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It was late when the doorbell rang, already near ten and raining cats and dogs. Lyall was not expecting anyone, and Muggle salesmen would not come to this area at this time of day. That left only two options. It was either his son, who would probably let himself in within seconds. Or it was someone bringing bad news about his son.
Lyall put the paper down and waited.
After seconds, there was the reassuring sound of a key superfluously being shoved into lock. It were the traces of Hope’s upbringing and age-old automatisms that had his son reaching for it, even when the wards would let him in upon touch.
Lyall got up, rubbed a stiff spot on his lower back, and shuffled towards the door.
When was the last time he had gone out?
A heap of books, manuals and old Prophets was scattered all across the sofa and the table. There were empty tea cups on every surface, and Lyall felt a surge of embarrassment. He attempted a quick cleaning spell before opening the door to the corridor.
Best not to let Remus think he was neglecting himself.
Turning on the light in the hallway, he saw the boy (…man, he corrected himself, as Remus’ boyhood was long gone) looking pale. Thin, too, and by now already grayer than Lyall was.
Lyall tried not to, but he could not keep from looking him over, estimating the situation, checking for signs of stable income and health or lack thereof, and bit his tongue not to comment on any of it.
Hope would have resented him for not making more of an effort to look after their son. But what was he supposed to do? Remus was a grown man, and Lyall could hardly force him to sit at the dinner table.
Besides, it was not like he was one to talk, at the moment. When Hope was still there, Lyall had been in charge of cooking on most days, but he could not be bothered to do it for himself, not willing to face the minefield of confrontations that one simple meal provided. The portions made too large out of habit. The sad sight of a round kitchen table set for one. And especially the silence as he spooned his dishes, the only sound his own chewing and the clattering of cutlery on a plate.
He had taken to eating in the study, where he could at least pretend. That he was busy, and Hope was downstairs. But the house was always so quiet.
‘Hei son, wasn’t expecting you.’
Remus only blinked, looking past Lyall into the hallway and then back to the floor.
'Is everything all right?'
Lyall had learned to thread the path of Remus caprices with caution. Not to push too hard or appear too eager. Backing Remus in a corner led to him staying away. And Lyall was quite happy with how things had been between them lately.
He did not like to think that Hope’s death had, in a way, smoothed things over, but it had at least taken the fight out of the both of them. A brutal light shed on how precarious things were. Shared grief that made the underlying tensions seem almost insignificant.
And thus, they had found a system again. One where Remus showed up for dinner a few times a month. Where Lyall knew where his son lived and Remus silently accepted the groceries Lyall disposed of in his kitchen - not so much it could not be discarded as a thoughtful gesture, but enough that Remus would not starve if Lyall's rations were, as he sometimes suspected, the only thing coming in that week.
Although, coming to think of it, it had been a while since they last saw each other.
‘Is something the matter?’ Lyall asked, looking at his son in the half dark. ‘Remus?’
Remus looked frightened, shocked almost. He passed Lyall quietly, not bothering to take off his coat or shoes.
The first instinct that grabbed Lyall by the chest was ‘another loss'. And he felt outrage, because that simply would not be fair. Remus had lost enough people, far more than reasonable for a man who was not even forty.
‘Remus?’ he tried again, following him into the living room.
‘Dad.’
It came out strangled. Remus was clutching the lapels of his coat, twisting them in his fists. It was an old coat, too warm for this weather, that Lyall recognised.
It had been his originally, a proper quality woolen trench. He had worn it only a handful of times, when Remus had come over for the first time in months after that horrible Halloween, wearing a shitty thin waxed thing with faded elbows, even when it was below zero.
After dinner, Hope had come in with the coat over her arm. Asked if Remus would perhaps try it on, see, she’d bought it for Lyall on sale, but Lyall thought it was itchy in the neck and now it was just hanging there, unused. She had not missed a beat. Tricked their son into taking a handout. Despite his irritation that the theatrics were necessary at all (because why wouldn't he just let them help him) Lyall had been impressed at her ability to lie, had even vaguely wondered if she’d ever deceived him like that.
