Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,161
hold her gaze as I frantically searched my mind for what to say next. What was I supposed to say? Hi, I’m the middle child who ruined your lives.
“Jason?” Her haunted whisper jerked my gaze back to her face. Tears were filling her eyes. My entire body tensed painfully. I licked my lips and tried to say something, anything, but I couldn’t make a sound past the lump in my throat. I finally settled on a nod.
My mother gave a harsh cry before she threw both of her thin arms around my neck, holding me in an impossibly tight embrace. Her fragile body was racked with violent sobs as she held me in her arms. I hugged her, wrapping my arms around her.
From the back of the house, I heard heavy footsteps rushing toward us, and the tension that had started to ease returned. I took a step backward, pulling my mom with me as my father turned the final corner to enter the hallway. I was afraid of being rejected, of being blamed for their hardship. It was no less than I deserved, but that thought did nothing to protect me against the pain.
My father was still a tall, broad-shouldered man, but his brown hair had gone completely gray. Confused anger hardened his features as he looked from his crying wife to me standing in her tight embrace. “What’s going on here?”
My mother pulled back enough so she could turn to look at him, but both of her hands were tightly fisted in my shirt as if she were afraid that I was going to disappear. “It’s Jason. It’s our baby Jason,” she cried.
He held back, his eyes narrowed on me, searching my features. I wasn’t sure what my mother had seen to convince her it was me, but it only took him a second to see it as well. His face crumpled in a blink and I found myself pulled roughly into the house by big hands before I was engulfed in a hug by my father.
I don’t know how long we stood there, hugging and crying; somewhere between a heartbeat and forever, but I knew it would never be long enough. It was only when my mother laughed that we started to pull away.
“Goodness,” she said, wiping away her tears with her right hand while her left hand was tightly clenched in my right. “The neighbors must think we’re crazy, standing in the open doorway, crying like a bunch of loonies.”
My father and I laughed, letting the last of the tension ease from my shoulders. My father reached past me and closed the door while my mom ushered me down the hall toward the living room. I stopped, my eyes falling on the wall filled with framed photographs. They were all family photographs taken over the years. Sadly, there were no pictures of me over the age of seven, and those were all of the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy I had been so long ago. I was surprised to find that I was on the wall. It was only when I was standing there staring at the pictures that I realized I hadn’t expected them to be on the wall.
Something must have shown on my face, because Mom touched my cheek. “Jason, honey, what is it?”
“I didn’t expect to see my picture here,” I admitted softly before I thought about what I was saying.
Dad placed a hand on my shoulder from where he was standing directly behind me. “Of course your picture is here.”
“I talked to Robert.” My voice was rough with emotion. I wasn’t angry. Just surprised. “He said you told everyone that I died. He said that I was the reason you were forced to move and come to Low Town. I figured when you started fresh here, there’d be no evidence of my existence.”
Mom placed both her hands on my cheeks, forcing me to look down at her. “Oh, no, honey,” she started, and then stopped, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. “I mean, yes, we did tell people you had died when you first left, but we were always so ashamed of that lie. We have never been ashamed of you and your wonderful gift. But they told us it would be easier if we told everyone you were dead. We never took your pictures down and we never denied that you are our son.”
I folded my mother in a fierce hug. “I’m not angry. You did what everyone does, what you were supposed