“How? How the hell can you fix this? You can’t do anything, Mom. He… Kona… that asshole… I thought…”
The buildup crests—that swift thread of rage, of fury slipping back, shaking his fingers, makes her son lean out of her touch. But Keira settles him, catches that slip of control before it is out of her hands completely.
“Play.” She turns his shoulders, moves his wrist onto the keys.
“It won’t help.” Ransom’s jaw works, clenches as she holds his large hands steady on the piano. “No, Mom, I can’t. It won’t work. I can’t get it to work this time.”
“Then I’ll help you. Come on.” He hesitates, just for a moment and with one shuddering exhale, begins to play. The notes are sporadic, uneven as his fingers slip across the keys and Keira urges him, fills in the missing notes with her right hand, her left steady, still on his back. “That’s it. Good. Take your breaths. Count for me.” And he does; clipped, uneasy numbers, gritted through his teeth, but they come.
“One… tw… two…”
Keira wants to slap something, beat in Kona’s face, but she pushes the inclination away, focuses on the way Ransom’s eyes stare down at the keys, how his fingers aren’t as shaking as much. “Can you… will you sing with me, sweetie?”
Eyes squeezed tight, Ransom shakes his head, bending his back and she knows he is trying to lose himself in the music. She’s seen it too often from him. He wants to drift from his anger, become lost in the feel of the ivory on his fingertips and the vibration of the pedals at his feet.
He is wandering, out of touch with the calm he needs; broken by the ghosts of the past and Keira’s chest pulls tight, hating that her son has felt the sting that has lived in her for sixteen years. She never wanted this for him. She didn’t want her mistakes, her sin, to touch him. But it has and its bite is vicious and crippling.
The tune is familiar to her; something new, something that Ransom learned after hearing it one time on the radio. He plays by ear and she thinks he knows this song, that it lives inside him. It’s loss and pain and the fever that love brings; the numbing pull that loving someone can do. She doesn’t know all the words, but she’ll try. For her boy, she’d try anything to heal him.
Ransom doesn’t frown or flinch when she misses some of the words, filling them in with her own. He continues to play, notes clearer, surer and when she reaches the second verse, he picks up the song, voice shaking, a quiver trembling the lyrics, but the words come to him, strengthen him as he continues to sing.
The bridge, she knows because the words always manage to hit close to all the heartache Keira brought upon herself.
Funny you’re the broken one,
but I’m the only one who needed saving.
Ransom’s hair is wavy, tousled by his fingers, something he does when he’s annoyed, frustrated; another gesture he’s inherited from Kona and she pushes back a thick wave that has fallen onto his forehead. The touch has him pausing, forehead creased as he looks at her and then, he takes his hands off the keys and jerks up as he stares over Keira’s shoulder.
He is hers. Ransom has her talent for music. He has her easy nature, her need to make others comfortable. But that rage, that tiny fuse of calm comes from both Kona and Keira and it is that lit fuse that Keira sees now. Ransom kicks the bench back, nearly toppling her to the floor and her son darts toward his father standing in the patio doorway.
“Son… wait…” Kona tries, hands up.
“Don’t you call me that, asshole. I’m not your son.” Kona lets Ransom take him by the collar, lets himself be shoved against the wall before Keira can stop the boy. “No decent father would do that to his kid.”
“Ransom, don’t.” Keira’s hands on her son’s shoulders do nothing. “Please, he’s not worth it.”
Kona takes her words like medicine. He needs it; they cut deep, but he’d allowed something unforgivable. He wants more of Keira’s insults. He wants all of Ransom’s rage.
“Why would you do that?” His son shakes him again and Kona’s head goes back, hits the wall behind him. “What gives you the right?”
He can’t find words; there aren’t any. Kona can only stand there, staring down at his son, the boy who looks so like him, who Luka lives in all those small gestures and familiar expressions. The rage is thick, tangible and all Kona can think to do is reach out to touch it.
But Ransom jerks away from his reaching hand, pushes Kona’s chest again and he knows what his boy wants. It’s what he would want, what he always wanted when someone hurt him.