But that was over a decade ago, and the coat was now in worse state than the wax jacket had been.
Lyall felt the familiar pit in his stomach. The wish that for once, Remus could just walk into a store and buy expensive winter wear without having to worry about it. He wondered if he could try the itchy-coat-trick again, but surely only Hope could pull that off. Perhaps Remus had not believed her either, but had simply been less inclined to fight her on it.
‘What’s going on?’ Lyall asked. His son glanced up and Lyall briefly caught the haunted expression on his face.
‘I did something stupid,’ Remus muttered, avoiding looking his father in the eye.
Something stupid.
Lyall's mind flew through a myriad of possibilities, most of them to do with the law. Remus failing to show up at an obligatory registration check-up, or something of the sort. And of course there was the other concern. Remus not transforming in a proper space, too stubborn to ask for Wolfsbane. An outbreak. A victim.
He waited in silence as his throat closed up, and Remus sank down on the sofa, coat still on. The open paper crunched under his weight, but he did not bother to remove it.
‘I, er- I…’ He hid his face, and turned to look out of the window, one hand clasped over his mouth.
Lyall walked the short way to the kitchen. Brought two mugs with water to a boil with a flick of his wand, and waited until the tea was a deep, dark brown before returning to buy himself some time. When he returned, Remus was still in the exact same pose.
‘So,’ Lyall began, handing him a tea. ‘Tell me.’
Remus took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I er-, I eloped.’ His voice was barely audible.
Lyall felt the tension in his shoulders release a little. Eloped. Oh. That wasn’t too bad. Not ideal, but in his list of Remus-related worries, eloping had never even made it into the top hundred.
‘Aha,’ said Lyall, not sure what else there was to say. Remus looked at him with a pained expression.
‘Who, er-’ Lyall continued, after the silence went on for uncomfortably long. ‘If I may ask, who exactly did you marry?’
‘Dora,’ said Remus in a tone that suggested this was not important.
‘Dora…’ Lyall repeated, trying to find a face to go with the name. Had he ever met a Dora? Dora sounded like a woman’s name, which surprised him, but well. The heart wants what it wants, and all that.
‘You don’t know her,’ provided Remus, seeing his father’s pensive expression. ‘And I shouldn’t have- it was a dumb idea, and I should never have…’ He sounded near tears.
Lyall did not know where to start, curious about this Dora, and why Remus came to him late at night and filled with apparent regret. Perhaps Remus had let the first available candidate get the best of him again. Christ, where to even begin?
Oh, Hope. If only she was here. She would have known what to say. Would have been able to break the uncomfortable silence in the room, find the right questions to make Remus explain.
What would she have said?
It had been nearly two years, and he couldn’t stand that he was forgetting things, things he thought he would never be able to forget. The cadence of her speech. There were moments where he for the life of him could not picture the rhythm of her words, where he felt empty and desparate until someone, a commercial voice-over or a news anchor, sounded slightly like her, and he caught a glimpse until it evaporated again.
‘I’m sure,’ Lyall said, ‘it will be alright. It’s, ah, a big change, I suppose. Can feel a bit disruptive…’
‘I should never have gone along with it,’ Remus repeated hoarsely. ‘I knew it was a terrible idea from the start.’ He laughed; a dry, empty sound.
‘Remus...’
‘She’s pregnant.’ He sounded bitter.
Lyall carefully put the cup of tea he was nursing back on the table. ‘Oh.’
Remus knotted his finger in his hair, looking a bit maniacal as he did it, and Lyall’s eyes shot through the room trying to find something else to rest on.
‘I’m sorry.’ Remus said then, so Lyall’s pupils flew back to his face. ‘It was a mistake.’
