I'll be Mother
"She's gone, then?" Fresh back from uni, the ink on his chemistry doctorate barely dry, my brother looks up from the flask he's been swirling over the Bunsen burner. His voice is level, barely interested, and despite my best efforts, he reads the answer in my posture.
Sherlock looks even paler than normal, his eyes cool, the color leached away into gray. No, that's me trying to read more than is there. She warned me not to do that. It's only the morning sun streaming in through the windows. Sherlock shrugs very slightly, and pulls on a leather gauntlet. He begins to decant the pale yellow liquid from the Erlenmeyer flask into individual test tubes.
"What are you working on?" I ask him.
"Hydrochloride salts." He tells me, after the slightest hesitation.
I sigh. "Cocaine hydrochloride?"
He grimaces a non-smile at me. "Designer drug. My goal someday is to find a way to get myself just as wired on caffeine, sucrose and nicotine, and you can sod off. But let's kill the small talk. It isn't like we're any good at it."
"It certainly isn't your forte." I put the envelope down on the table beside the test tube rack. He glances at it, sees her writing, and deliberately ignores it.
"Any news from Basil?" he asks. Another uni student took him to some movie last year, and ever since he's started calling our father Basil.
I shake my head. "Just her."
The last few drops go into the final test tube, and he strips off the glove, looking at me impassively. Wrong for a 22 year old to be this detached. I wonder if the reaction would be the same if she were dead. Yes, I decide, it would. Neither of us has a real relationship with our father. Thinking back, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen him in England since Sherlock was born, and of course, not at all since Sherlock enumerated his infidelities at Grandmother's dinner party seven years ago. But Mummy. . .
I push the envelope, which is addressed to us both, towards him. "I know what it says, Mycroft." He says impatiently. "You've been given control of the cash, I get shite, as usual. And you. I get you. Around my neck for the rest of my life."
He opens a drawer and pulls out a plastic bag full of white powder. "You aren't really a pirate, Sherlock." I tell him. "Nor are you Robin Hood. You rolled a drug dealer."
"Next level up. A distributor. It's off the street, isn't it?"
"A paragon of virtue. Sherlock, quit wasting your time. You are capable of. . ."
"Of what, Mycroft? Professor Goldman really didn't have much choice but to recommend my degree, seeing as I wrote his last three papers. But I'm bored."
My little brother bored is my little brother in trouble, even when he was little. As Sherlock moves his rack of test tubes to another table under a vent hood, I take the letter out of the envelope and reread it.
My dear Mycroft, and Sherlock,
It will be no surprise to you that I've gone. I confess that I am a bit surprised it has taken me so long to go. I'll go to Kashmir first, to see your father, and after that, who knows? The domestic thing has been so tedious. . .
Mycroft, you've been handling the family's affairs since you turned twenty-one – I've arranged with the attorneys to make it official and irrevocable. I've transferred what I think will be sufficient funds for my travels, but if I need more I'll be in touch. I am so proud of you and appreciate your help with Sherlock these last few years, so I could continue my research.
I look up from the letter. Sherlock ignores me, poking around on his cluttered desk, looking for his lighter. Thinking back on it, I was the one who decided on Sherlock's boarding school when he was ten, found a university that would allow him to progress at an accelerated pace, arranged for his clothing and his books and the Christmas holidays. Mummy did find the minutiae of the everyday tedious, compared to deciphering a lost manuscript from a thousand years ago.
Sherlock, you were an accident from the beginning. If there is an afterlife, it is my care of you for which I will have to answer. I wanted Mycroft, and one child was all I was planning to have. When you came, so many years after Mycroft, well, first I had the postpartum depression, and then I had trouble making myself take responsibility for you. And I think you will agree that you were not an especially easy child. We are both fortunate Mycroft was willing to act as your guardian, and that he was so good with you. I am not proud of what I did, or what I felt, but it is done now, and can't be undone. You owe Mycroft so much, and I hope someday you remember it.
Mycroft, I have no idea when we shall see each other again, but do care for Sherlock as best as you can.
As ever, your Mum
I fold up the letter and return it to the envelope as Sherlock comes back to the table. Really, he has deduced the contents already, and doesn't need to read it.
I poke at the bag. "Perhaps, Sherlock, you should work to eliminate crime, instead of adding to it."
He lights a cigarette. "Perhaps." he says. "I'm certainly done with chemistry. But sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. I'm off, too. I'll just send you the bills, like Mummy and Basil."
"Sherlock. . ."
"Don't pretend like it won't be a relief. Your parenting days are over, too, Mummy." His voice almost drips with sarcasm. "You can concentrate on your career. I assume within a decade you'll be running the country." He takes a deep drag on the cigarette and blows the smoke at me. "Are we done?"
By supper, he's gone and I have the house to myself. He's left his best violins and taken the oldest, and I find the plastic bag in the trash, looking somewhat deflated. And he's wrong, of course. It is not a relief. I know that I will worry about him. Constantly.