The Trouble With Love
Duke and Grace had returned to Haven. Duke was considering moving back but undecided. Grace was just along for the ride, enjoying exploring the town openly after having skulked around it invisibly for weeks back at the end of the troubles. Grace saw a small tourist and bait shop as they approached the docks and ducked in to browse. Duke shrugged and followed her. Nathan, further down the docks, called vainly for Duke to wait – and swore and ran after them as the two entered the place.
When he reached the shop he opened the door and entered to see Duke standing stiffly in the embrace of a woman. She was older, with hair a shade unflatteringly called "dishwater blond" and liberally streaked at the temples with gray. Her face was lined but her blue eyes were vibrant, even through the tears shimmering in them. She released Duke just after Nathan entered the store, swiping briskly at the water spiking her lashes together.
"I'm sorry." She said, her voice husky and a little rough around the edges. "I had no right to do that."
"No, you didn't." Duke agreed tautly.
She stepped back. Nathan could tell from the rigid set of Duke's shoulders that he was restraining himself with great difficulty. His fists were clenched so hard the knuckles were white. The woman took all this in and her lips tightened slightly.
"Please, just listen to me for one minute, Duke." She asked him quietly. "I know I don't deserve it but I never thought I'd see you again and here you are, like a miracle. I'll be damned if I pass up this chance..."
She paused, taking a deep breath and Duke stood in a stony silence but at least he hadn't left.
"Duke, I'm so sorry." The woman said with painful sincerity. "I failed you miserably as a mother and there isn't a day that I don't regret that with all of my heart. I love you. I always loved you – I just sucked at it."
Grace had one hand covering her mouth and her eyes were misty. Her empathy was strong enough that she was on the verge of tears, between the woman's pain and Duke's. The woman continued, ignoring Duke's implacable fury.
"I need you to know that it wasn't you - it was never you. When you feel like no one could possibly love you - and don't pretend that you don't feel that way, I know too well how rejection from your mother creates insecurities - just know that it isn't true. You are everything a mother - I - could ever have hoped for. I'm so proud of the man you are, even though I know I have no right to be, and I'm so very glad you're alive." Her voice broke on a sob.
"Be happy." She choked out in a strangled whisper before whirling on one heel, heading to the back of the store. She didn't look back and they saw her remove her store apron and hand it to the manager. She disappeared through an "employee only" entrance. Grace rested a gentle hand on Duke's shoulder. He was fairly vibrating with pain and anger.
"Duke! I'm sorry. I should have warned you that your mother was back in Haven." Nathan said weakly from the door.
"What can I do?" Grace asked him quietly.
"Nothing." He answered bleakly. "Just give me some space."
He whirled in a move that mimicked the woman's and left through the front door. Grace and Nathan looked at each other, helpless worry for Duke reflected on their faces. Nathan pulled out his cell an pushed a button.
"Gloria? We've got a situation with Duke." He said grimly. "No. Paige isn't the one to handle this. Duke just ran into his mother at Bob's B8 shop – I don't know where he's gone off to."
He listened in silence and then put away his phone. Grace looked at him questioningly.
"He has a different sort of connection to Gloria." Nathan explained. "If anyone can reach him right now it will be her. She said she had a pretty good idea of where he would be."
Grace nodded but the worry didn't leave her eyes – or Nathan's.
The beach was tiny and pebbly and secluded. Duke wandered the length of it, bending down to grab a handful of pebbles and tossing them into the water one at a time. He sighed with resignation when the crunching of footsteps on the rocky shore announced the arrival of someone.
"No. I don't want to talk." He told whoever it was, tossing another rock. "I'm fine. Leave me alone."
"Oh kid," said Gloria, her voice rich with sympathy, "I wouldn't want to talk either but I'm not leaving you alone either. Not just yet."
"Seriously, Gloria, just leave it – okay?" He refused to look at her so she planted herself right in front of him.
"Kid, there's something you gotta know." She told him seriously. Duke's shoulders braced for a blow.
His mother, meanwhile, had returned to her small home. It was a simple stone cottage with one bedroom, a living room that would hold no more than three or four people, a tiny kitchen and a remarkably large and luxurious bathroom. She put a kettle on to boil and then sat at her two person table and cried, her head pillowed on her arms.
Grief that she'd never lose tore through her with harsh sobs. Regret for wasted years and bad choices boiled in her but through it all there was joy that the child she'd thought was gone forever was, in fact, alive and well. The simple fact that he was alive eventually dried her tears. She washed her face in the sink and made herself a spicy herbal tea redolent with cinnamon. She took it out to her garden in the back – green with the spring planting she'd been working on for the past week and smelling of healthy soil and fertilizer.