‘Well,’ he started, not able to deny it was indeed stupid. More than stupid, in fact. The child would… transmission was possible. Lyall swallowed. ‘That’s, er, not great, I suppose.’
Remus shook his head.
‘Have you considered-’ Lyall began, hesitantly. Remus laughed again.
‘She wants to have it.’ He sounded like a man being led to the gallows.
‘Right,’ said Lyall, and he wanted to say many more things.
How could you be so irresponsible? You know better, I know you do because I have personally educated you about this. Think about what you’ll be doing to that child. It’s not a matter of ‘want’.
But he didn’t say any of those things. He looked at the picture of Hope smiling in her periwinkle sundress and knew she would, at least, not have said any of those things.
‘That seems…unwise,’ he said. ‘But-’
‘I know,’ Remus said, his voice raw. ‘I’ve been trying to talk her out of it, but she won’t… ’
He shifted, looking ahead of him almost desperately. ‘It was a mistake. Everything was. I was- everybody said… I should not have gone along with it.’
The sound he made was almost a whimper, but then he took a deep breath, and a strange calmth appeared to come over him.
‘It’s all right. She’s with her parents. They will take care of her.’
He sounded almost absent as he said it.
Lyall blinked a few times. ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked, hoping he was misunderstanding.
Remus did not even look up, continuing in the same trance-like voice. ‘Dora is with her parents now. It's for the best. I will just leave them to it…it’s better like this.’
Then Remus just sat there, staring into the black screen of the television. Lyall slowly got to his feet.
‘You mean to tell me,’ he started, his voice sounding awfully distant. He could not help it. He was tired. Tired of pretending to be understanding about things that were not calling for it whatsoever. ‘You mean to tell me you are leaving your wife?’
There was more silence. Then Remus repeated, croakily. ‘It’s for the best. Her family hates me. And the child, the child will be better off without me. You know it’s true.’
‘Do I?’ There was a slight tremble in Lyall’s voice as he tried to contain his anger. ‘You think a woman, a woman you decided to marry, and presumably care about, will be better off without you, the father of her child?’
‘What kind of father would I be?’ Remus go up too, desperate frustration lining his face. ‘A father that it will always be ashamed of. That, that might have given him this condition…’
Lyall had accepted a lot from Remus over the past decades. Why this ultimately turned out to be his breaking point he did not know. Frankly, he felt appalled. His eyes shifted past Remus to the picture of Hope again, and he contemplated for a second. But he was sure she would have been on Lyall’s side on this one.
‘So your solution,’ he said, not quite controlling the volume of his voice, ‘is to leave this woman with this child on her own? Who exactly does this help, Remus?’
Remus said nothing. He stood, arms dropping to his side uselessly, apparently taken aback by his father’s irritation. Lyall couldn't fathom what else he could have possibly been expecting.
‘I’ll tell you who it helps. It helps you.’ He pointed at Remus, index finger accusatively raised ‘This does not benefit the partner you’ve knocked up, nor the baby. Just you.’
Remus looked around incomprehensively, and Lyall now felt rage boil inside of him, for once uncontained, not buried under layers of his own conscience, the doubt about whether he himself would have acted any differently if he had been put through Remus's trials. He felt familiar enough with this particular trial, and he was not afraid to charge.
‘Do you think I didn’t hate myself after what happened to you?’ he asked, disbelief lining his voice. ‘Do you think I enjoyed being confronted with my mishaps every morning at the breakfast table? I didn’t.’
‘Well,’ Remus replied, looking up at him from under his brow, his voice cold, ‘if it was such agony to be my parent…’
‘Coch y gath, Remus! An agony to be your parent? It has never even occurred to me to leave you and your mam behind. What do you think, and please use your head for three seconds here: would it have been better if I, the person with the werewolf expertise, had just walked out on you?’
