HIDING - every scar has a story

2. Promise.

{Cary}

Cary slid down low in the leather backseat, wishing for the thousandth time he could make himself invisible. His mother turned in the passenger seat, smiling. "How was your day, sweetie?"

He saw his father's eyes on him in the rearview mirror and ducked his head to hide his face. "Fine." He played with the volume on the iPod in his jacket pocket until he could just make out her words, bubbling along the top of the roar of his music.

"Ciaran, your mother asked you a question." His father's voice punched through, and Cary flicked the earbuds out of his ears. and let them drop down the collar of his jacket. His mother was looking over her shoulder at him, still smiling brightly.

"The homework is in my backpack," Cary said. "I'm doing the reading tonight."

"What are you reading?" His father's eyes found him again, and Cary held still, his hands closing beside his legs.
"Hatchet."

"The same book you've been working on since the beginning of the year?"

"The words get jumbled," Cary muttered, and then wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

His father snorted. "Don't blame the words, boy. It's your mind that makes them jumbled. Come to my study after dinner. Bring your novel. We'll see if I can straighten out those unruly words."

Cary's ears rang faintly and he swallowed. "Yes Father." On a good day, he could make it from supper to bedtime without giving his father a reason to notice or speak to him. Today was not going to be a good day. Cary turned his face to the window, catching the rays of the setting sun slicing between the buildings. He pressed one earbud back into his ear so the screams of his music would drown out the noise in his own head.

His father disappeared into his study when they got home. His mother made a face at Cary in the hall. "Cary, that awful jacket."

"You never told me he was coming to pick me up," Cary said. He jerked it off, stuffing it in the back of the closet. It was useless protection here anyways.

His mother followed him to the kitchen, hefting herself onto a stool at the island counter while he washed his hands. The cut of her stylish clothes could no longer conceal the swollen curves of her pregnant body. "We went to the ultrasound appointment together." He could hear the smile in her voice without turning to look. "You should have seen you father's face when they told us it's a boy."

Cary shut off the tap, hard. "What do you want me to make for supper?"

She tipped her head, tapping one manicured fingernail on the counter-top. "Aren't you excited about having a brother?"

"Sure, it's fine." He took out a package of chicken breasts out of the fridge, his fingers sticking to the chilled plastic. "I'm fine."

Her smile returned and she nestled her hand around the curve of her belly. "Good."

Cary set the pan on the stovetop and dropped olive oil onto its gleaming surface to heat. He'd learned to lie from her, she was the best. Either he'd gotten so good at it that she couldn't tell he was lying anymore, or she just didn't care to look.

"Everything is going to be different when the baby comes," she said. Her face had softened as she watched him. "Everything will be better. Your father has never been so happy, Cary. He always wanted to have another child, and so did I. I was hoping for a little girl, but the ultrasound definitely showed a boy. A son for your father to love."

Cary dropped the chicken breasts into the pan with a 'hiss' and the smell of olive oil and garlic filled the kitchen. His shoulders were braced while her words fell like blows. A son for your father to love. With his jacket off, the scars on his wrists were plain on his skin, running over the bones of his wrists that had been broken. "How many weeks left?" He asked.

"Four. You could meet your brother any day now."

He took a mouthful of the fragrant smell of the chicken and swallowed back nausea. In the sizzle and the sound of the overhead fan he missed his mother crossing the kitchen until she wrapped her hand around the bare skin just below his shirt sleeve. The muscles in his arm jumped with tension.

"Ciaran?" His mother's voice was soft and strange. "Your brother is going to need you. I need you. You know that, right?"

He looked in her face. She was smiling uncertainly. "I know that," he said roughly.

Fear shadowed her wide grey eyes and her hand tightened on his arm. "You can't run away again. You can't leave me."

He looked away, his face heating to tell the truth the way it never did when he lied. "I promised already. I won't leave."

He heard her relieved sigh and she put her arm around his shoulders to hug him for a second. She said she loved him. He used the wooden spatula to push the chicken over onto their raw pink sides. That word didn't mean anything to him.

*Why do you think that word 'love' doesn't mean anything to Cary coming from his mom?*

892 words.