“In the spirit of this open discussion you seek,” Ronan straightened his shoulders and raised his chin, “I have a question to ask and I’d like an honest answer.” He and Oisín had whispered about this for years. Did he really want to know? He was only going to make things worse by opening a can of worms. But, faced with this new mother – this stranger wearing his mother’s face – he seemed incapable of censoring his own words.
Finn waited, aware of Oisín moving to stand at his brother’s shoulder.
“I have to know – is Rolf my biological father?” Ronan stared at his mother, watching the colour drain from her face.
“What?” She seemed to sway.
Oisín was afraid she was going to faint. He reached out to grab her elbow.
“I think you heard me, Mother,” Ronan said. His mother might look pathetic but he’d come too far now to back down. “I asked if Rolf, your adored Uncle Rolf, the man you are running to – is that man my biological father?”
“Where in the name of God did that rubbish come from?” Finn could only stare. The two squirmed but said nothing.
“Let me see if I have this straight.” She pushed her fingers through what little hair she had. “You both believe I married your father then immediately turned around and had an affair. I gave birth to this other man’s baby and passed that child off as belonging to Patrick Brennan. Have I got my facts right?”
“That’s not what I said,” Ronan objected. It sounded a lot worse when you put it like that.
“That is most certainly what you implied, young man.” Finn wasn’t willing to let him off the hook.
“I didn’t really think about that part of it.” Ronan’s shoulders were up around his burning red ears. The thought of his mother having sex with anyone was obscene. It didn’t matter who it was, it wasn’t something he was comfortable thinking about.
“For your information, Patrick Brennan is the only man I’ve ever been intimate with. He has the singular honour of being sire to both of you. Is that understood? I trust you don’t need an explanation of the workings of sexual intimacy?” Finn blew air through her lips, fluttering the red hair on her forehead.
“How do you explain Ronan’s uncanny resemblance to Rolf then?” Oisín jumped in to support his bro. ‘If you look at old pictures of Rolf you can see the resemblance. Except for the clothes you could be looking at Ronan. If there is no blood connection between them,” he wasn’t going to let the subject drop now they had come this far, “how come Ronan looks as if Rolf spat him?”
He and Ronan had spent years staring at old black-and-white photos they’d found of his mother’s Uncle Rolf. Ronan was convinced Patrick Brennan was not his biological father and his feeling of guilt about – and gratitude to – a man he believed raised a child that wasn’t his was ruining his life.
“I’ve always thought Ronan was a carbon copy of Patrick.” Finn was shocked to her toes by the direction of this conversation. “When did the two of you decide that I was a slut and had been lying through my teeth for years?”
“We didn’t really think of it as you lying, exactly,” Oisín replied for both of them. “It’s just that you never seemed to mind when Father played around. You turned a blind eye and said nothing. We figured it was because you played away first.”
“Charming, that is absolutely a delightful way of looking at your mother!” Finn reminded herself she couldn’t box their ears. “I repeat, Patrick Brennan is the only man I have ever been intimate with. I have never ‘played away’ as you so delicately put it. I did mind – very much – when Patrick broke his marriage vows.” How was a woman supposed to discuss something of that nature with her sons? They’d been toddlers the first time she’d learned Patrick had betrayed her. She’d been reeling, sick with grief, crippled by the bruising shock. When she confronted Patrick, he cried in her arms. He swore to her it would never happen again.
“What did you two expect me to do? Discuss the matter with you? Tell you how I felt about your father’s infidelities? You were children. I thought I was protecting you.”
“Talking to us, telling us how you were feeling might have helped us understand what was going on around here,” Ronan said.
“You were babies the first time – protecting you both was all I could think about.” Was there a manual somewhere that explained what to do when your sons looked at you with disappointment in their eyes. Oisín’s sad green eyes – her father’s eyes – hurt.
“Look, can we take a break?” Ronan felt wrung out emotionally – the elephant in the room had finally been exposed.
“I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” Finn pushed her chair back.
“Coffee?” they said together.
“Not tea?” said Ronan. “The world has come to an end.”
With their slightly strained laughter ringing in her ears Finn went to make a pot of coffee.
“So you two believed Rolf was Ronan’s father?” Finn asked after serving coffee and cake. She had a hard time accepting her boys thought she’d had an affair with Rolf. Lord, it was incestuous.
“Yeah.” Oisín buried his face in his coffee mug.
“Mum, do you have any idea how many times we saw our grandfather when we were growing up?” Ronan asked. “The visits to exciting places to see him stopped completely before we were teenagers.”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“We didn’t get to see Emmet very much, or spend much time with him, did we? But it seemed to us that Rolf was always around when we went to visit him. We thought it was to give Rolf a chance to see Ronan.”
“Go on,” Finn prompted.
“Well, no one ever thought of explaining to us who he was. What he was doing in our family gatherings. Father never came with us, not once. We always went with you alone and when we returned from our holidays Father would be in a pig’s mood for days.” Ronan shrugged. “We thought we had it all figured out.”