‘It’s not the same,’ muttered Remus defensively, ‘Ma was a Muggle, and you…’
‘Well, I didn’t stay because she was a Muggle, I stayed because she was my wife! The mother of my child. I stayed because I loved the both of you, and it was my fucking responsibility to take care of you. Sometimes you just…you just have to…’ Lyall waved his arms around helplessly, aware that his voice had shifted into a lecturing tone. ‘There is no easy way out.’
‘I have never had an easy way out!’ Remus huffed, ‘I’ve…everything in my goddamn life...’
‘Don’t finish that sentence,’ Lyall interrupted him. ‘By God, I don’t have the patience for it right now. Leaving his damn pregnant wife…’
He turned around to one of the bookcases and leaned both arms against it, looking at the floor.
‘You’re not the victim here,’ he scoffed, feeling a brief, liberating burst shoot through him. The words that had first popped up in him when Remus had left them to live with that Black. Which he had suppressed, out of guilt, or for Hope’s sake, or simply because he had rationalised it away. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot, Remus, and I wish you could have been spared that, I really do, but you’re an adult. You act, there are consequences. Things don’t just happen, for Merlin’s sake.’
Fired up, he couldn't help but go on, and let every reproach that had simmered inside of him boil to the surface. ‘For the past fifteen fucking years your mam and I have been holding our arms open for you, and you blatantly refuse to- ’
‘Oh, is it about this again?’ Remus was near shouting, too, protectively crossing his arms over his chest. ‘You just- none of that is about me. You’ve never agreed with anything I do, you just wanted to ease your guilt…’
‘Grow up, Remus.’ Lyall’s voice was icy now. He pinched his brow between his fingers, sighed deeply. ‘You know more than well that you were breaking your mother’s heart by not ever showing your face here, and what for? Because of me? Because I tried to give you a fistful of pounds every now and then to make sure you could keep a roof over your head? Because I did not support you signing up for kamikaze missions? Woe is you, how very terrible of me.’
‘No!’ Remus stepped forward, his eyes dark. ‘You’ve never thought I could be independent. You’ve never believed I’d-’
He sounded almost whiney, a tone that might have humoured Lyall in 1972, but now almost raised the hairs in the back of his neck.
‘No, that’s what you thought,’ Lyall said through gritted teeth. ‘And you’ve made it your life’s mission to find proof that everyone else thinks it’s true.’
‘Well, I’m sorry!’ Remus spat. He shuddered with rage, and for a fragment of a second, Lyall believed he would pull his wand, but instead, Remus flung the mug in his hand towards the sofa.
It did not break, but instead sadly thudded against the backrest. Lyall followed it with his gaze.
Remus’ fingers trembled as he balled them into fists. ‘I’m sure it’s somehow all my fault that I turned out like this, and you had nothing to do with it.’
He stepped back to the sofa, aimlessly hovered near it, then paced back to the other side of the room, never looking his father in the eye.
Lyall sighed. He did not have the energy for it anymore. Had no interest in defending himself or his actions. Even the usual gnawing concern that Remus was right and everything that had befallen him could somehow be traced back to those two sentences uttered in that courtroom, even that did not really come to Lyall tonight.
It probably would again, eventually. But at this moment, he just felt tired.
Hope and him had moved heaven and earth to give Remus a shot at life, a relatively happy childhood. And still, three decades later, Remus stood here with his chin up and his fists balled, whinging about everything Lyall had bereaved him off. This time, it felt misguided, seeing that he was attempting to become a worse father than Lyall had been.
‘You know, your mother was always keen to see you in the best possible light,’ Lyall muttered through his teeth, ‘but not even she could have found an excuse for how you're acting right now.’
Remus looked up again, finally, a flash of hurt crossing his face. And Lyall felt for him, for a moment. Felt the familiar ache he had whenever Remus made poor decisions that stemmed from a type of self-loathing Lyall had not been able to protect him from.
He also numbly concluded that it was no longer enough.
