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Something in her knew. The minute she laid eyes on him, something within her was conscious of it, practically seeing her own blood running through his veins. Her blood in the son she never knew quite how to love.
At first it was easy. Pretend not to notice the furrow in his brow that was just like her, the abundance of midnight colored hair, the way he seemed to learn to read, count, talk, so much quicker than all of the other children. It was almost uncanny, seeing herself in a way she wasn’t familiar with.
He didn’t play well with the other kids, sitting in his own corner and only ever mingling with them when that bright orange one would crawl up to him and tug on his sleeve. She wondered if she had been this antisocial as a child, digging through years of soiled memories to find some sign of it, but no. She was always social, much more like the one with flaming orange hair who seemed to be grabbing at a real childhood with both hands, learning to walk before any of the other kids.
Maybe it was easier to pretend that he wasn’t hers, to treat him just like every other child that traveled through the halls of Grace Field plant three. Just a child who looked uncanningly similar to her, who was unlike her in every other way, his mannerisms and bitter frown were almost evidence that he wasn’t hers.
It was easier to pretend Emma was her own.
Passionate and kind the way she used to be, sweet and playful. Like a picture taken before a disaster, it almost hurt to look at. She kept looking regardless, it would be irresponsible to let a child as clever as Emma run around unmonitored.
But, she wouldn’t be able to pretend forever, the pretty stage play where the cheerful girl with green eyes was her own flesh was one with a set expiration date. One day he was just a baby who was eerily silent, the next he was sitting in the forest with a bloodied twig in one hand and a song on the tip of his tongue. The curtains closed on that fantasy she liked to live in, and reality was knocking on her door.
Looking at him hurt more than anything. Watching her own world fall to pieces in front of her, unable to look away for fear he would cause more ruin than he already had.
The way he looked at her, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to even pretend to love him again. He almost had pity in his eyes. Something hopeful, something terrible that she never wanted to see again. She wanted to turn away from him, cover her eyes and run like a child, but she stood rooted to where she was.
Years of training seemed to kick in, her face melted away from horror, into a serene smile. The acceptance of a deal sliding out of her easily, almost on autopilot.
A part of her mind wondered how she did it, how she kept her hands steady as she wrapped them around his shoulders and guided him back to the house, explaining away the bloodied ear with a simple lie of falling on a rock. She was faced with something that had been ripped away from her, something she was able to brush away to her periphery, but when it was right before her, she wasn’t sure how she didn’t march into headquarters and resign that moment.
The lack of affection from then on was almost refreshing. There was no doting mother around him, only the cultivator of the best crop to come from Grace Field. She had slipped easily away from the role of the Mother, the Mother who cared and loved and held babies and sung quiet lullabies and did not let her calm smile fall, and into the role of the Farmer, who never smiled and had a sharp gaze and watched like a hawk and was easily cruel.
Sure, she was still acting, but hadn’t she always been? Since the moment she saw that cliff, she had begun her acting career. An actress twirling about in the old halls, halls where she used to be free from the shackles of performing.
Her world had been burned the minute she heard Leslie playing a beautiful song on his mandolin, a newer and steadier one being created by her own hand, only to be smashed to bits by the child she had never wanted to have. Unable to even retain the illusion of freedom.
Resentment was the word her mind came to everytime she thought about her son (and maybe pity if she were honest. At least she had had the luxury of happiness for a while in her own childhood.)
He had ruined her world, offering himself up as if a spy were a fair trade for forcing her to look at the ugly scars that marred her skin.
She hated him. Hated everything he stood for, hated the way he thought he was smarter than her, that he thought that she couldn’t see his plan from years away. It was clear the moment she found him in that forest that he had intended to die, that he had been staring down the lung tunel on the way to hell since the moment he had realized his reality.
His plan was almost obvious. Take Emma and Norman with him. Kill himself in the process.
The details were fuzzy, but did she need to know them? As long as she could hold all of them tight to her, control them with her perfected persona of the doting mother until the time they all turned twelve, she would be fine. She would be more than fine, she would be the best mama to ever work at Grace Field.
And maybe then, when all three of them were gone and dead, little more than a few more faces in the crowd of young ghosts that flurried around her, she would be able to really live it. Allow herself to get absorbed in the life of a mother, and if a few of her adorable children had to be shipped away to be eaten, she was always the type to prefer looking the other way.