Anne began to cry silently as she watched them carry her daughter away. Francesca put her arm around the older woman’s shoulder, at a loss for what to say, still in a state of shock herself.
“Ian,” she exclaimed when she glanced around and saw him and his grandfather walking in her direction. She’d never seen him so pale. His facial muscles were rigid.
His glance at her was glacial.
“How dare you come here,” he said as he approached her, his lips barely moving, his mouth and jaw were drawn so tight. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. She’d never seen him this way . . . so anguished, so furious . . . so exposed. She couldn’t think of what to say. He’d never forgive her for coming here uninvited, for seeing him at what was perhaps one of the most vulnerable moments of his life.
“Ian—”
But he cut her off by merely walking past her in the direction where they’d taken his mother. James gave his wife a sad glance and followed his grandson.
Anne took her hand and led her to a chair. She sat down next to her, all the vibrancy Francesca had noticed upon first meeting her seeming to have drained away.
“Don’t blame Ian,” Anne said hollowly. “Helen and he had been sharing a wonderful morning and now . . . all ripped away again. He’s upset, obviously.”
“I can understand why,” Francesca replied. “I shouldn’t have come. I had no idea—”
Anne patted her forearm distractedly. “It’s a ravaging disease. Brutal. It’s been hard on all of us, but the hardest by far for Ian. From an early age, he had no choice but to be Helen’s sole caretaker. He told me after he’d lived with us for a while and started to open up that he had to constantly monitor her, for fear her madness would be exposed to the townspeople in too flagrant of a fashion, and they’d take her away to the hospital and send him to an orphanage. He lived in daily, hourly fear of her harming herself or of being separated from her. He barely attended school like the other children, because he needed to look out for Helen. The town where Helen ended up—we, to this day, don’t know how or why she ended up there—was very remote and a bit backward. I have little doubt some kind of child protection agency would have been contacted about Ian’s poor school attendance if it’d been more centrally located. As it was, he managed to keep Helen’s illness a good secret, learning where Helen kept her reserve of money and managing it frugally, taking up odd jobs around the village, running errands, and once it was learned that he had a genius for fixing electronic things, repairing small appliances. He did all their shopping and housekeeping, cooking for them, making their little cottage as neat as he was able and securing it with various safety measures, given Helen’s odd behaviors and occasional violence during her psychotic episodes . . . such as the one you just witnessed,” Anne mused wearily. She gave a heavy sigh. “All that, and when we finally discovered Helen and him, Ian hadn’t yet passed his tenth birthday.”
Francesca shuddered with silent emotion. No wonder he was so controlling. Oh God, that poor little boy. How lonely he must have been. How brutal for him to experience moments of love and connection during his mother’s lucid periods, only to have them vanish from him when psychosis hit . . . just as it had today. Suddenly, she recalled that expression he wore once in a while that tore at her so deeply and bewildered her so much, the look of someone who not only had been abandoned and lost but who knew with certainty he would eventually be rejected again.
“I’m so sorry, Anne,” Francesca said, feeling the inadequacy—the shabby thinness—of her words.
“Dr. Epstein warned us not to be overly optimistic. But it’s so hard not to hope, and Helen was making such progress. We saw her, ever so briefly, talked to her—her, our Helen. Dear, sweet Helen.” She sighed heavily. “Well. There are other treatments that are still in the works. Perhaps . . . some day . . .”
Francesca couldn’t help but feel, however, given the barren quality of Anne’s tone and the slight grayish cast to her skin, that she was very close to giving up hope of ever seeing her daughter happy and well. She wondered how many times the Nobles had seen some improvement in Helen, only to have their hopes dashed again and again as madness reared its head.
Francesca stood up shakily several minutes later when Ian reentered the morning room. “She’s asleep,” Ian told his grandmother, his gaze ominously avoiding Francesca. “Julia has pulled the medication. Mom will go back on the regimen she took before. At least it kept her stable.”
“If stable means sedated, I suppose you’re right,” Anne said.
Ian’s mouth twisted slightly at that. “We have no other choice. At least she wasn’t harming herself.” He looked at Francesca. She cringed inwardly when she saw the ice glittering in his eyes. “We’re leaving,” he said. “I’ve called my pilot, and he’s getting the plane ready for departure to Chicago.”
“All right,” Francesca said. She’d be able to try and explain why she’d come once they were aboard the plane. She’d apologize for horning in where she wasn’t wanted. Maybe she could make him understand . . .
. . . although every time she thought of how vulnerable he’d been . . . how raw, she quailed, dreading he could never forgive her.
* * *
He hardly spoke to her in the car ride to the airport, just stared straight ahead as he drove, his knuckles white as he gripped the leather-bound wheel. When she tried to break the silence with an apology, he cut her off briskly.