‘Go back to your wife. Apologise. Think about how in Merlin’s name you’re going to raise a potentially lycanthropic infant between the two of you,’ he turned around, taking his wand from his pockets to dim the lights. Remus flinched at it. ‘And don’t you dare run away from this. We’ve raised you better than that.’
He halted in the doorway. Without looking back, he told Remus: ‘I suppose it's late. You can stay in the spare room tonight. Go to bed, and we can talk about it tomorrow.’
***
They had not made it to tomorrow. Lyall had brushed his teeth and taken a shower, expecting to hear the front door slam, the fireplace swish. He walked downstairs in his pyjamas, and prepared to be greeted by an empty living room.
He apologised to Hope in his head. The one thing she would have wanted him to do, keep Remus nearby, and he fumbled it.
But, much to his surprise, Remus was still sitting on the sofa. The mug he had thrown earlier was now clasped between his hands. When Lyall entered, he looked up with the distress expected from a wounded animal.
‘I don't think I would be a good father.’ Remus said it softly, almost as if he hoped Lyall would not hear him. Lyall sighed and crossed the distance to sit down next to him.
‘I hoped that maybe if I left…’ Remus continued, staring at the floor. ‘Maybe she'd change her mind. About keeping the baby.’
He no longer sounded defensive, or unreasonable. There was a genuine trace of fear in his voice, his fingers anxiously exploring the mug’s rim. In a self-chastising tone, he added: ‘I know I’m an idiot for letting it happen in the first place.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Lyall put a tentative hand on his back. ‘These things happen.’
Remus let out a sort of choked laugh. ‘You know, I had somehow expected that that would be the thing you’d be the most angry about,’ he said.
Lyall shook his head. It was not smart, no, and in Remus situation more caution had been warranted, but it did happen. Spur of the moments, a brief slip of judgment, even just bad luck. Remus had been conceived in a very similar manner, and Lyall was not really one to judge.
Remus rubbed a hand across his eyes.
‘I don't want to pass this on.’
There was a sniffle that landed in Lyall's own stomach like a brick. He squeezed Remus’ shoulder. Opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. All the while, Remus shook under his hand.
‘For fuck's sake,’ Remus mumbled, his voice subdued by the fists pressed against his mouth.
Lyall shifted uncomfortably, the knife of culpability he had intended to discard earlier instantly back to twist in his innards.
‘It might not happen,’ was all he managed to say. ‘There’s not much data on it.’
Remus gave a skeptical scoff. It was the only consolidation Lyall had for him - all he knew about lycanthropic babies was related to colony-children, and he doubted those were bitten and not born.
He imagined an infant on a stone floor subjected to that kind of pain, and then a whelp, blind and deaf and equally helpless. He felt ill.
‘Have you explained this to her this, too? Why you’re against this?’ he asked. A curt nod came in response.
‘Exactly like this? Just openly and honestly told her what you are afraid of? What it could mean, for the child?’
‘I have,’ Remus said. ‘I’ve tried. But she’s… she’s an optimist.’ Remus rubbed his cheeks almost angrily. ‘I don't think she believes it's that bad. I assume she thinks we will find a cure or something. It’s…’ he let the sentence die out, his frustration palpable. After a while, he added: ‘It seems to be a bit of a double-edged sword, hmm? Only people with unrealistic expectations about what werewolfery is feel comfortable socialising with a werewolf. James, Sirius, Peter. Dora…always so bloody positive. Turning my- my monstrosity into just a “furry little problem”.
He sunk back into an almost meditative silence. Lyall thought for a moment. Remus seemed willing to talk, but he was not sure how to keep him going. How had Hope done it? She always seemed to know how to break him open.
‘What else is she like? Dora?’ he asked.
‘Too good for me,’ Remus mumbled. ‘Too young, too. I should have never done it.’
Lyall searched for words, toeing the line with caution. ‘Why did you?’
‘I liked her,’ Remus whispered. ‘Miraculously, she liked me back. Pursued me. It made me feel good. It made me feel like-’ he blinked a few times, fell quiet.
