Remus was twelve years old when his mother died. She’d been dying slowly for several years, their house tainted with the cold, hardening certainty of it. Hope stopped singing—she could hardly draw in enough breath to whisper an I love you. Sometimes, when Remus played some of her old favorites on the record player, she didn’t recognise them at all. Rarely did she have enough energy to get out to the porch.
Lyall changed, too. Hardened. He didn’t dance anymore, didn’t laugh, didn’t look at Remus for longer than a brief glance. He was irritable, angry with the world, and Remus confronting his father’s anger meant facing the real reason for it: that his mother was going to die. So, Remus learned silence, learned to hide in corners, learned all the best ways not to invoke his father’s rage.
Lyall hardened, Remus shrank, and all the while, Hope withered.
The death was long, dirty, brutal, drawn out to poison several years of Remus’ childhood. Selfishly, drunkenly, bitterly, Remus later found himself wishing it had happened quicker. Were the extra few years with his mother worth it, wrought with so much suffering? If the Lord had taken her sooner, wouldn’t that have given him more time to cope with it all, safe from the memory of her skeletal frame vomiting up blood? Would Lyall have found a way to love his son in spite of the loss, if he’d just had more time?
None of it mattered. Remus played the years over in his mind constantly, thought of ways it could have happened differently, or moments he could have loved her more. It made no change. She was still dead. He had still been twelve.