Understanding,and yet not, for Benny had never experienced something so world-changing as Zachariah had, Benny nodded along to his brother’s spoken plans. They sounded like good plans, like rational plans. The sort of plans that were grounded in the reality of what any one man could do, or could achieve. To find the knots. To untangle them, methodically, bit by bit by bit. To slowly unravel the chain, and see, in the end, whether it was worth keeping. Benny thought it sounded more than worth it, he thought it sounded necessary. He let a smile onto his face, one which was encouraging, one which was true. “Of course,” he said, with a certainly he wasn’t sure he felt. “And I’ll be here, you know. If you need some soap or butter, to help things along, or just someone to… someone.” He gave a little shrug. Someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to look to for advice when it came to not fitting in, someone who wanted to know him, the real him, just as much as he himself.
“Does it matter, where it came from?” Benny prompted, tilting his head to try and catch his brother’s eye. “Not that- not that I mean your feelings aren’t important. I just mean, we still have the memories. You still spent the time with us. You still love us.” Intensely, something that Zachariah admitted with a rawness within his voice, and an honesty that caught on Benny’s heartstrings like a broken nail on a woollen jumper. “Isn’t that what counts?”
Really, it should have been what counted. Not the initial reason behind the action, but the result of it. Did it matter if someone donated to a charity only to look good in front of their peers, if it meant that a hungry child was fed as a result of their vanity? Did it matter if Zachariah had tried so hard to bond with his siblings to undermine his feelings of isolation and difference, if the result was their love for one another, which went well beyond blood? Went beyond appearance? Went beyond any perceived lack of this or that or-
Shocked, surprised, Benny swallowed dry and choked on his own tonsils.
“Um-” he spluttered, wordless, though he very much doubted he needed to voice that Zachariah had been right in his assumption. Benny reckoned that it was clear in the panic upon his face, in the sudden red flush over his cheeks and ears, in the pound of his heart, so loud and wild it was less human and more animal. Yes, Benny loved Valentin. His stomach clenched. His mouth gaped. “It- He- I-” A breath, deep and shuddering. Benny gathered himself, found strength in the reminder that moments ago Zachariah had promised not to change him. “It’s new. Don’t- Don’t say anything, tell anyone. Please?” What had started out as a firm attempt at a command withered into a meek beg at its end. “I’m not to tell anyone. We have to be- safe.” Safe. Secret. Quiet. And yet Zachariah had guessed, without even seeing the two of them together? Was it the luggage in Benny’s room? Was it Valentin’s soap-clean scent on the pillow case and the bedsheets? Was it just the glow of love in Benny’s cheeks, the sort of domestic honeymoon happiness that painted newlyweds, newly founds, in peaches and pinks for the world to see? Benny placed a hand on his burning cheek, as if to hide it.
Thankfully, issues of their mother rearrose, and though Benny felt guilty to admit it, he felt relief in burrowing into Zachariah’s identity and not his own. With steadily cooling nerves and waning embarrassment, he listened. Listened to the story their mother had told Zachariah, about a man who didn’t take responsibility, about the doctor who did, and all the things inbetween. It sounded almost impossible. It sounded almost ridiculous. Their mother, Mrs Forester, the pious woman, the firm woman, the faultless woman, and a child born out of wedlock, and a turning away from filial responsibility, and the adoption of a new life? Surely not. And yet Zachariah said it all with the same certainty with which he had broken the revelation only minutes earlier, leaving no space for any doubt to nestle and make a home. In the silence that followed, each fragment of hesitancy was crushed, one by one, until Benny could only sit, dumbly, and accept that his mother was not the woman he had always thought her to be. She was something, someone deeper, and darker, and far more complex.
Benny couldn’t imagine the way it must have hurt Zachariah to hear those things. It hurt him, it hurt Benny, and he wasn’t even the result of that love. It hurt him, and he wasn’t even the target of her blanket anger. How could she believe that, when their father – his father? – had been so very lovely? Had been so kind? When none of her sons had harmed a woman, only ever been harmed by them in the case of Zachariah? Benny’s brow was twisted with confusion, wretched and tense.
