Discovering Mum

Discovering Mum.

Foreword.

Everyone in this story is over the legal age of consent. That doesn't mean that all of the actions in this story are legal, but they are all consenting adults. This is a work of fiction in every sense and should not be taken as a retelling of actual events.

This is the story of how a mother and a son found solace with each other during a series of terrible events. The trust and friendship that they developed rapidly became the catalyst for a new life. A life where they could be true to themselves. They discover a love for each other, as well as a renewed love for family, and friends. Ultimately it becomes a story about the redefining of what is love and what is family.

This story was originally going to be a short story covering their initial road trip only. However, as I was writing it the characters kept insisting that they had more story and life in them. I felt that it was an injustice to make them shallow, so I had to write more. The more I wrote about them and the more I got to know them, the more I wanted to know. Before I knew what was happening they had hijacked my story and I accidentally wrote a novel.

This is a long story and not every chapter is loaded with action and sexuality. If this isn't your thing, I understand and I hope you find something more to your liking within my other stories. To those of you who do like a bit more depth, I hope it offers you what you are looking for. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it and bringing these characters to life.

I have used certain tags in all of the chapters because that is what the story covers but the things represented in those tags may not be in every chapter.

Please let me know your honest thoughts and opinions in the comments section, I really do value them.

Thanks.

Chapter One: The Fucking Long Year.

It had been a fucking long year. I mean, one of those shit years where you seem to be stumbling from one blow to the next in a state of shock. There wasn't time to recover from one horror before stumbling into the next epic shit show. Leaving barely enough time for us to react, let alone process.

Considering everything that happened, one of the biggest shocks for me, and most unexpected considering the circumstances, was the fact that I had managed to finish my schooling and pass. Considering my grades throughout my entire school career, I don't know who was more surprised, my teachers or myself.

The year started with my brother, normally a level-headed and likeable guy, going completely off the rails. He had gone to a party with his mates and, on a whim, had tried some kind of drug. He was drunk at the time, pressured by so-called friends, and I think he did it thinking it would be a funny tale to tell; however, it rapidly spiralled into a horrendous addiction. He went from being the fun but smart guy with a heart of gold to being that guy who would do anything to make money for drugs.

Within six months of that party, he was arrested and ended up in prison for his involvement in an armed robbery while completely off his brain. It was hard to believe that all of this happened in the space of months. He had hidden it from Mum and Dad reasonably well to begin with. Although I knew things weren't going as well as normal and his friend group changed drastically, it was still quite unexpected, to say the least.

He had always been a great student who, annoyingly, found school to be relatively easy as well as being a nice and caring guy. He was always the popular kid without being the ego-driven jock that many of the popular kids were. He befriended pretty much everyone he met, and he didn't care all that much for social hierarchies. Why he self-destructed so spectacularly, we still don't really understand and probably never will.

The school year was coming to an end, and he had done enough throughout the year to barely scrape a pass, although his grades had taken a nosedive in the second half of the year. With his schooling finished, he had previously planned on taking a few months break before going out to start full-time work. He had told us that his boss, the town mechanic, had offered him an apprenticeship that he was due to start at the end of January. It turned out, though, that his boss had fired him about a month before him telling us that, due to catching him stealing from the business. He put on a show of leaving for work in the morning, but he was just going out with his new friends to score.

By this time, we knew something wasn't right, but we didn't know exactly what. Peter and I used to be close, and we would always make plans for the summer break, but this year there had been none of that. He had begun being secretive, suspicious, and keeping to himself. It was the first of December, the first day of summer here in Australia, when he was arrested and the rest of the family went into their own downward spiral.

Almost all of December was taken up with police interviews, and lawyers. The court case began early February and by that time the cracks were starting to show in my parents' psyches, as well as their relationship. They were incredibly stressed, both mentally and financially. They were both upset and angry, and they were just not listening to each other. It didn't really come as a big surprise when Dad started coming home later from work and drinking every night.

Not long after that, he started sleeping on the couch, and Mum withdrew further into herself. I was the meat in a particularly shit sandwich. Dad and I had never really seen eye to eye but I tried to talk to him anyway. All he wanted to do, though, was bitch about Mum and try and point the blame at anyone and everyone else for what happened to my brother. He just refused to accept that what happened was a result of Peter's own decisions and actions, even after Peter himself told him exactly that. He just refused to accept that Peter had done any of this willingly.

