The silence the followed the delivery of Becky’s last words was anything but amicable. It was full of weight and perhaps even danger. It was a silence that most women would have turned and fled from and would have been smart to do so. Becky, however, was not a typical girl. Garrett knew this already after the epic tantrum she’d thrown in Colorado when he’d told her he was going, but seeing the way she dug in her heels with him now served as an unwelcome reminder.

There were very few people in the world he knew of who could be told flat out how unwelcome they were in a place, who would still stand there where they were. And as if things weren’t already bad enough, there was the news she’d just delivered so venomously. She was glad to have hurt him, or even to think that there was a chance she had hurt him. The fact that it was one of his own parents who had not only summoned her there but given away his precise location was the blow she had kept for last. It was the blow she had saved just in case there were no others left to her, and she was glad that she had hurt him. When he saw that, it took a great deal of restraint he hadn’t known he had to keep from hurting her. Since coming to New York, he had begun to believe that he was some kind of a changed man. He’d come to believe that the shittier parts of him, of which there were more than he liked to admit, were starting to recede some. With Becky there, he wasn’t so sure anymore. With her there in the room with him, he didn’t feel so much different after all. He felt like the same asshole he’d always been—only now he was that asshole and also really fucking pissed off.

“You need to start talking, Becky.”

“I thought the things I had to say weren’t welcome. That was the way you made it seem, anyway.”

“Don’t be mistaken, not even for a minute. Nothing about you is welcome here. But if you’re going to bring my parents into this, you better start talking.”

“What makes you think you get to tell me what to do?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Becky. You’re playing a dangerous fucking game, and I don’t have the patience for it.”

“So now you’re threatening me?” she asked, her hands on her hips in a haughty gesture that made him want to throw her across the room. “God, I don’t know why I ever let myself get so upset over you to begin with. You aren’t exactly Prince Charming, are you?”

“Enough! That’s enough out of you! Tell me who it was, Becky. You said it was one of my parents who told you to come here? One of them that told you where I was? Tell me who the fuck it was!”

“I won’t tell you anything, do you hear me? I’m not supposed to, that’s part of it, but that’s not even the real reason. I’m not going to tell you who it was because you’re an asshole, and you don’t deserve to get what you want. Now, if you feel like apologizing to me you have my number. I’m going to be staying in the city for a little while. Otherwise, I suggest you start doing some thinking about why your parents feel the need to intervene on your behalf in the first place. I love you, Garrett, I really do, but you need to start working on getting your priorities straight.”

“So you’re not going to tell me? Is that what you’re telling me right now?”

“Your listening skills are pretty terrible, you know that? Not that it’s much of a change from when we were in Colorado, but still. Another thing for you to work on.”

“Get out.”

“Is that really how you talk to— “

“Get the fuck out!”

For a minute, she looked like she might cry and whether it made him a prick or not, Garrett was glad. The whole point of her having come had been to make him feel like shit after all, hadn’t it? Either that or she was crazy enough to think that coming to his hotel room that way would somehow lead to a reconciliation, in which case she was almost certainly crazy enough to warrant a call to the cops. If she was trying to make a play for him, she was doing a terrible job. Even when she really did start to cry, he didn’t feel moved in the slightest. Any chance that he might have, was wiped out by the vision of Finnley storming out of his suite, right when he’d finally started to convince her that he might be worth a damn. He glanced down at Becky and jerked his head towards the door, more than just wanting her out now, but needing her out. He needed her gone so that he could try to make some sense of what the hell had just happened.

“Fine,” she spat, any sweetness she might be trying to demonstrate completely gone. “I’m gone. But don’t think that just because I leave this hotel I’m leaving the city. You may have more money than God, but you don’t own New York City. I can stay here for as long as I want to and besides, your parents don’t seem to mind me being here. They don’t seem to mind it one damn bit.”

And then she was stalking out of his door, slamming it as hard as she could as she went. The minute she was gone, Garrett began to get dressed. He didn’t want to do it, not one bit. What he wanted to do was climb into bed and go back to sleep. He wanted to sleep until the whole fucked up scene he’d just played an unwilling part in was undone. Except that it wouldn’t be undone, and he knew it. There was no amount of sleep that would make Becky not be in the city. There was no hole he could stick his head into to undo Finnley’s new disgust with him. There was nothing he could do but move forward with the whole mess, which in this case meant figuring out which of his parents had sold him down the river.