“But that’s ridiculous, I mean look at us, we haven’t…” he began to protest, shaking his head mostly to himself. He sighed, hung his head, and made a soft sound of agreement and acknowledgement as his brother mentioned their mother’s hands-off approach to her children’s marital affairs. Then he let out a sound less of agreement and more of sympathy and pain for their youngest sister. Out of the corner of his eye, Zachariah shifted, moved, and looked towards him. Benny raised his head, and looked back, meeting eyes which clearly churned with query and theory.
“What?” he asked softly, unaware of what had caused his older brother to fall silent, nor to look so perturbed. He ran through what had just been said for a clue. “What?” he repeated, a little more urgently, before his mind waved a tiny, miniscule red flag. His brow changed from crumpled to raised. “Well, happy maybe, relieved, but not- You can’t be thinking that mummy had anything to do with what happened, can you?” he asked, almost laughing a little with some sort of desperate disbelief. Their mother, intervene? Their mother, shoot a rifle? Their mother, a killer? Surely not. Please. Surely not.
Zachariah laughed lightly at Benny's joke, though he knew it was meant earnestly. The truth was he was sure Benny would help just by being Benny. It was a relief to have someone to share the burden with, someone who was not pained by his very existence, someone who did not care who or why he was. Someone who was always willing to believe the very best in him. He ducked his head.
"I think it does matter. A little. To me at least." He was not reprimanding. He was grateful for Benny's overwhelming insistence that it didn't matter. "I think I've realized that you can't love someone the way they deserve if you're eternally scared of losing them." To love out of fear was a very different thing than to love out of joy. He had tainted this relationship with his insecurity, it was a good thing if Benny and his siblings hadn't felt its effects, but he had. "Luckily, I don't think it's too late to change." He smiled a little then with the resolve.
A smile that only grew with Benny's flustered speech. He wouldn't have been too shocked to learn that Benny and Valentin had been sneaking around behind closed doors for years, but to hear that it was new was some relief. It meant there weren't yet more secrets keeping them apart. "I wouldn't do anything that put you in danger. I won't breathe a word." He cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly. He tried to think what he might say if he'd just discovered Benny had a girl here instead. "I've always liked Valentin, he's a good chap, and if you- if he makes you happy, then I am glad you have each other."
Benny took the story well, perhaps better than he had. He wanted to agree with Benny's protest, but inside there was the fear that he only proved their mother's beliefs. He had been self-serving, and cold, he had denounced love and played with hearts. Perhaps not to the extent of Irving, but he suspected now that these, if anything, were the qualities his biological father had passed on. He'd always felt like there was something about Earnest Forester that he didn't have, the innate selflessness, the compassion, the kindness. For all his imitation, he had only produced shadows of these traits, selfishness disguised by seemingly selfless acts. He could hope it wasn't too late to learn, but perhaps he could not blame their mother entirely for her convictions.
However, understanding where they originated was not the same as condoning what they might have led to. Seeing Benny's confusion and complete denial made Zachariah realise how drastic the suspicions sounded, even whilst they remained inside his own mind. "No, no you're right. It's silly." He agreed hastily, almost embarrassed for even thinking such a thing. But... "Sissy has always been adamant there was an element of foul play though." One of the reasons it hadn't been investigated any further than it was, was because nobody seemed to have any motive for killing him. Perhaps the St Maur girls stood to benefit if they could find husbands and make heirs quick enough, but none of them could have done it. Sissy didn't have any other serious admirers who might have done it out of jealousy. If they'd uncovered a motive... perhaps they'd uncovered a murderer. "But you're right, it's a ridiculous notion. Besides, she was busy that day, wasn't she?" He couldn't quite bring himself to say the word alibi.
