Page 162 of Mistaken Intention

To know what my father did to my mother…

To know how I came to be born…

Mom coughs and we all look at her. She’s turned and is staring at Hunter.

“I wrote to you,” she says. “When I was lucid, they let me write.”

“I never received any letters. None of us did.”

The man beside Mom lets out a long sigh, shaking his head and she looks up at him. “Theodore must have intercepted them,” she says, turning her gaze back on Hunter. “I wrote to you, though. I promise.”

Ella sits up. “How long were you in the hospital?”

“Nearly three years.” Ella’s eyes widen, her mouth dropping open. I can’t help gasping.Three years?“I’d probably still be there now if it wasn’t for Braydon.” She looks up at the man who’s still holding her, gratitude and love filling her eyes.

“Why? What did Braydon do?” Hunter asks.

“He saved me,” she says, quite simply.

Braydon smiles. “I don’t know about that, but I moved here from Chicago, and I went to work at the hospital as a resident psychologist. After just a few one-to-one sessions with your mom, I realized there was nothing wrong with her… otherthan the damage your father had done. She certainly wasn’t psychotic, or a danger to anyone… not even herself.”

“Braydon arranged for my discharge,” Mom says. “And although I wanted to contact you, he reminded me I’d have to go through Theodore. We both knew I wasn’t strong enough for that.”

“So you just left us?” Ella says, shaking her head.

“Don’t make it sound easy,” Mom replies. “It wasn’t. But I’d written and heard nothing back. I assumed Theodore had told you stories about me… made you fearful of me.”

“He never said a word about you,” I say, recalling his silences, his rebuttals whenever one of us raised the subject. “He refused to talk about you at all.”

“Th—That’s not strictly true.” I turn at the sound of Hunter’s voice.

“What are you saying? I’m pretty sure I don’t have any holes in my memory now. As far as I’m aware, you’ve always told me…”

“I know what I’ve always told you,” he says. “And it’s not your memory playing tricks. I lied to you, Drew… to you and Ella. Dad told me once, why Mom left.”

Before I can say anything, Mom steps forward, releasing herself from Braydon’s arms. “What did he tell you? Did he say I was crazy?”

“No. He told me you didn’t love us enough to take us with you.”

“Oh, my God.” She raises her hand to her mouth, but then pushes it back through her hair. “Was he implying I’d just walked out, abandoning you? Or did he mean I’d left with another man?”

“I always assumed the latter,” Hunter says, shrugging his shoulders before he turns to me and then looks down at Ella. “I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you what Dad had said because Iwanted to protect you from his cruelty. If I was wrong, then once again, I’m sorry.”

Sometimes he can take the big brother thing too far, but in this instance, I’m grateful. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear that, when there was no hope of having it contradicted. “You weren’t wrong.” I smile at him while Ella just nods and leans back in Mac’s embrace.

“I loved you,” Mom says, looking first at Ella, then at me, and finally at Hunter. “I loved all of you, and I still do, but I couldn’t be sure your father would let me have any kind of relationship with you, and rightly or wrongly, I assumed it would be too difficult for you to hear from me after such a long time. Ella would have only been six years old when I was released, and Drew just nine. I didn’t know how they’d handle me coming back out of the blue, especially if their father had fed them stories about me being insane. The last thing I wanted was to scare them…” She pauses, stepping a little closer to Hunter. “And I knew you’d look after them. You were good at that. You’d looked after me for long enough.”

“I’d tried,” he whispers.

“Even though it wasn’t your job.” She smiles up at him and he shakes his head, but doesn’t speak. I’m not sure he can. “When I didn’t get any reply to my letters, I figured you didn’t want to know me anymore, so we moved away.” Mom turns, going back to Braydon. “To England.”

“That’s a long way to go,” Mac says, tilting his head to one side.

Mom looks over at him. “You’re British?”

“Yes. I know what it means to cross the Atlantic and start again. It’s an enormous commitment… and I didn’t have any family to leave behind.”

“It wasn’t a decision I took lightly,” Mom says, gazing up at Braydon. “I missed my children every minute of every day.Maybe I was weak. Maybe I should have tried harder, but Theodore had stolen all the fight from me. I had nothing left.”

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