Black Lightning by John Saul Page B

to it all, just the way he always listened to it, and he’d known what it really meant, because half the time she said it right out loud. Even now her words echoed in his ears:
    Richard was smart— not like you!
    Richard was perfect— not like you!
    Richard was a good son— not like you!
    All his life he’d known who she really loved. Even when he was a little boy, she’d always held Richard up to him as the ideal of perfection. Why can’t you get as good grades as Richard gets? Why can’t you behave yourself, the way Richard always does?
    Richard could talk before he was eight months old!
    Richard could walk when he was less than a year!
    Richard is a genius!
    Richard, Richard, Richard!
    He’d heard it every day as he was growing up, even after Richard went to college, then moved into a house of his own. Rory himself moved out of the house as soon as he could, renting the little apartment on Capitol Hill where he still lived today, twelve years later. But moving out of his mother’s house hadn’t changed a thing. Edna had been glad to be rid of him, and she’d proved it by showing him his old room the first time he came back to visit her.
    It hadn’t been his room anymore. His bed was gone, and so was everything else that had been his. Now there was a Hide-A-Bed against one wall, a TV set against the other, and a big leather chair in the corner where his bureau had been. The words she’d uttered as he stood in the doorway, his stomach hollow as he stared at the room that had once been his, were burned into his mind forever: “Isn’t it nicer now? Richard and I did it. His house is so small, you know, and we just thought it would be nice for him to have a special room here, all to himself. Someplace where he can come when he just needs to think.”
    Rory had wanted to hit her that day, wanted to put his face into hers and scream at her.
    But he hadn’t.
    Instead he’d done as he’d always done.
    He’d agreed that the room was nice and that Richard certainly did need it.
    He’d kept his peace, hoping that if he didn’t ask for anything, didn’t demand any attention from her, didn’t do anything she could criticize, maybe she would love him the way she loved Richard.
    The years had gone by, and the pain had festered in Rory, but he stoically held it all in, certain that sooner or later his mother would love him, too. Then, when the murders started, and people started thinking Richard had committed them, he’d been sure his mother would start appreciating him.
    Instead, she’d just given more and more of her attention to Richard, telling anyone who would listen that Richard couldn’t have done what they said he did.
    Richard was a good boy.
    Richard was perfect. Richard! Richard! Richard!
    And now, even the day after Richard had finally been executed, it was going to be the same! Richard was perfect, and Rory was an idiot, and even with Richard dead, nothing was going to change at all.
    Why?
    Why couldn’t she love him?
    Why couldn’t she defend him the way she defended Richard?
    What had he done that was so terrible?
    Instead of asking her the questions that were boiling in his brain, Rory only looked up from his paper, his eyes wary. “What, Mother? I was reading.”
    “The sports section?” Edna demanded. Her scathing voice made Rory wince, but she barely noticed it. “How can you care about sports after what’s happened to your brother? Don’t you even care what they did to him?” Now she picked up the newspaper and flung Anne Jeffers’s column at him. “Don’t you care what that woman is doing to your brother’s memory?”
    Rory picked up the paper, glanced at it, then stood up. “ They didn’t do anything to Richard, Mother,” he said. “He did it himself. He killed those people, and they proved it, and they made him pay for it. That’s what really happened, Mother.” He started out of the kitchen.
    Edna rose to her feet, clutching the collar of her favorite chenille bathrobe