Lyall summoned a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Remained silent as he filled them up and drank until they were empty, then poured a second round.
‘You’d like her, I think.’ Remus finally commented hoarsely. ‘But it doesn't really matter. It’s been three months and I’ve already messed it up.’
‘No.’ said Lyall. ‘You just panicked. You wouldn't be the first new father to do so. You can make this right. Talk to her, make her see this is serious...’
Remus briefly glanced at him from the corner of his eye. ‘Did you panic?'
‘Of course. Full disclosure, you weren’t exactly planned either.’ He smiled dryly at the surprised expression on his son's face. ‘Nothing was in order, I was barely making any money yet, your mam was not well...’ He shrugged as if the rest was self-explanatory.
‘What did you do?’
‘Pretended everything was under control. It was, in a way. I had Hope, and we had family… you don’t have to do it all alone.’
Remus swallowed. ‘I just don’t think I’ll be a good dad,’ he said again.
Lyall shook his head, chewed his bottom lip. ‘I’m sure you’d be fine. If you actually tried.’ He looked at Remus, who was still frowning. ‘I don’t think I've always been a great father, either.’
Remus was quiet for a while, then whispered: ‘You were not a bad father.’
Lyall took another large sip.
Remus went on, though. ‘I think you did…you did go about things the wrong way sometimes.’
‘I’m sure I did,’ Lyall answered. 'You will, too. It’s not easy to do it right.’
Remus leaned back against the sofa, his face softened by the whiskey. ‘Sometimes,’ he muttered, ‘sometimes I feel like you were the first person who made me hate myself.’
The words hung quietly between them, heavy and vulnerable, and then Remus laughed, a dry chortle. ‘It’s strange. Because I've never felt like you hated me. But I’ve- I’ve so often felt like I was letting you down. Like…I feel it now. That I never lived up to what you pictured for me. And then, the money and all that, that feels like…like you're shoving it in my face. That I'm a failure.’
‘You're not a failure,’ mumbled Lyall, feeling a tell-tale heat of tipsiness rise to his cheeks as he downed the third glass of liquor. ‘I’ve never thought you were. I mean, of course I wanted things differently for you-’
‘Sometimes it would have been nice,’ Remus interrupted him, ‘if you had been a bit more…accepting of how things turned out.’
Lyall put the glass down. Flopped an arm around Remus’ shoulders and pulled him closer. Said nothing for a long time.
***
Lyall made his way upstairs slowly, sat down on the edge of the bed in the dim room, and came to the surprised conclusion that he was drunk.
By now, there were whole days where he got through without missing her. Weeks that filled up with appointments and colleagues and the occasional friend, where he felt nearly normal. But then sometimes, like tonight, the loss would feel so encompassing he did not know what to do with himself.
He curled up on his side, his fingers involuntarily reaching out to her side of the bed, brushing the cool mattress.
And he thought back to evenings and mornings in this bed, the self-evidence of her presence. To wrapping around her in a half-slumbering state, the sleepy kiss on his temple he received in return.
He ached for her. Ached to bury his face in her neck, between her breasts, her thighs. Thinking this about his dead wife felt nearly unbecoming, but it surpassed the sexual, it was the sheer physicality of it he needed, the opportunity to feel her all around him. Christ, he even missed her unscrupulously warming her freezing toes on his calves.
How many nights had he wasted by going to bed before her, asleep and unaware of the moment she slid under the sheets. How much time with her had he allowed to slip away? Why hadn’t he waited? Why had he not waited up?
A dry sob ripped through his throat, and he buried his face in the pillow and shook. ‘Hope,’ he whispered into the evening. Are you there somewhere? Do you still hear me?
***
Lyall woke up with a pounding head to a symphony of household sounds. He heard the sound of dishes, and that of the kettle that had not been used since Hope passed. Remus.