The figuring things out aspect was the only thing he could think about as he showered and hastily dressed. It would have been the world’s largest coincidence for him to find out about his grandparents and then have this mess with Becky to happen right at the same time, and Garrett didn’t believe in that kind of coincidence. There were two people potentially involved, two people to whom he needed to pay a visit. For someone else going to see the crazy person in the psych ward wouldn’t have been the first choice out of the two, but for Garrett it was the lesser of two evils. With that in mind, he got his rarely used car out of the garage and took off. It was the easiest thing in the world for him to get in to see his mother after the last time he’d been there, and in very little time at all, he was sitting at her desk again.

“Two visits in one month! I must be a pretty special lady all of the sudden.”

“Come on, Mom. You were always a special woman.”

“Wouldn’t have known it though, would I? Not with the way you acted towards me. Just your father’s son. I should’ve known it from the start. I did know it, didn’t I? I was better off in this goddamned place. I would have been better off without either of you. I would have been better off never having you. A lot of pain and suffering never had.”

“Jesus, Mom. What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with me? Nothing, boy. Why don’t you ask yourself that question? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Does it make you happy? Do you think you’ve been a good man?”

“Maybe I should come back some other time,” Garrett answered, flashing back to the times when his mother had gotten irrationally angry while he was only a child. “You don’t seem to be yourself.”

“Which version of myself?” She laughed, her attitude changing on a dime to something resembling sassy. “I’ve got so many.”

“Look, do you feel like talking to me right now, or should I come back another time? Because I’ve got something I need to ask you about, and it can’t involve any bullshit.”

“Something to talk to me about, huh? What sort of thing do you want to talk to me about?”

“It’s about a girl.”

“Hot damn! A girl! That’s the kind of thing I like to talk about. I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to man up and find someone.”

“Man up? What the hell are you talking about, Mom? Seriously, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing much. Just doing a little experimenting with my medications.”

“What do you mean by experimenting? Are you supposed to do that?”

“It means I haven’t been taking it. And no, I’m not supposed to do that. If you rat me out, though, I’ll put a hex on you, and you won’t like that one single bit.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What? What the hell does that mean? It was me who what?”

“It was you who sent her. It was you who sent her to fuck up everything in my world, but I’m not going to let you get away with it!”

Almost immediately after he said it, there was a knock on his mom’s door and the voice of some concerned orderly cutting through the tension.

“Everything alright in there, ma’am?”

“Go away!”

“Mom,” Garrett said in a low voice, his hand circling his temples in a futile attempt to stave off a killer headache. “Stop it. It’s not her fault.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she spat at him before turning to the door to finish her dressing down of the poor woman on the other side. “And you get out of here! I’m having a much-needed argument with my son!”

“But are you sure—?”

“Of course, I’m sure! It’s therapeutic! I thought you guys wanted me to do that sort of thing!”

“Alright, but the two of you will have to keep it down. It may be therapy for the two of you, but it certainly isn’t helping any of the other patients.”

“Fine. Now leave us alone”!

Garrett’s mom had marched right up to her side of the closed door as the two of them had fought and that was where she waited until she heard actual footsteps leading away from it. It looked to Garrett like her refusal to take her medication had brought back some of her characteristic paranoia, something he considered mentioning before stopping himself. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have thought very hard about saying something, but given the conversation the two of them were having, he thought he might not have a leg to stand on. He was feeling pretty paranoid himself these days and in no position to be accusing others of it. Fortunately, or at least he thought so, when his mom turned to look at him again some of the extreme intensity that came along with her mania seemed to have left her. She cocked her head to the right, looking at him with squinted eyes and a clearly speculative gaze.

“What’s the matter with you, Garrett?”

“Who says anything’s the matter with me?”

“Well, for starters, you’re starting to sound a little bit like me.”

“The hell I am.”

“That’s right, the hell you are. When I’m the one who doesn’t understand what we’re talking about things are bad, and I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Who exactly is it that you think I’ve sent?”

“You know who I’m talking about.”

“Actually, sweetie, I don’t. I don’t have a clue.”

