“Mom. Knock-knock.”
“Matty? Hey…”
His mother was standing out the front of their house when he approached it – their Legion house, not their actual home, which was of course many miles away, sitting empty where they had left it. This was Ironbound’s house, Matt supposed – a one and a half storey family home, with a suburban triangular roof, wooden front porch with white trimmings, and walls painted light grey. From a distance, coming across the grassy grounds around the side of the Academy, the house seemed still and silent, the dark shingles of the roof merged into the night sky beyond – the white porch light the single point of illumination, staining the walls with shadows. Yet as he approached Matt saw a figure moving, standing just beyond the front porch, their back to the door. For a moment Matt was worried. But then he remembered: she would’ve been waiting for him.
“Mom.” They embraced in the mottled glow of the porchlight. Kathryn Callaghan’s long brown hair was loose, sitting in its natural curls; she wore a light blue shirt, black track pants and slippers, with a maroon knitted shawl wrapped round her shoulders. She squeezed Matt tight, then after a moment released him, cupping his chin with both hands. Matt’s brow furrowed and he sniffed, smelling something acrid and unpleasant. His eyes fell on the lit cigarette held between her fingers.
“Mom,” Matt repeated, a complaint this time. He fixed her with a disapproving gaze.
“Oh shush,” Mrs Callaghan hushed, swatting at him with the hand not holding the cigarette, “It’s only one.”
“I thought you told Dad you quit.”
“What your father doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Matt’s mother replied. She took another long draw and blew the smoke away from him, then threw the cigarette on the damp grass and squashed it underfoot.
“So many years of lectures…”
“Yes, well, when my children can scrub their own lungs…” She let the sentence trail as she took in the expression on Matt’s face. “Oh Matty. Are you okay? What happened?”
“Is Dad…?”
“He’s asleep. Kids are out. There was a commotion… somebody mentioned… but I didn’t want to scare them.” She paused, peering at him. “Is everything okay? Are you alright?”
Matt sighed. Together, they walked round to the side of the darkened house, to where a two‑person, white wooden seat swung from the branches of an old oak tree. They sat, and Matt ran his mother through a blow‑by‑blow of the day’s events – the attack, his escape, the FBI’s coercion. He left out Lionel and the USB drive tucked quietly away in his pocket, but little else. Not Jane’s anger. Not the violence of the attack.
“God.”
By the time the tale was told, Matt’s mother was leaning forward in the gently swaying chair, her face pained. “Oh Matty. You poor thing.”
Matt forced himself just to sniff. “It’s fine,” he told her, “I’m okay.”
“Of course you’re not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She shook her head, gripping his hand tight as they looked out across the night at the manor. “And you’re here now?” she asked him, “The Academy I mean. At least for the time being.”
“I guess,” Matt mumbled, “Yes. No. Maybe?” He sighed, sat up and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t… I’ve been talking all about me. How’re you?”
“I’m fine. Worried about my son.” She shook him by the shoulders and Matt gave a weak chuckle.
“Dad?”
“Still thrilled at being off work.”
“Jonas? Sarah?”
“Your brother has been taken under the wing of that Charles Farrington person,” Matt’s mother mused, “Though I’m not entirely sure how it happened. He’s normally quite reserved, Charles, the few times I’ve seen him. Anyway, he was walking by as Jonas was throwing a few fire moves around outside one afternoon, you know, which he’s started doing lately in hopes of catching the attention of one of those activewear‑glad girls, and he stopped and watched for a bit and offered to give Jonas some pointers.”
“And Jonas accepted?”
“Heavens no. Ungrateful little brat laughed in Mr Farrington’s face and said ‘I don’t need help old man’.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “He’s such a little-”
“For which I was ready to ground him,” his mother continued, firm, “Or at the very least power‑wash his cellphone. Anyway turns out I didn’t need to, because Mr Farrington was not in the least bit offended. Instead he simply shrugged and said ‘It’s your choice if you want to be useless’. Then he erupts into this fifty-foot phoenix of flames and flies directly over the castle.” Matt laughed, and his mother raised a meaningful eyebrow at him. “I have never seen Jonas so quiet.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Kathryn Callaghan scoffed. “Of course, your brother spends the next two days running through every room in Morningstar until he at last finds the poor man reading somewhere and begs‑begs‑begs him to teach him how to do that. I’m told there was even grovelling involved. And now my son is being privately tutored by the greatest pyromancer in America while every single other branch of his education atrophies, and I don’t know whether to be proud or annoyed.”
“A little of both,” said Matt, “With Jonas it’s always a little of both.”
“And then Sarah, God.” Matt’s mother sighed. “I’m going to lose Sarah to the same thing. Ever since she manifested it’s been like the Tasmanian Devil hurtling through our living room, and please‑please‑please Mom can you go running with me, please‑please‑please.”
“And are you?”
“Matt, honey, one day you are going to wake up in middle age and understand what I truly mean when I say unfitness runs in our family.”
“Nobody runs in our family.”