Finn fought against the desire to laugh madly. She felt her lips twitch and resisted. She couldn’t go off into gales of laughter. It would hurt their feelings.
“How to put this delicately?” she said. “Rolf and your grandfather are lovers – life partners. They have been in a solid committed relationship for more than fifty years.”
Finn lost the battle then. She roared with laughter. The totally stunned look on their faces – it was priceless!
“No way!” they said together.
“Way! Right back at you, boys. If you want to comment you’d better come up with something better than that.”
Finn wiped the tears of mirth from her eyes. This was really priceless. She couldn’t wait to tell her fathers. They’d enjoy the humour of the situation. She couldn’t see the resemblance herself. How could the boys not see the likeness when they looked at Ronan and Patrick together?
“You can’t just leave it at that!” Oisín stared at his laughing mother as if he’d never seen her before. How could she tell them something like that and expect them to have no problem understanding?
“What do you want to know?” Finn really didn’t see what the problem was. Rolf had always been in her life. He was her ‘da-ma’, a father and mother combined. He was as much if not more of a parent to her than Emmet.
“Everything, anything. Jeez, I don’t know – you’ve sort of knocked our socks off. I never expected this answer, never!” Oisín was shaking his head.
“OK, your grandfather is gay, clear?” Finn waited for their nod before she continued. “Rolf and he are, in a sense, married. They have been for over fifty years.”
“There’s a surprise.” Ronan was reeling.
“Patrick is very uncomfortable with the entire situation and never wanted to be around my ‘fathers’. He fought exposing his delicate boys to the ‘den of iniquity’ that was my home life. His words – ‘den of iniquity’.”
“But you ... how did you ... what did they ...?”
Oisín obviously didn’t know quite how to phrase the question
but Finn understood. She’d been answering this question in some form or another most of her life.
“They paid some woman to agree to give birth to me,” she said softly, saving her sons further embarrassment. “It was illegal to be gay, you know. My father and Rolf have suffered all of their lives for being different. I know both you and Ronan studied the life of Oscar Wilde in school?”
Ronan nodded, feeling as if he’d fallen off the edge of the world. This was a lot stranger than his mother playing around. God, his grandfather was gay. That was going to take some getting used to.
“Do you know ... your mother?” he asked.
“We never really talked about it and honestly I never asked.” Finn shrugged. It was just a fact of her life.
“Give me a break! How on earth could you not talk about it?” Oisín was indignant on her behalf. What kind of life had she had, for god’s sake?
“I was very young when I married your father. I wasn’t much older than you are now, Oisín.” Finn hadn’t ever thought of the situation in these terms. Oisín was her son, her baby. He wasn’t ready for marriage! How had her father and Rolf allowed her to marry Patrick? They must have thought she’d lost her mind.
“How can you bear knowing nothing about your own mother?” Ronan was having a hard time accepting his mother’s acceptance of her unusual situation.
“I don’t think of the woman who gave birth to me as my mother.” Finn smiled at the look of horror on her sons’ faces. “The woman was paid a lot of money to have my father’s child. Rolf is my mother in every way that counts. That may be hard for you to understand but to me it’s how things have always been.”
Oisín put his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “It’s not exactly a picture-perfect family, is it?”
“It’s my life, the only one I knew. I was surrounded by love and laughter. How was I to know it wasn’t normal? What the hell is normal anyway? The life I had with your father?”
That silenced them. They concentrated on drinking coffee and eating cake – from time to time she’d catch them looking at her – they asked no more questions. She tried not to laugh – they were looking at her as if they had never seen her before.
Chapter 8
“Morning, Mum.” Oisín stepped into the kitchen, thrilled to smell coffee and cinnamon. He examined his mother from head to toe. It was going to be hard to get used to her new look. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you decked out in jeans before.” He bent and pressed a kiss into her cheek.
They had discussed her distress at the loss of their affectionate embraces last night. Oisín too had missed their closeness.
“That shirt looks familiar.” Ronan walked into the kitchen. He too pressed a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “Did Father get away?” He’d heard him return in the early hours of the morning.
“He left very early. He wanted the chance to rest up before going on air. You know your father likes to appear at his best at these outside broadcasts. It’s a chance for his listening public to see him.” He’d made enough noise coming into the bedroom but she’d pretended to be asleep. She’d heard enough insults out of him about the change in her appearance. “And, the clothes I’m wearing belong to you two.”
Finn felt she’d won the Lotto. Patrick would be away for weeks. Her sons were willing to try and change how they behaved. She wanted to dance around the kitchen.
“I could never bear to throw out anything belonging to you two. The shirt, jeans and sneakers came out of your old things that I had put to one side.”
“Well,” Oisín accepted a mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun with a wide smile, “they will never fit us again, Short Stuff.”
“I will have you know, young man, that I am considered tall for a woman.” She poured Ronan’s coffee. “I think Ronan wore these jeans when he was about thirteen.”
“What are you planning to do today, Mum?” Ronan asked when the batch of hot fresh buns had disappeared from the platter.
