“How can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked.
Shane looked around the sterile lobby with plain chairs and a counter that was protected by bulletproof glass. He felt as if he were in a prison facility, but then, that’s essentially what it was. This was a place for criminals — like his mother.
“We’re here to see Betty Grayson,” Shane said, and Lia realized she’d never heard his mother’s name before. Shane didn’t refer to his parents by name, but only as the people who had created him. It was a distinction he made to remove himself from them further than he had when he left their house for the last time.
“One moment, please,” the clerk said, not showing a reaction as he looked in the computer. “And how do you know Ms. Grayson?”
Shane was quiet for a moment before finally speaking. “She’s the woman who gave birth to me,” he finally said. It would be too much for him to say she was his mother.
“Your name?” The man didn’t even blink at Shane’s choice of words.
“Shane Grayson, and this is Lia Palazzo.”
After a little more typing, the man looked back up. “I need your IDs, please.”
Shane and Lia passed them through a small dipped opening and then waited a while longer. Shane was hoping they would be turned away. Then he could honestly say that he’d tried but there was nothing he could do.
Of course, with his clearance, he could get in to see her if he truly wanted to, but Lia didn’t know that. Yet.
After a few moments, the man handed them each a visitor’s badge, then buzzed open a door next to the counter. “Go through to the left, and wait at the door there.”
Shane sighed in resignation.
Shane and Lia walked through, then waited for another door to be buzzed open for them. Another staff member led them through a maze of hallways.
“If you’ll wait here, we’ll bring Ms. Grayson in to visit with you,” the aide said before leaving them in a plain room with four chairs, a table, and nothing else.
After they sat there for several tense moments, the door opened again, and Lia had to fight a gasp when a woman was brought in. Stringy hair hung down, covering half her face and her reed thin body, wasted body was the picture of unhealthiness. But what shocked Lia the most was the vacant look in her black eyes — the same eyes as Shane had.
Dark, unhealthy circles adorned the area beneath her eyes, and her lips were just lax; there was no expression in her features. Her eyes traveled over both Shane and Lia with a complete lack of interest.
The aide led her to the chair across from them, and she and Shane locked gazes. He was surprised to feel pity for this tiny woman. He thought he would always have her image burned into his brain, but it had been nearly twenty years since he’d last seen her, and if he had passed her on the street, he wouldn’t have recognized her.
He noticed that her eyes were the same color as his, but that’s where the similarities ended. She looked washed out and vacant, her body just an empty vessel for a lost soul.
“Hello, Betty,” he finally said, and she turned her head and she assessed him, a spark of something entering her eyes for only the briefest of moments.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, his voice quiet, not harsh but not friendly.
She didn’t do anything for several moments, then gave the slightest nod, so tiny a movement that if they hadn’t been watching her steadily, they would have missed it.
Then she turned to look at Lia, and her eyes were puzzled for a moment, but quickly went vacant again as she turned back toward Shane.
“Do you talk?” he asked.
“Not much,” she whispered.
Lia tensed at the childlike sound of her voice. This woman, who had caused so much trauma and pain for Shane, was clearly gone. Lia felt that some people who were locked up in mental facilities instead of prisons got off easy — got a free ride. This wasn’t the case for Shane’s mother. She was clearly in the right place.
“I didn’t want to come today,” Shane told her, again keeping his voice neutral.
“Why did you?”
“Lia thought I needed to get some answers from you. I don’t think you can give me any,” he told her honestly.
“I was bad to you,” his mother said, looking right at him, her eyes unblinking, her hands motionless at her sides, as if they were just hanging there, useless limbs on an unused body.
At her words, Shane sat back in shock. Just the slightest tensing of his muscles betrayed his reaction, but Lia knew him enough now to know the words affected him.
“Yes you were,” he said.
“That man. He was a bad, bad man. I killed him. He had to die,” she went on, her eyes sparking for just a moment, but the emotion in them shocked both Shane and Lia. It was terror. Her hands twitched as if she was getting ready to move, but then she stilled again.
“Yes, you did. Why did you stay with him if he frightened you?” Shane asked, his body relaxing as he leaned slightly forward.
“Nowhere to go. My daddy said I was a naughty girl and I deserved to be with him. I was a sinner, a sinner! I deserved to burn in hell! A sinner!” she screamed as she looked at Shane, her hand suddenly shooting out and gripping his arm, her short nails digging into his flesh.
Lia didn’t know what to do. Shane stayed oddly calm while his mother’s fingers tightened around his flesh, her grip unyielding.
“No one deserves to be raped or beaten, Betty. No one deserves to go through the pain either of us went through,” he told her, his voice still calm even with her growing hysteria.
“Hank hurt me so much. Hurt me all the time. He laid on me, pushed in me, hurt me. Then you were there. My belly grew with you, bigger and bigger. He told me I was bad. I was a slut. His slut. He was mad that you was in there, in the way of his grunts and groans. He hurt me.”
“You hated me,” Shane said. Still no inflection in his tone as he looked in her crazy, lost eyes.
“Yes, I hated you. I hated him being inside me so long. So long. He was inside me for too long. I thought it would stop, thought he would leave me, but then you were there, and then you came out, and he hated you, too.”
Betty spoke with childlike honesty, her words tearing Lia’s heart in two. She’d been so wrong to ask Shane to come here, so very wrong.
“Why didn’t you give me up for adoption? Why not let someone else raise me if you didn’t want me?” This was the one thing that Shane needed to know.
Betty looked at him in surprise and thought about the question. Maybe the idea had never crossed her mind. Maybe no one had told her that was an option.