Page 8 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

The vicar begins the service by extolling Don Green’s virtues, saying what a proud father and honorable husband he was. How hard he worked for his family. How he was such a good friend to his mates.

He reads Psalm 23 and Psalm 130. Tells us about forgiveness and mercy, and how Dad will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And then the congregation sings the hymns, and all I can think is how fucking bizarre and ironic it all is. Dad had no amazing grace. He barely rose before ten a.m., so he would never have seen the first dew fall or heard the blackbird speak. Nothing was bright and beautiful when he was around.

By the end of the service, I’m filled with disbelief and anger. I don’t want any part of a God who would allow that animal into his house. Fuck forgiveness. Fuck mercy. We should all get what we deserve, and Dad deserves to fucking burn.

At the end of the service comes the moment I’ve been waiting for. The curtains part and the coffin trundles away, ready to be burned to ashes. That’s it. He’s gone. It’s over.

If I asked, I wonder whether they’d let me go and watch the coffin be consumed by the flames.

As everyone starts getting to their feet, I walk outside, into the fresh air, go around the side of the building, and lean against the wall, my hands on my knees. Anger, resentment, and a dozen other unexpected emotions make my stomach churn and acid rise to burn my throat, and before I can stop myself, I vomit into the bushes.

When it’s over, I wipe my mouth, feeling angry and shaky. Fuck this. I’ve seen what I came to see. I can go now.

As I straighten, though, someone says, “Linc,” and I turn to see my mother standing at the top of the path, watching me.

I walk toward her and stop when I’m about two feet away. She’s all skin and bones, everything about her a sharp angle from her chin to her shoulders to her elbows. If she hugged me, it’d be like being hugged by a skeletal tree, stripped of its leaves in winter. Not that she will. I can’t remember her ever giving me a hug.

It makes me think of Elora, and the way she threw her arms around me as soon as I saw her. She was all soft curves, from her pink cheeks to her full breasts to the swell of her hips, and I feel an ache inside I can’t explain.

“You came,” my mother says.

“I wanted to make sure he was really dead,” I reply.

Her brown eyes are as flat and lifeless as I remember, but as she studies me, they light up, just a little. “You look just like him,” she murmurs.

I frown, because I know I look nothing like my dad, not my height, my build, or the color of my hair.

“Don knew,” she says. “That’s why he hated you so much.”

I blink. “Knew what?”

“That you weren’t his.”

Everything vanishes. The building, the people spilling out of the door, the graves on the other side of the road, the green grass and blue sky, the sound of birdsong. Someone’s sucked all the air away, and I’m standing in a vacuum.

She waits patiently for the news to register. My jaw has dropped, but my brain won’t function. I control-alt-delete it, try to reboot it, but I just keep getting the blue screen of death.

“What?” I say.

“I had an affair,” she says. From her tone, she could be reading a dull political text. “A couple of years into our marriage. His name was Edmund Mansfield. Don caught us together. He beat Ed pretty badly. Told him if he came near me again, he’d kill him. I never saw him again. It was clear as you grew up that you weren’t Don’s son. You look just like Ed.” Her gaze lingers on my hair, my face, the distance in her eyes telling me she’s seeing him, not me.

“That doesn’t mean I’m his son.” My heart is racing, and I’m struggling to catch my breath.

“I wasn’t sleeping with Don at the time,” she says. “We’d had a big argument. It’s one reason I went with Ed.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Don made me promise not to.”

I swallow hard. “He just decided to punish me for it for fourteen years.”

She doesn’t look guilty or upset. She returns my gaze calmly.

I’m vaguely aware of Sean standing beside me. How long has he been there? Did he hear everything? He was always Dad’s favorite. Now I know why.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” I whisper to her. “Why didn’t you leave and take us with you? How could you let him do that to me?”

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