“Paperwork.” Finn was going to pull the office apart putting the history of her marriage together – as much as she could anyway. She wanted facts and figures at her fingertips before she started anything. Twenty-one years of marriage was a lot to give up, she was finding.
“Rather you than me.” Ronan began to push his chair back.
“Before you go –” Finn put her hand on his arm and stopped him from moving. She poured more coffee and waited until she had their attention. “I planned to discuss something with you two last night – but we got side-tracked by talk of my lurid past.”
“Ah, Mum!” the two objected and moved uneasily.
“I wanted to discuss the computer system we’ve had installed in the house.” She glanced from one to the other. “I was surprised when your father suggested it. He is not known as a computer person.” She waited to see if they would say anything.
They exchanged uneasy glances.
“Which of you put the idea in his head – and why?”
Oisín glared at his brother. Ronan could step up to the plate on this one. It had been his idea after all.
“I suggested the system.” Ronan swallowed visibly. “It’s cutting edge, Mum. I heard about it from one of the technicians visiting the studios. Computers are the way of the future. I paid for it too.”
“My God, son, the cost of that system ran into thousands – tens of thousands. Where did you get that kind of money?”
“We are not extras in the films and TV shows anymore, Mum,” Oisín jumped in. “I know you don’t watch much TV but your little boys, Mrs Brennan, are fast becoming sex symbols.”
“We can talk more about that later.” Finn used the flat of her hand to push gently at his face. “I’m delighted for you two if that’s what you want out of life. However, I want to know the true purpose behind that system.” She noticed them cringe. “I noticed your father lights up every screen in the house when he uses it.” She caught the guilty exchange of glances.
“Mum …” Ronan was almost in tears. How could he tell her that he’d put the system in place to spy on his own parents? He’d been heartily sick of what he saw as their cheating and lying. He’d never explained the perils of using the system to Patrick. He’d wanted to get back at them both for the mess he thought they’d made of his life. “I was fascinated by the concept – computers are the way of the future.”
“I don’t think so, son.” She’d spent a lot of time thinking about that computer system. “You were using the system to spy on this household. And you didn’t bother to explain the system completely to your father. That is why he records himself into the system memory every time he turns on the house system.” She made no mention of what she had discovered about Patrick on that system. She would make every effort to keep them both out of her upcoming battle with their father.
“Yes, I was so angry with both of you, with what I believed you were doing to this family, that I acted without thinking about the consequences,” Ronan said.
“And you were hoping to catch me in the act – so to speak.” She ignored their cringing. “You must have been bored out of your skulls watching me run around the house like a madwoman keeping order.”
“It was a surprise to see how hard you worked.” Ronan hoped they could leave it at that.
“Where do you go on Tuesday and Thursday evenings?” Oisín knew Ronan wanted to know. He didn’t care one way or the other.
She’d wondered if they would dare to question her. “I’ve been studying with my friend Paul. The man’s a genius with a blowtorch. I’ve been improving my welding skills, learning to turn metal – for my nutjobs.”
“Has he taught you to turn elbows and knees?” Ronan knew his mother had found bending the metal without breaking it difficult.
“He has.” Finn was thrilled they even thought about her little nutjobs.
“Good for you,” Oisín stood up, “and now we must get off.”
She walked to the door with her sons.
“That’s a good way t
o get mugged, missus,” Dare Lawrence said when the door opened before he could knock.
Finn and two young men stood in the hallway.
“What are you doing here?” Finn accepted the quick kisses and goodbyes from her sons. They stepped around her and her visitor, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the man standing on her doorstep.
“In the name of God, woman,” Dare felt his jaw drop, “what have you done to yourself?” He didn’t wait for a reply before stating, “You look fabulous.”
“Thank you.” Finn stood frozen in the open doorway. Her heart was fluttering in an unfamiliar fashion – her knees went weak – was this her first hot flush? “What brings you to my door?”
“What?” Dare felt blindsided – he’d thought she was attractive before but now she was breath-taking. “Oh, yes.” He pushed his fingers through hair longer than Finn’s now. “I have to return to the States. I’ve a lot to tie up before I can move.”
“Yes.” Finn didn’t see what that had to do with her.
“I wanted to try and buy some of your amazing steampunk artwork.” He could see the refusal on her lips. What was wrong with the woman? “I want to give them as gifts to friends in the States – people who helped me when Jane was sick.”
“I don’t sell my nutjobs.” Finn felt sick to her stomach at the thought of exposing her tinkering to others.
“Your what?”
“That’s what I call my tinkering.” She shrugged. “My nutjobs.”
“I love it,” Dare grinned. “Please, would you let me see what you have? I really want some.”
“On your own head be it.”
Finn had to take firm control of her nerves. She wanted to change her life. Here was a chance to prove she could, to herself if to no-one else. She never showed anyone her nutjobs. She stepped out of the house to join him on the front porch.
“Follow me.”
She led the way around the house to the back garden.
Dare tried not to laugh. You’d think she was heading for the guillotine.
Her Revolution Page 6