She didn't hear the knocking on her door as she sat on her swinging chair and rocked slowly, reaching for the uneasy peace that she had known before her son had walked into the shop where she had been employed until that moment.
"Is it true? You were troubled?"
She jerked and winced as hot tea sloshed over her hand. Duke leaned warily against the back door, his arms folded defensively.
"Who told you about that?" She questioned, buying time. "Gloria!" She cursed a moment later, furious. "She had no right!"
"Just answer the question." He demanded. "I have a right to know."
"You do," she agreed, "but only if you want to know. She shouldn't have told you."
"Tell me." He pushed but the harsh edge of his voice was smoothing a little. She looked at him, her bruised heart aching for a connection but knowing that ship had sailed. But he was right, he had a right to know.
"My family has been troubled for centuries, just like the Crockers." She told him slowly. "It affected the women."
"What was it? What could possibly make a woman reject her own child?"
"Love." She whispered harshly. "Love triggered it. They handed you to me in the hospital and I fell so completely in love with you and then…"
"Your trouble activated." He prompted when her voice trailed off.
"Everything anyone was feeling within two hundred yards of me poured into me." She told Duke, looking him straight in the eye. "Everything. I almost passed out. I started drinking that week and was on hard drugs before you were a year old. Anything to blur the emotions that pounded on me all the time."
Duke looked faintly sick. He remembered Ezra Colbert and how erratic the man was.
"So you were an addict because of your trouble?"
"It was a lousy solution but it was all I could think of under the onslaught. Alcohol worked for a little while, harder drugs for longer."
She swung silently for several minutes, wrestling with something. Just as he was about to turn and leave she took a deep breath, her gaze focused fiercely on the apple tree in the center of her garden.
"I knew who you were, that day." She confessed, her voice harsh with emotion. His eyes narrowed.
"Boston?" He asked her, disbelief filling his voice. She nodded, her eyes never moving from the tree.
"I didn't care - I just wanted something to drown them out. The girl contemplating suicide on the roof of her apartment building, the man planning to cheat on his wife with his secretary, the secretary who hated her boss but needed the job... all of it. I wanted it gone again. But it worked out in the end. I had a complete breakdown after you left – wound up in a mental institute. It was like a vacation. Psych drugs tend to smooth out the emotions, you see. The people around me were floating in a fog, for the most part. Even a lot of the staff were on medication. For the first time in decades I could think without being swamped with outside feelings."
Duke was still processing as she continued.
"I began to build a framework for coping. After two years in Boston I contacted Vince Teagues and he got me transferred to the Freddie."
"You were in Haven that whole time?" Duke was shocked.
"I was in the Freddie the whole time. Mostly I stayed in my room. Before he transferred to the Medical Facility Doctor Lucassi made a treatment plan that allowed me to isolate myself. There was a cottage on the grounds where I stayed – people would bring me my food and medications but mostly I just read and gardened and kept to myself."
Duke tried to squash a feeling of sympathy. She seemed to sense it and gave him a brief, twisted smile.
"That was your real curse, you know." She told him sadly. "You thought it was being a killer but anyone can be a killer. Your curse is that you inherited just enough of my curse to empathize with others. Killing with compassion is torture – and I knew you had it, you see. I felt it the very first time I held you. The Devoe curse had finally jumped into a male and you were that lucky guy."
"To be a Devoe is to be alone, never give your heart away;
For when you feel love and open your heart, their emotions come in to stay."
She recited softly, almost to herself. Then she gave herself a brief shake and inhaled deeply.
"Anyway, there you have it. Sorry I screwed you up so much kid." She told him with a valiant effort at flippancy. "Now you have something to bring your shrink."
Duke stared at her, his eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched. She looked at him, her eyes soft and understanding.
"It's okay, Duke." She told him. "I'm not expecting a tearful Hallmark moment and I don't expect you to ever forgive me. I'll just be forever grateful that you survived. You go get on with your life. Be happy."
She got up and went to the raised beds farthest from the house and began thinning her lettuce shoots. Tears shimmered in her eyes but didn't fall when she heard the door close quietly behind him. She went from her knees to sitting on the ground and leaned against the side of the raised bed and held her knees tightly. She sat that way for a long time, letting her thoughts float aimlessly. It was odd but for the first time in more than thirty years she was simply processing her own emotions, no one else's; odd, but also strangely soothing.