I tried to talk to Mum and occasionally I could get her talking. The problem was that she would start to say how she was feeling about things, realise who she was talking to, and then clam up, not wanting to burden me with what she saw as her problem to deal with. I know she was trying to protect me from the worst of it, but it didn't really work that way.

Eventually I convinced her that she needed to talk to someone and that I was willing to listen, as well as having my own need to talk about it. She tried to open up to me a couple of times after that, but it was like Dad was just waiting for us to start talking and he would walk into the room just staring at us as though accusing us of conspiring against him or Peter.

Most of the time, when she wasn't at work, Mum just stayed in her room, avoiding my Dad, avoiding me, but most of all, avoiding life. I felt like I was becoming more and more distant from each of them as time went by. My Eighteenth birthday came and went with the barest of acknowledgements because it was right at the start of the court case and their focus was firmly on Peter at this point.

It's not how I saw my life panning out but I figured that at eighteen I was at an age where I should become more independent. Perhaps it was time to quit school and get a full-time job. There was nothing I would have liked more than to move out of that toxic environment. Every time I thought about doing it, though, I realised that I would be abandoning not just my final year of education but also my parents, leaving them to deal with this all on their own.

Maybe that was what they needed, but by now I felt like I was the only buffer between them, and I really didn't want to watch them implode. It's with no small amount of irony when I look back that I didn't want it to be my fault if they did, and I felt that moving out would take away the only pressure release either of them had.

Dad just seemed so angry all the time and was more often than not drunk or on his way to it, when he bothered to come home at all. He seemed to be focusing his rage on Mum and I most of the time now, and he had said a few times that it was just easier to stay at work or with his pub mates because it was less stressful than coming home.

Mum was so sad all the time that she had gone beyond sadness and into a kind of desperate, empty hole. She looked strangely hollow. She had lost weight, not that she was ever particularly big anyway. She had always been a healthy size for as long as I can remember. She was certainly not built like an athlete or a waif, but she wasn't overweight either. She had always had just enough weight to lend her a softness that I found quite appealing. Something that I was attracted to in other girls all along.

These days, however, her cheeks had started to look a little hollowed, her skin was pale, and she had dark circles appearing beneath her eyes. Mostly, she just looked tired, and her clothes seemed to hang on her more than they had in the past, lending her an almost shapeless look. Her shoulders became hunched in, and she looked to me like she was trying to just disappear.

As February went into March, Peter's trial came around. There was so much focus on it from my parents that I had all but ceased to exist. I found myself doing better at school because it gave me something to focus on, and it suddenly seemed more important to get it right. I wasn't going out with friends or anything like that because partying had lost its sense of adventure and excitement for me. I stopped pursuing girls at school, not that I was much of a ladies man anyway, but they seemed suddenly childish and petty. Not that I lost interest all together in women, just the petty bullshit surrounding the ones I knew.

The trial didn't go well at all for Peter. The reality is that it was never going to. He was honest and owned up to everything he had done; he didn't try to mitigate it with excuses or deflect any of it with lies. Having been locked up for a while he had not had any drugs and now that he could think a little clearer he was genuinely sickened by his own actions and wanted to get on with becoming clean and making amends.

Although his honesty and ownership of what he did held him in good stead with the judge, it didn't alter the fact that he had committed these crimes, and because the robbery was an armed one, the judge had to impose a strict penalty.

When the judge announced what his term would be, there was a mixed response all around. The people against whom he had committed the crimes felt vindicated, and it was obvious they were glad that he was going to be locked up. For us, though, it hit a bit different. I can just remember feeling numb.

Five years seemed like an eternity to me. That was a quarter of the life he had already lived. Mum was devastated and cried like I had never seen her cry before. Dad wasn't sad though, he was just furious. He was shaking with rage, and I genuinely think the only reason he didn't lash out and strike at someone in that moment was because he couldn't decide where to direct his rage. The judge? The Jury? The prosecutor? The lawyer who he felt had obviously failed Peter? Peter's friends who had helped get him into this situation?

Weirdly, he never considered pointing that indignation at Peter, who, by his own volition, was as guilty as could be. He just couldn't accept that his first-born son, the boy who looked so much like him, wasn't perfect.

It was hurtful to know that I was always the second rate son. Something I had always known on some level, but it was becoming more and more apparent every day and he seemed to give up any pretence of this fact.

By the time March was almost over, things were very fragile at home. That's when Mum got a phone call from her mother to say that she was terminally ill with cancer. It was completely unexpected and just one more shock for my Mum. As I said earlier, the kicks just kept coming.