“Well, someone does now.” She shook her head. “Giselle Pixus comes by and races with her sometimes. You should see the look on Sarah’s face – you would think she was back being five again staring up at a real-life Disney princess. Nothing in the world- nobody can compare. Definitely not her slow old mother.” Kathryn Callaghan shook her head, though she smiled as she did. “She’s a wonder that woman. I can’t believe she makes time.”
“She saved my life today.”
“Did she? Well, she’s invited to Thanksgiving.”
They lapsed into silence, gently swaying on the swing in the cold night air. Matt’s mother turned to him.
“Matty,” she told him, “I am so, so sorry you’ve gone through all this. I am so, so sorry about your home.” And in the darkness Matt’s reserve crumpled, and he folded into his mother’s arms, and she held his head and stroked his hair as he sobbed, quiet tears running down his face.
Eventually, Matt hiccupped, wiped his cheeks on his sleeve and sat up.
“You’re not secretly- hic- secretly pleased?” he asked her, drying his eyes between sniffs, “Not happy I’m moving back in with you?”
“Pssh,” said Kathryn Callaghan, dismissing the idea with one hand, “My son’s nineteen, he’s saved the world and started college. I’d have to be crazy to want him home. No.” She shook her head. “You’ll always have a place here Matty, as long as you need. But you and I both know your wings are a bit too big now.”
“Yeah,” Matt chuckled, half a laugh, half a sniff.
“Besides,” his mother continued, “Any child of mine who can consistently lie to me for five years deserves their own apartment.”
“Oh come on. You said you weren’t still mad about that.”
“I was never mad,” she countered, sounding only a touch resentful, “I was impressed. Show’s you’re my son at the very least. Your father couldn’t lie about what tie he was wearing.”
Again Matt laughed. And again, before too long the laughter faded, and silence took over, and both parent and child found themselves sitting quietly side by side, gazing out at the starlit world.
“Mom?” Matt finally asked.
“Yes Matt.”
“Are you going to be okay if I die?”
In a way, he’d expected wrath or hysterics – for his mother to angrily demand how he could even suggest such a foolish notion or descend into tears at the very thought. But deep down, he knew her better than that. He knew his family.
“Oh Matty,” his Mom whispered, and she turned to him, her weak smile brimming through silver tears, “When you die, a piece of my soul will die with you, and nothing will ever be the same.”
Her gaze wandered back towards the manor, and in the glow of the porch and the moonlight sorrow wrapped and swayed around her voice. “When the Legion first picked you,” she said, “God, it feels like a lifetime. But when these people at this place first picked you, God I was so scared. I was certain I was going to lose you. That you’d be killed, swept up. My baby boy.” She tilted her head back and stared up at the stars. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop you, I dared not, what kind of mother… yet the world was so big and you were so small, and every day I was certain, ‘this is it, this is the day they bring home a coffin’.” She sniffed. “So, I did the only thing I could. I spent the first three months while you were away finding every piece of you I had with me – every photo, every school report, every fingerpainting, all those pointless awards and participation ribbons and scraps of homework we’d kept laying around. And I brought them all together. And I put them all in order. Bit by bit.”
His mother let out a quavering sigh. “It took me months,” she admitted, “Months and months and months, but now I have a scrapbook, this big, blue scrapbook of every moment, every memory, every piece of you I ever had. It made me feel like such a lame old lady, but I did it anyway. And I keep adding to it. Oh yes,” she told him, “Every day. Anytime there’s anything in the newspaper. Some of my friends keep their eyes open for me. Plus your grandma. She always had an eye for scrapbooking.”
“Every piece of that book,” his mother continued, “Is a sign that you were here. Is your life made real, is memories I can look at and bring surging back like they were never forgotten. And I want it to keep going. I want you to live for a hundred years, to do everything conceivable, so by the time you die that book could fill a library. But if your time ends tomorrow, then it’ll still be there, and I can look back at it when I miss you, and remember how you were, and the joy it was to be in your life.” She turned and cupped his head in her hands. “Don’t be afraid of death. Not for you, not for what it’ll do to me. The worst thing you could do, the absolute worst thing, is to let the pages of that book grow empty. Because right now they’re bursting, and that fills me with so much love.”
In the moonlit night, Matt’s mother faced him. “What am I going to do if you die? I’m going to keep living. I’m going to cry a lot, and I’m going to eat, and I’m going to wish every moment you were there. And I’m going to read this book, every day you’re not with me, and you will live again in my memories, because no amount of silence ever stole a second of song.”
“When that day comes,” she told him, taking both of his hands, tears flowing in rivers down her cheeks to a warm, defiant smile, “Should it ever come, and may it never, but if it does. When that day comes we’ll stand over you, and we’ll paint your coffin in every colour, and we’ll sing and we’ll cry and we’ll tell stupid effing stories. And we will adorn you in light and flowers, and wave to Death when he takes you, and say to him: ‘that’s our boy – you be gentle now’.”
“And then,” Kathryn Callaghan said finally, and though her voice broke she held her chin up high, “Then your father and I will leave, and we will search, and we will keep searching, if it takes us to the Earth’s end, til we are old and grey and broken – and with your ashes on our hands we will find the one who killed you, and we will boil them alive.”