The Merry Men Masquerade

8. Reason #1

"Kids causing trouble . . . Sam's fixin' to quit! . . . goddamn leeches . . . told Ronan yet?"

Ronan was perched on the edge of the bed in an instant. He leaned as far off as he could, not daring to try his luck crossing the creaky floorboards.

He had to strain for bits and pieces of Wendy's hissed response. "-doesn't need to know . . . better off."

Millie's next words were soft but edged, gently scolding. "He deserves to know, Wendy."

"It's for his own good."

"His, or yours? You worried how he'll react 'f he sees the Dumases are-"

"Are what?" Wendy rarely ever raised her voice. "Heartless, good for nothin''goddamn leeches?' You're not gonna tell me how to care for my own son, swear to god."

"He'll resent you," Millie said. "When he finds out."

"'When?'" Wendy echoed. "Is that a threat?"

"Wha-fuck's sake, don't be so dramatic."

"It ain't dramatic that I wanna protect my boy!" Wendy seethed. She seemed to notice her own volume, because there was a beat of silence, then one last string of words Ronan could barely make out. "His pa didn't want him- didn't want either of us. What's the use in disappointin' him? God knows I've done well enough at that myself."

The truth settled like an anvil in Ronan's throat, and he struggled to catch his breath.

Millie changed the subject after that. Ronan didn't catch a single word.

He had wondered about his father, occasionally and wistfully, on the days Wendy worked too long to make him dinner, or the days she drank so much she missed work and dinner. He wondered when he heard her vomiting in the street and when he had to help her up the stairs, when there was so little coin on the counter that only one of them got to eat, and he fell asleep to the sound of her stomach growling.

He had thought, even through all of that, that he was alright without a father, because as unsteady as she was, Wendy had never failed at loving him.

But she had never lied to him, either.

Millie's voice disappeared behind the front door long before Wendy finally came upstairs. Ronan feigned sleep as she pushed the hair from his face, and though he'd long-since grown accustomed to the smell of liquor, tonight he had to resist the urge to flinch as she pressed a kiss to his forehead.

She sat awake for some time, playing gently with Ronan's hair. She had always paid a bit more love to his white patch, always told him it was so pretty. Ronan had keened every time, at the attention and at the way the word pretty sounded directed at him.

Now, he squirmed, just enough that she pulled her hand back for fear of stirring him. She fell asleep eventually, but Ronan didn't.

He was out of the house before dawn the next morning. He didn't bother picking around carefully; after a night like the last, Wendy wouldn't wake until the sun forced her.

Mr. Hughes was already hard at work when Ronan reached the locksmith's, and he didn't do more than raise an eyebrow at Ronan's early arrival.

He did pause when, an hour later, Ronan blurted from beside him, "D'yknow the Dumases?"

Mr. Hughes lowered the magnifying glass he held over the mechanism of a tumbler lock. "That's what's on your mind? This is your favorite part and you're not even watching."

"Do you?" Ronan asked again, rudely, but Mr. Hughes either noticed his agitation or wasn't fazed either way. He straightened from his deep bend over his work table, though not by much - Ronan doubted he'd been alive the last time the man had stood fully upright.