Ground Zero by Rain Stickland Page B

knew what it was, we decided not to have more. It’s a shame, really, because Geraldine was a damn good mother to that kid, but we couldn’t risk it. Not just the possibility that we’d have another like him, but also that he might harm a younger sibling.”
    “It makes us sound so terrible,” Geraldine quietly stated.
    “I don’t think it does,” Mac responded. “I think it’s heartbreaking that you felt you had to make that choice. Very few people are capable of looking at their children realistically, and you did everything humanly possible to get help for him and try to turn him away from that path. I can’t think of a single other thing you could have done. When he became an adult, he made choices that went against everything you tried to instill in him, and they were his choices, not yours.”
    Geraldine had started crying, so Brian reached for her hand. He held it up to his mouth and rubbed her forearm with his other hand. Neil laced his fingers with Mackenzie’s. She looked down at their joined hands and then covered them with her other one.
    “You gave him real love,” Mac began again. “You might not think you did, because of the way he made you feel, but you gave him the kind of love that a majority of parents can’t even imagine. You did the hard work to give him his best chance, even when your own feelings were working against you. I don’t think a lot of people have that kind of love in them. Most of us take the easier road. Denial.”
    “Thank you for that,” Brian said gruffly. “Geraldine was right about your daughter probably saving a lot more lives than she realizes, and I hope you’ll tell her that we said so.”
    “I will. I’ve been trying to find a way to help her deal with it. She didn’t just feel guilt for killing your son, either. She also felt guilty because she seemed to think it meant she felt bad for Neil not being killed, and probably myself, but we both knew that wasn’t really how she felt about it. She just hated having blood on her hands.
    “Cam’s always been pretty tough and cynical. When we took archery lessons, then later went to the gun ranges to learn to shoot, I guess she figured she’d be perfectly fine with using those weapons. She wasn’t expecting to feel bad afterward, despite the fact that I tried to tell her it’s never quite what you imagine it will be when you have to kill someone.” Mac realized she would have to explain, when both Geraldine and Brian looked at her in confusion.
    “Her father broke in to our apartment when Cam was just a baby. He had a knife that I managed to get away from him when he was distracted. I was standing there holding it when he ran at me. I faced up to it and called the police and all that, even though I was scared shitless. It was written off as self-defense, though they could have called it an accident, too, I suppose.
    “To this day I don’t know if I actually had time to turn the knife away from him. I had to deal with the aftermath, and I wasn’t expecting the guilt any more than Cam was. She didn’t know about it until I told her a couple of weeks ago. She only knew he’d been killed while trying to rob someone. She didn’t know it was me. I’ve never lied to her about it, but I didn’t want her growing up with the knowledge that her father had been killed by her mother. Her father had grown up spoiled by his family, and he seemed to think he was entitled to whatever he wanted.”
    “Sort of like our Gerry,” Brian said. “Except for the part about being spoiled. If anything, he was a bit deprived because we had to permanently remove most of his privileges. That sense of entitlement, though, seems to be a commonality.”
    “I don’t know what it was with some of the kids the baby boomers and our generation raised,” added Neil. “I’m thankful Billy was never like that, and Cameron isn’t either, but some of those overly-entitled shits still sprang from good people. Hopefully we’ll find