Pulse

Chapter 7

Cian

When I arrived home and the whole place smelled like apples, I was unsurprised. There was nothing my mother liked to do more than bake her sorrows away. I always joked that if she could knead her whole past into a batter and bake the damn thing, she would. My mother seemed alright on the outside, but ever since the accident, she'd been different. I mean, how could she not be? She couldn't even see her youngest son anymore; whenever Vinny said anything to her, it was through me, never directly from him to her.

I came into the kitchen and plopped myself down at the breakfast bar, leaning my chin into my hands. Mom was tapping away at the oven, her back to me. Light fixtures similar to spotlights shone down on me, illuminating the marble countertops and the stainless steel appliances, which the maids kept polished to a mirror-like shine. Our house was not small, and neither was it average. It had to be upscale, to keep the Horne family's good name up.

This was us: a happy, thriving family living the American dream on the outside, with strange secrets on the inside. We were forced to keep it that way.

My mother was afraid of imperfection.

"Cian," she said, turning around and dusting flour from her hands. She smiled at me, her hair floating around her shoulders like golden tinsel. As usual, she was done up, wearing a blouse and a pencil skirt, her makeup probably worked on for hours. "I thought you'd be home soon."

I reached for an apple in the fruit bowl in front of me. Taking a bite, I said, "Yeah. Book club done?"

"Uh-huh."

"Cool."

"People ask a lot of questions, you know."

The sentence seemed out of place, but at the same time it was not. Mom was always concerned about people knowing too much. I looked at her, and noticed she was tired, her mouth in a frown and the skin a bit puffy underneath her eyes. There were some things makeup couldn't hide. Even the way she stood told me everything. She was bracing herself against the counter as if she'd fall over without it, her knees slightly bent. We are Hornes, Cian, I remembered her telling me two years ago, just after I'd found out about Vince, and since we are Hornes we have no room for weakness like this. Stop crying, Cian.

Stop crying.

My relationship with her, in a nutshell, was bittersweet. "Is that so?" my tone was cautious. "Who's people, and what do they ask about?"

"Friends of mine," Mom clarified. She wandered toward her wine cabinet and pulled out some Merlot, filling a glass with it and holding it to her nose for a while before sipping. "Book club members, charity donators, the people I mingle with. They want to know about you, how you're doing, and all. They want to know how we're doing without Vincent."
I bit my lip. "He's not exactly gone."
For a moment, my mother looked around, pale eyes darting from corner to corner. She brushed her hair beyond her shoulder, lowering her wine glass. "Is he here right now? Did he say something?"

"No, Mom, Vinny's not here right now."

She frowned at me, and I knew why. She disliked the fact that I called him Vinny; more than once she'd expressed that it was childish and she had named him Vincent for a reason, but I didn't care. Vinny wanted to be called Vinny, and calling him Vincent on a daily basis felt wrong to me and to him. She'd said once, One day, when he's grown, he'll go by Vincent Horne and he'll be one of the most respected men in the world. That had been, of course, before he'd died.

"Sometimes I don't know what to say," Mom went on with a sigh. She sipped more wine, and the kitchen now smelled less like apples. "I've lost him but I haven't, so when they ask me how I feel, I don't even have an answer. It's the same with you, Cian. You're not who you once were, but you're still here. How am I supposed to feel about that?"