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"Hi, Mom." Mark sat down and laid the posy of chrysanthemums on the tray affixed to the arm of the wheelchair.
"Hello, Mark." Rhia smiled her lopsided smile and fingered the pale pink blossoms with her good hand. "I wasn't expecting a visit today."
"I know, Mom. It's... There's something I need to tell you."
"Oh?" Rhia pulled a flower free of the bunch and lifted it to her face, delighting in the silky cool feel of the petals against her skin.
"Mom, look at me." Very gently, Mark took the straying right hand, the flower caught between their entwined fingers. Rhia's flaccid left lay unmoving in her lap. She smiled at her son, uncomprehending.
Mark met his mother's eyes. She blinked, the blind left pupil milky and frozen, her innocent, sunny smile defying his grief.
"Mark?" she prompted.
"Let's go for a walk," Mark decided. He released her hand and left her holding the chrysanthemum as he stood up. He released the brake and manoeuvred the wheelchair toward the activity room exit. One of the nursing staff noticed the movement and fixed Mark with a quizzical look. "I'm just taking her into the garden," he explained.
"Have her back by four thirty, please," the nurse said. "She'll need her medication."
"Will do," Mark promised.
Outside, a breeze played with the leaves on the trees and ruffled Mark's hair. He parked the wheelchair next to a bench and sat where he could look into his mother's eyes. Very gently, he pushed hair away from her face and she let go of the treasured chrysanthemum blossom so she could take hold of his hand with the one she could use. "You're so grown up," she said dreamily. "I can't believe my baby's so grown up."
"Mom," Mark said, his voice catching, "it's about Dad."
"Oh, you mustn't believe what that David Anderson tells you about your father," Rhia said. "It's wrong of him to keep saying Marsh is dead." Rhia's right hand tightened around her son's, her brow creasing in agitation.
"Mom..." Mark choked back tears. "Dad was killed yesterday."
"Yesterday?" Rhia blinked, confused. "No, that's not right. The plane crashed into the sea, they said... You were, what? You were so small... How old were you, Mark? You weren't all grown up like this. David said your father was dead but he isn't. I know he isn't. He wouldn't, couldn't die like that. Not Marsh..."
"Mom, you were right about that," Mark said. "Dad faked his death so he could go into deep cover on Riga. He was there all this time. I didn't know until... until someone told me."
Rhia shook her head. "I was right?"
"Yes. He's been on Riga all this time. It was classified. Need to know."
"And we didn't need to know?" There was a hard edge to the words.
"They said it was to protect us." Mark's voice was bitter.
"Do you believe them?" Rhia's chin lifted, and her good eye focussed on her son's face. For a moment, Mark saw in his mother an echo of the woman she'd once been.
"This time? Yes."
"Oh." Rhia took a deep breath and her good hand tightened around Mark's.
"Mom?" Mark queried. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Rhia said. The hand relaxed. "I just need a moment, sweetheart." She closed her eyes, and Mark wondered if she would weep for the man she'd loved and lost, then lost again.
Mark waited, then braced himself to ask his next question. "Would you like to know what happened?"
Rhia opened her eyes and looked straight at Mark without a hint of her usual vague haziness. Mark's throat tightened under the knife edge of her stare and he swallowed.
He'd been three years old when a Spectran attack on their home had rendered his mother an invalid and driven his father to feign death as a shield for his family. To Mark, Rhia Hawking had been Mommie: warm, safe, strong and sweet. Afterward, she'd been Mom: damaged, delicate, fragile, an invalid in a nursing home. He'd never met Captain Rhiannon Zarel of Rigan Intelligence, and now, for the first time, he found himself wondering what she would have been like to work with.
"Yes," she said, her voice clear and incisive. "Yes, Mark, I believe I would."
Mark spoke of the instructor he'd met at the Academy, the enigmatic, arrogant pilot who had pushed him harder than anyone else. "I always figured it was because he'd known Dad, that he expected me to live up to being my father's son, and in a sense I guess that was true. He was always tough on me, Mom, but I respected him. He saved my bacon more than once. I always considered him a friend." Mark swallowed again. The lump in his throat refused to go away.
"So he couldn't really let go in the end," Rhia said. "Not completely." She made a small sound that might have been an echo of laughter. "How very like him."
"He wasn't going to tell me, you know. Not ever. He was willing to take his secret to the grave."
Rhia's hand gave a gentle squeeze. "Oh, sweetheart."
"In the end, after everything, every close call, every near miss, it was an assassin. An agent by the name of Ghartz. A coward. He infiltrated the Red Ranger base and killed Dad while he was asleep."
Rhia sighed and closed her eyes. "How... Ironic."
Mark let his breath out in a rush. "Yeah."
For a long while, mother and son sat in silence in the garden, hands clasped, sharing the loss all over again.
"I have to take you back inside, Mom," Mark said eventually. "It's time for your pills."
Inside, as the nurse prepared to return Mrs Hawking to her room for her medication, Mark bent to kiss his mother farewell. "How do you feel, Mom?"
Rhia lifted her head and smiled. "I feel free, Mark. I feel free."