yelled, “I hate him! With my whole heart, I hate him! The disgusting, brutish creature he is! I hate him!”

“He is still your father!”

“I know!” I said, “I know! He is my father. I am reminded every. single. day of who he is! I know I should care for him, and I know I should love him, but when did he ever care for us? How many times has he hurt you? Or should you just ignore that again? Can you truly feign so?”

“You will burn for this!” she said before she collapsed onto the daybed. She sobbed loud down towards the floor. I calmed in the relative silence and kneeled in front of her. I tried to hold her hands, but she took them away from me.

“Maman, I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my tone low and calm. “I am. I’ve never wanted to cause you pain, but I had to do this. For you. For our family. How long could we have suffered him?”

She shook her head with tears down her face. “Do not involve me in your sins.”

“Please, Maman, see reason.”

“Get out.”

“Get out!” She yelled again when she stood up and I hadn’t moved: “I do not want to see you in here again!”

“I am still your son!” I said standing.

“You are no son of mine!”

I huffed. Her face made it clear to me that she meant it.

“I said leave! Or I’ll call them to drag you out! And you know what will happen then? They will send you to a hospital! They will send you to the gallows! Is that what you want? Get out!”

“Fine.” I said, chocking back the emotions in my voice, “I’ll leave if that’s what you want so dearly.”

I went to leave and shook my head. When I opened the door, as the tears I held back burned my eyes, and my rage simmered under my skin, I said something I shouldn’t have.

“I suppose I should’ve just let him kill you then.”

I didn’t leave, despite my mother’s insistence. I couldn’t leave my rooms, afraid I would run into her, so I paced around for hours as my nerves ate away at me. Sharp stabbing pains went through my head, as I shook violently, and my chest was in so much pain that I had to lie down in order to breathe clearly. The world fazed in and out of my vision as a large void seemed ready to open up in the ground beneath me and swallow me whole.

I knew I should’ve obeyed her, but I was in too much pain to move. As exhausted as I was, I could not sleep. I imagined that she would send word to have me arrested, that any moment they would come into the room and take me, subject me to the dirty, damp walls of a prison cell, before being hauled up the gallows and my head rolling on stained wood.

All was lost. I had been defeated. My mother despised me, my father was dead, and my brother might as well have been a world away. He could not come back, ignorant of all of these events, not while my mother hated me so. I had to return to Varlemont, if my mother decided not to betray me, and then what? If she didn’t forgive me, and refused to see me, then that would be impossible to explain. And after that? There was nothing for me. There was nothing between us anymore, even if she did forgive me, she would never look at me the same again. I remembered the times she cared for me, when she nursed me from the fall down the stairs, or all the other times I was injured, and I wanted nothing more than to go back—just for a moment more—before the pain, before everything had changed, when the only thing I wanted in the entire world was to make my mother happy, before I became who I am. I might’ve saved my mother from my father, but what saved her from me?

My nerves only calmed when I thought I only needed to let her anger subside, and then we could have a civil conversation and she would forgive me. It was a different path than I planned, but it could work. I had to return to Varlemont, for a time, and then I would write to her about speaking again. That was the only way forward. We could move on with our lives as we always had done. No one knew anything about it. We had time.

Morning came. I waited to see if she would send a servant to summon me again, but when none arrived, I arranged for my departure. It crossed my mind to go and see her myself, despite my plan, with the thought she might’ve calmed enough, but I saw her twisted and pained face, her sobs, and her screams in my mind and thought it would only make her angrier. Once I packed and dressed for traveling, I left out into the courtyard. The sun had just barely risen, the icy rain replaced with a light snow that dusted over the grey stones, and the liveried servants packed and readied the carriage. I crossed the courtyard and hoped the long journey would exhaust me enough to allow me sleep.

I was almost at the carriage when I heard the gunshot. I ran. The staircase and halls rushed by me while I screamed out to her before I could even think of what could’ve happened. All through my life, I was forced to hear my mother bear the brunt of my father’s assaults, and I hid, due to an innate weakness, or ran away, as a cold terror washed through me, as if distance did anything to ease the pain of it. That same terror followed me to Varlemont, caused my night-mares, and kept me up far into the night as I suffered with the knowledge that she was not safe, and as long as she wasn’t safe, then neither was I. That same terror washed over me then, the second I heard the shot, knowing that something was horrifically wrong and that I had to run to her, to help her, as I screamed out to her, in hopeless desperation, as if she was anything but dead.

At every turn I took, I thought I might see her, rushing to find me as well, to meet somewhere in the middle, but my cries became more desperate the closer I became without her presence. I must have known then, deep in my heart of hearts, because I imagined what I wished to see when I opened that door, to see her in her morning dress, at the table in front of a sunlit window, smiling and wondering what I was so panicked for. We were safe. Everything was okay. I was okay — but I’d never be okay again.

“Maman!” I called out as I opened the door.

I can never forget the blood.

It pooled thick under her head where she laid, spreading out into the wooden floor around her, splayed onto the white paneled walls, matted in her hair, down her shoulders, her chemise, my hands, my arms, as I held onto her flimsy body to chest, the warmth of it soaking through my waistcoat into my shirt underneath. My eyes burned from the sobs as I clutched onto her, begging, pleading, and screaming; one hand on the back of her head as blood ran hot through my fingers, as I muttered over and over again under my breath something that no longer sounded like words but a muddle of incoherent babble.

How terrible it is to bear; how horrible it is to even try to find the words to describe it all. I have held and screamed out to my mother for eternity, her cold hands in mine, her death seared into my mind, haunting me, chasing me for so long, the slightest remembrance casting me back into its recesses where there is nothing but her cold body, my mind spiraling, my chest aching, no longer in control of my senses, until the warmth left her body.

I once believed that death was nothing at all, but it wasn’t nothing at all—it was everything. It was the end of my life.

No.

Worse.

It was the end of the world.