with Darragh, as I had. I told him about the letter and that I would be returning to St Brigid’s. I had him make all the arrangements for your move – the travel, the house, even getting the position at the hospital for your mother – so I wouldn’t know where you were. I assumed that it was safer that way, not realizing it was all done in vain, as thanks to Taron, Darragh knew where you were all along.” There was so much bitterness in his tone that I started to wonder if Taron was in fact still alive. “He also made all the arrangements for your new name.”
“New name?”
“Changing your name to Ingle, I mean. I had Taron send new identification for you all, so there wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“No, that can’t be right. My name has always been Ingle, even before all of that.”
He shook his head. “You were born Rebecca Clavish. When I spoke to you in my office before you left,” he paused for a moment before continuing, “when I told you to take care of Ryland, the last thing I did was change your name.”
“You compelled me too?” I whispered, not doing much to mask the fact that I was upset by the idea.
“I had to.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You wouldn’t,” he said with a humorless smile.
I remembered Jocelyn calling me into his office the evening before we were set to move. He sat me up on his desk and told me that I was going to have to take care of Mommy and baby Ryland while he was away. I told him that I was a big girl now and promised that I would take care of everything. Yet, as the images of that meeting ran through my mind, they seemed oddly different. While I’d never let myself think about that night as a whole, I’d always remembered Jocelyn looking tired and distant. As a girl, I had assumed it was because he had spent all night packing with Mom and needed sleep. When I was older, after I knew he had left us, I assumed that he was simply tired of us. Tired of the family he didn’t want, and anxious to be on his way.
But I’d been wrong. I could see through my hate and pride to the horrible clarity underneath, where tired distance can, in different lighting, look a lot like sadness.
My throat closed up on me and I doubted it was possible to feel more terrible than I did at that moment. Could it be true? Did I want it to be true?
Jocelyn was silent for a moment, letting me collect my thoughts, or possibly collecting his own, before he said, “You should get back to the infirmary, you still need your rest. It was probably wrong of me to put all this on you when you are still so weak, but you deserved to know. Will you be able to make it back?” He walked over to my chair and extended a hand, helping me up.
“Alex is waiting to walk with me.”
He nodded then slowly walked back to the window. I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me.
“I know you think that I mistreated your mother terribly, and there is no one on this earth that agrees with you more than I do,” he said quietly, with his back to me, once again staring out the window. “But I want you to know that no matter how long I live my last thought on this earth will be of her.”
He didn’t turn to look at me, and he said nothing else. I tried again to leave, worried that the tears I could feel burning my eyes were going to brim over before I was able to make it out the door. Yet I couldn’t seem to make myself go. Something in me wouldn’t let me leave – not like that. I could see how hard it was for him to tell me everything he had, and I wanted to let him know that – while I wasn’t yet sure what to make of it – I appreciated it. I wasn’t quite ready to ask for or offer forgiveness, but I had to somehow let him know that I understood.
I could have told myself that none of it was true, or that even if it was true it didn’t matter. I could have said that it didn’t change anything, or that I was past caring, or that I had