Page 125 of Mr. Edwards
“You have glaucoma?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Fuck knows, but I’m old, so it’s a possibility.”
I throw my head back and laugh; she’s only been here minutes and I’m already feeling a bit better.
She places the joint between her lips, lighting it. After taking a long draw, she holds in the smoke as she rests her back against the wall behind us. When she finally exhales, she extends her hand toward me offering me a puff.
I shake my head. “My mom was an addict, so I’ve never touched the stuff.”
“I respect that,” she says. “But I can’t be straight for the conversation we’re about to have.”
My stomach churns at the thought of what she might have to say, so against my better judgment, I reach for the joint, bringing it to my mouth.
Reece will kill me if he finds out what I’m doing. He gave me a huge lecture about drugs when I first moved in with him all those years ago, but he needn’t have bothered, I saw firsthand what they did to my mother, and there was no way I was going to end up like her.
The moment I inhale I start to cough and splutter,and Granny chuckles as she lightly taps my back. “Amateur,” she mumbles.
We pass the joint back and forth a few more times before any further words are spoken. I’m not feeling the effects yet, so I lean back against the wall and wait to hear what Granny has to say.
“Did you know Jason wasn’t my biological son?”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. He was only three years old when I met his father. He was a cute kid and took a shine to me right off the bat. My husband, James, was a great dad. His ex was a psycho bitch, so when they split, he took Jason with him. He said he wouldn’t be safe living with her. I won’t go into it, but the beginning of that kid’s life was rough. My heart went out to him.
“His dad and I eventually got married, and I fell pregnant with Robert, Grayson’s father, and everything changed. Turns out the little boy I had grown to love had a dark side.
Jason hated his brother from the moment he was born. It was a jealousy thing, and over time I wasn’t comfortable leaving the boys alone. Not even for a second. My sweet Robert was such a good baby, but when I started to find small bruises on him and bite marks, I knew exactly where they were coming from.”
“That’s awful,” I say.
“As they got older, things got worse. Jason constantly bullied his little brother. He called him Bobby-boy, which Robert hated. That only made him do it more. He was such a spiteful little shit. If I ever chastised him for his behavior, he’d accuse me of playing favorites, or loving Robert more because he was my biological son. I tried so hard to never do that.”
I reach over and place my hand on top of hers because Ihave no response for any of this. I don’t want to hear about his life, but she obviously needs to get this off her chest, so I let her speak.
“Robert was good at everything, school, sports, you name it. The girls loved him, and Jason only hated him more for it. My husband, God rest his soul, wore rose-colored glasses when it came to his eldest son. It was obvious to me that Jason had inherited his mother’s genes. My husband didn’t have a nasty bone in his body. He was a kind, loving man, but a little coarse around the edges. A rough-and-tumble kind of guy. He’d always say,‘Boys will be boys, wait until they’re older, they’ll be best of friends’.”
“Did that ever happen?”
“No. They barely had anything to do with each other. I was surprised when he showed up at Robert’s funeral. They hadn’t spoken in years, and he never bothered to come and visit him while he’d been sick.”
Granny stops talking for a moment and starts digging in her bag again. When she pulls out another joint and lights it, I know she’s struggling to relive it all. “At the funeral, Jason didn’t shed a tear. Quite the opposite. I happened to look over at him as Robert’s coffin was being lowered into the ground, and do you know what that piece of shit did? He fucking smiled. It’s probably the first genuine smile I’d ever seen him make. Any love I held for him, died in that moment.”
When Granny reaches up to wipe away her tears, my heart hurts for her. I can’t imagine how that would’ve felt.
She takes a deep breath before continuing. “When Jason was twelve, I got a call from the principal at his school. A girl a few grades below him, had accused him of touching her inappropriately. He denied it of course, but there was this little voice in the back of my mind that said differently. He’d become such a practiced liar over theyears it was impossible to know when he was telling the truth.”
This conversation is heading down a path I’m not comfortable with, but I’m grateful for the pot now. I’m feeling very relaxed and chilled despite her confessions.
I believe Granny though, a hundred percent that fucker did what that girl accused him of, and my heart goes out to her. A part of me has always carried around a fraction of guilt. I was always beating myself up, wondering if there was anything I’d done to encourage his behavior, even though my heart knew that wasn’t the case.
“There were other incidents in the years that followed, but it was always his word against theirs, and somehow, he managed to talk his way out of all of it. In college, he was even accused of drugging a girl at a party and taking advantage of her. He got away with that one too. He ended up dropping out a few months later because that girl’s brother, and a group of his friends, beat him so bad he had to be hospitalized.”
She turns to face me, reaching for my hands. “This is why I felt compelled to come here today. When Grayson told me what he’d done to you, the shame and guilt I felt was almost too much to bear.”
Although it’s hard to hear about the other victims, it makes me realize that the monster I knew him to be, was always there. There’s nothing I could’ve said or done to change that.
“What he did to me wasn’t your fault,” I tell her.