“Becky, mom. I’m talking about Becky.”

“Okay. Still nothing.”

“She was my ex. I left her behind in Colorado when I came to New York.”

“So what’s the problem? You’re missing her now?”

“No, I’m not missing her! She’s out of her mind, from the looks of it. She just showed up at my hotel room this morning.”

“Well, why the hell would you tell her where you were going to be living if you didn’t want her to come and visit? And why are you living in a hotel?”

“I’m living in a hotel because I never planned on living here, and I haven’t figured out how long I’m staying. If I’m staying.”

“Okay, it reeks of the sense of entitlement that comes with your father, but I’ll take it. And the second thing? What about that? I’ve never thought of you as a stupid boy but—”

“I didn’t tell her where I was! That’s the whole point, Mom. I didn’t tell her anything, didn’t even tell her a general area of the city, and it’s a big city.”

“Well, then how’d she know where you were?”

“That’s my whole point. She told me it was one of my parents who sold me down the river, location wise.”

“And you think it was me?”

“It could have been, couldn’t it? I’ve only got two parents, and you’re one of them.”

“Garrett, you need to start using your head.”

“Huh. Interesting piece of advice coming from you.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the only advice to give. If you think I’m the one that contacted your nutty ex?”

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

“From in here. You think I used my superpowers of investigation from inside of this lockdown house to contact your ex and tell her to come mess with you? First of all, I don’t know why I would want to do something like that to my own kid. Secondly, I don’t have access to the kind of thing you’re talking about. Whatever technology I would need, I don’t have it. They don’t even let me make a phone call without monitoring it.”

He felt incredibly foolish for not having seen it before, but once his mom spelled it all out for him, he saw that she couldn’t be lying. Of course, it couldn’t have been her. It was ludicrous to think that she could have. Realizing that, realizing that he’d wasted his time visiting and then accusing her when she so clearly didn’t have the means. Not only did she not have the means, she didn’t have the motive, either. He wasn’t sure what exactly his dad’s motives were, but he must have had them. He didn’t see how it was possible to get around it at that point, which meant that there was no getting around the fact that he had to talk to dear old dad.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Sorry, huh? That’s uncommon for the Wallace men. They don’t tend to do the whole apology thing.”

“Well, I am, so take that as you will, whether it’s common or not.”

“Sorry. That was unnecessary, I guess.”

“It’s fine, Mom. I deserve it. I’m the one who came storming in here and accusing you of things you didn’t do.”

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t. Let’s not let your father’s shit get in between us anymore.”

“Thanks for that. I appreciate it, Mom, really. But I also need to go.”

“Time to confront the big bad wolf, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Well then by all means, go! Here, here, and cheers to the epic take down!”

“Hey, Mom? Will you promise me something?”

“Of course! Or probably. Maybe. Let’s settle on maybe. Depends on what you want.”

“Take your medication again, will you? Please?”

“You’re not my doctor, Garrett. You may be a lot of things, but you aren’t my doctor.”

“You’re right, I’m not. But I am your son, and I love you. It’s been too long since we’ve had any kind of relationship, and that’s on me. But if you stop with the medicine?”

“Then what? You won’t want me anymore? You won’t come and see your mother?”

“That’s the thing. You won’t be my mother. Not really. I don’t want to come and see the thing that looks like my mom but isn’t. I want the real deal. Anything else will hurt too much.”

Garrett had never stood up to her that way, had never been that painfully honest, and for a minute, he was sure she was going to come at him like a wild cat. Her body was all primed to pounce, and then the next second, she appeared to have deflated. She did approach him, but it was with a much softer expression than the one she’d worn for the duration of their visit. She hugged him to her fiercely, much more so than her slight appearance would have made her look capable of, and he felt a tear on his neck.

“Alright, baby boy. If that’s how you feel, alright. I’ll start taking my medication again. Just promise me something in return, will you?”

“Of course, I will. I won’t even make any maybe stipulations.”

“Promise me that you’ll keep coming around, okay? Because I might forget. Sometimes I forget, and if it happens again, when it happens again, I’ll need somebody to remind me. Will you do that? Will you, please?”

“You know I will, Mom. I love you.”

“Do you? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Right about now it’s one of the only things I am sure of.”