He closed his eyes, relishing the sounds, and was reminded of the first house, the patter of feet on the vinyl kitchen floor, back when Remus had figured how to get out of the box by himself, and would come meet him in the kitchen with a cheeky look on his face and a finger pressed to his mouth. ‘Sssss, Mami sheeping'. Proud of himself for remembering.
'Yes, Mami's sleeping.'
And then Lyall would haul him up by an arm or a leg and place him on the counter, give him a little chore like peeling an egg, something that would keep him quiet and absorbed and excited, while Lyall finished the breakfast.
He had been a good dad, he thought, in the beginning. He wasn’t sure where things had gone wrong. Sometimes he feared it had all started coming apart with the bite, but then, there had been a long period of time after that where a lot went wrong, but nothing was really wrong between them. Even deep into Remus’ Hogwarts-years, they had been quite all right. back then, Remus still came along on long walks in the summer, and they talked, and sometimes he owled for advice on one thing on another.
Maybe they were both still tricking themselves into thinking that things would improve and all Remus’ efforts would not be in vain.
But life had caught up with them. The war. Remus, back in his parental home, applying for jobs knowing he would be rejected. The ever-increasing tension as Hope and Lyall tried to be optimistic against their better knowledge, and Remus was vexed by their efforts. Ultimately his decision to join the war - which Lyall ascribed to peer pressure and sheer despair - and Lyall’s own attempts to change his mind.
And then, Remus went away for increasingly long amounts of time, and then he was gone altogether, gone to live with Black who they both knew but never outwardly acknowledged to be Remus' lover, something Lyall had never considered a good idea to begin with.
‘Let him be,’ Hope had told Lyall, as if he did not hear her weeping with worry at night. ‘He just needs some space.’
And then of course, that godawful day at the Ministry, when Andrew, of all people, had caught him by the arm in the canteen and almost breathlessly told him that one Remus John Lupin was in W.C.U. 's custody after a werewolf colony raid.
He had heard it from Andrew, not his own son, who had used his moment of contact on Dumbledore instead. The old wizard had yet to show up by the time Lyall completed the process of freeing Remus.
Lyall had been livid. The event had been succeeded by a truly ghastly fight.
He regretted the things he had said, but he also felt resentful, and the distance grew. Then the war ended, and Remus hid and mostly stayed hidden.
It was complex. Remus had been hurt in ways that Lyall could not begin to imagine, had suffered countless losses. But also, from the glimpses of his son he got, he could not help but feel frustration. At his avoidance, his solitude, his complete rejection of support at any cost.
In 1982, Hope had finally pried his latest address from him, and Lyall found it mold-ridden, with just a dirty mattress in the bedroom which Remus had tried to hide. And on the way home, he had been seething. Because if only Remus asked, Lyall would gladly buy him furniture, hell, he would have taken out a second mortgage to buy Remus a place, but Remus did not ask, and Remus refused to take, out of foolish pride and with little to no care about the peace of mind he deprived his loved one's of.
‘Lyall,’ Hope had said, her lips pressed together tightly as they landed in their living room. ‘He only just came back. Don’t chase him away again.’
And he had almost wanted to shake her, because what was that even supposed to mean?
He wished he had known, when exactly it would be the last time his son would come to ask him for advice. He would have cherished it more, had he known.
Well, Remus had come here yesterday for his strange confession. Perhaps he had even come for help. That was something, at least.
Lyall walked downstairs. Saw Remus’ bent over the counter next to two plates of toasts and eggs, and got misty-eyed at the sight, which was probably at least half due to his hangover.
‘I took the liberty,’ said Remus, holding out a plate.
‘Thank you.’
They walked to the table, ate in silence.
‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’
Remus sighed, avoiding his father’s eye. ‘A bit.’
Lyall looked up at the picture of Hope. Suppressed the urge to tell Remus how to solve it.
‘I'm sure you’ll do the right thing.’