Chapter Text
When his son was born, Jim Goode was cloven in two.
Margaret had been in labor for a miserable stretch of twelve hours and he’d been exiled by her mother to the porch, knocked about by the wind and the sound of her screams. In the middle of the afternoon, the farm went silent. Despite himself, Jim thought of his mother when Roy was born, bleeding out on a tattered mattress. His limbs were overcome with tremors. His jaw ached. His eyes stung. He imagined Margaret, leeched of color. The baby, nothing more than a bloody bundle. Then as they did every day, his thoughts turned to his last moments with Roy, to his brother’s betrayed cry and the stubborn way he turned from him.
A soft hand on his shoulder dragged and a rare smile from his mother-in-law pulled him back to the light.
“She’s well, son,” she said gently. “So is the boy.”
She’s well.
The ache in his chest eased, if only by a fraction. He followed her inside on trembling feet. Margaret lay on the mattress, pale but content. She met his eyes with a nose crinkling smile. His lips quirked up as naturally as he breathed, his dark thoughts mere shadows on the sidelines.
Jim sat beside his wife and pressed a kiss to her temple. She leaned into him with a sigh. He relished the movement, the warmth of her weight on him, the proof that all was well and his nightmares were just that — nightmares.
Margaret pulled aside a corner of the cornflower blanket she held across her chest, revealing the damp red face of their child. Their son. As Margaret eased him into Jim’s waiting arms, he blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. He’d held Roy at his birth, if only for a moment. He’d been so small, smaller that the baby he now held. An early birth, weak in the face of the world. Jim remembered how his arms trembled, how for the first time in the world he’d felt stronger than another. How he’d wanted nothing more than to protect his too small, too weak baby brother.
And he’d abandoned him.
“I still think that was the right name for a son,” said Margaret. She squeezed his shoulder.
“Are you sure?” His voice cracked.
He felt her nod. He took a deep breath. Alright.
He stared at the child in his arms, delicate and dependent, the soft pressure of his wife’s hand on his shoulder his anchor to the world. He and Margaret were that child’s world, his protectors, his caretakers. He couldn’t protect his brother. But he was with Lucy, who’d take better care of him than Jim ever could. So he swallowed down regret, resolve flooding his lungs with his quickening breath. He pressed a featherlight kiss to his son’s forehead and whispered a promise.
“I’ll never leave you, Roy.”
Not again.