WARNING: Very, very dark chapter.

Wednesday evening, Charlie, Michael, and Fiona were eating dinner at home. Charlie was in the middle of a robust and dramatic rendition of The Farmer in the Dell, the latest song he'd learned at school. Fiona was holding her tongue so as not to stifle his artistry, but as soon as he was finished, she was going to tell him why no self-respecting human should "take" a wife.

A ringing cell phone interrupted the performance. Michael reached for his phone on the counter. "Hey, Ma. How're you doing? . . . What? . . . When? . . . Jesus Christ. Do they know what happened? . . . God . . . No, I know . . . I know . . . Let me, uh, let me talk to Fi and I'll call you back. . . . All right. . . . Yep . . . Okay, bye." He put the phone down softly next to his plate and kept his eyes down.

Fiona waited.

Finally he looked up with water in his eyes. Then he looked to Charlie, who was organizing his carrot sticks by length. He cleared his throat. "Charlie, Auntie Fi and I are gonna go to our room for just a minute. Wait for us out here, okay? You can put on your Thomas DVD if you want."

"Yay Thomas!" Television around dinner time was a rare treat. He abandoned his carrot project and bounded into the living room. Michael and Fiona walked to their room and closed the door.

He sat down on the bed while she stood. "Ruth committed suicide," he said, looking right into Fiona's eyes.

Her eyes filled with tears as she sat down with him. "Oh my god."

Michael tried to control his voice. "Apparently she checked herself out of the hospital on Monday. She was supposed to call to schedule an outpatient visit. They tried her a few times yesterday and this morning, and then her psychiatrist called the police to go check on her this afternoon. She, umm, she –"

Fiona made no attempt to stop her tears. "What?" she choked out.

"She turned on the car and closed the garage door. Had a bottle of Ambien in her lap. "

Fiona wailed harder. She ran into the bathroom so Charlie wouldn't hear her. A minute later she vomited into the toilet.

Michael walked slowly to the bathroom. He'd stopped crying. And now he had no expression. He handed her a towel after she finished rinsing her mouth and wiping her face.

"What the fuck was she thinking?" she spat. "How could she do that? How could she DO THAT!" she screamed. Michael closed the bathroom door to put another barrier between Charlie and the new reality.

"How could she do that to him? After everything he's has been through, she's going to destroy his life? He's never going to recover from this, Michael. You can't recover from this. No matter what we tell him, for the rest of his life he's going to think his mother didn't love him. He's going to blame himself for her, for Nate, for everything." She breathed heavily for a minute. "I hope she burns in hell for what she did to him. I really do."

Michael was silent.

"Are you going to say anything?"

He didn't answer.

"Don't do this, Michael," she warned. "Do not shut down. I can't do this by myself. I cannot do this by myself. You can't shut down on us."

He looked at her. "I have to go to my mom's," he said without inflection. "Do you want to go or stay here?"

She looked at him for a few moments, searching for emotion. "I'll go," she finally said. "Who – "

"I'll call Jesse," he answered before she finished. "Sam and Elsa are with that couple she met."

"Okay." She took some deep, shaky breaths and worked to collect herself. She shuddered at her reflection in the mirror, then splashed some cool water on her face.

"Jess," Michael was saying into the phone. "Are you free for a couple hours? . . . Would you mind staying with Charlie? . . . Yeah, we're fine. We, uhh, we need to go to my mom's because, uhh, hmm. Because Ruth killed herself. . . . Yeah. . . . No, I'm okay. Obviously Charlie doesn't know. . . . All right, we'll see you in a bit. 'Preciate it."

Michael used his finger to end the call and used his arm to put the phone in his pocket. Other than that, he didn't move.

Fiona waited. "Michael, will you please talk to me?"

"I can't," he said flatly. "I can listen, but I can't talk."

It felt like hours, but it was only a few minutes until Michael and Fiona emerged from their room. They weren't cheerful by any stretch, but they were composed enough to be with Charlie while they waited for Jesse. Charlie, for his part, didn't acknowledge their return. Thomas is a boy's best friend.

Thirteen minutes later, Jesse knocked on the door. Fiona knew she'd burst into tears and/or rage again, so she gestured for Michael to let him in.

Michael opened the door, preparing himself to block out Jesse's well-intentioned words. "Hey. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it," he said, slapping Jesse on the back.

"Oh, hey, you know, don't even mention it. Don't mention it. I got the easy job." He laughed nervously.

Michael took a deep breath. "All right, so he's eaten and he knows you're going to stay with him and that we won't be home before he goes to sleep. Uhhh . . . don't worry about anything else. He can sleep wherever he wants. We'll move him later if we need to."

"Got it. We'll be cool." Jesse hesitated before continuing. "Listen, man, I'm really sorry. I don't know what to say. If there's anything else I can do, just name it and it's done. Anything."

"Thanks, Jesse. Fi? You ready?"

She nodded and got up from the couch where she'd been staring at Charlie. "Bye bye, Charlie. I love you. We'll see you in the morning." She kissed the top of his head, then walked to the door and hugged Jesse. The sight of her tiny frame wrapped around his hulking one just emphasized the frailty Michael had seen two days earlier. "Thank you, Jesse. I can't talk to you or I'm going to lose it again, so I've got to go right now." She hurried out to the car.

"Bye, Charlie," Michael called. "Love you."

"Love you, too, Uncuh Micuh."

Madeline was sitting on the couch, smoking, when they walked in the front door. She looked at them but didn't say anything. Her eyes were puffy, red slits.

Fiona walked over to the couch and sat down next to her. They hugged hard and long. Michael stayed standing. And nobody said anything.

"I texted her Saturday," Madeline finally said in a gravelly voice. "Wanted to talk about her maybe flying in for Charlie's party. I didn't hear back from her." She snubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the side table next to the couch. "Guess I know why."

Michael and Fiona were quiet.

Madeline cleared her throat. "I've been in touch with, um, with her brother. He doesn't know for sure what they're doing, but he thinks probably they'll just have a private service, if they do anything at all. Did you know her mom killed herself as well?"

They both let out breaths of surprise. "No, I didn't," Fiona answered. "Did Nate ever mention anything?" she asked Michael. He shook his head.

"Honest to god, I doubt Nate knew," said Maddie. "Matt said it was this huge taboo in their family. Nobody ever talked about it."

Michael sat on the arm of one of the chairs and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"In fact, you know what he said? He said they didn't tell him or Ruth that their mom was dead for a year. Can you believe that? A year. They told them she ran off. He was fifteen and Ruth was eleven when she died, and they let them believe for a year that their mother abandoned them."

Michael and Fiona didn't say anything. They were too stunned.

"The only reason they found out was that Matt found some letter about death benefits or something." A bizarre smile formed on Madeline's face. "And with all that, with everything she knew, Ruth did the same goddamned thing."

"It's genetic, Ma," Michael said quietly. "She was depressed, she'd tried at least once before, and now with her mom – "

"Don't fucking defend her, Michael!" Madeline shouted.

Michael shook his head, looked away, and took a big breath, holding his tongue.

Fiona took Madeline's hand and held it tightly. "I'm furious, too, Madeline. I understand." She exhaled deeply. "But for the moment we've got to figure out where we go from here. I mean, custody, guardianship . . . I don't even know what all is involved."

"Matt's really the only one who could try to get custody. He and his wife. Their other brother is an addict somewhere. Their dad has dementia. Matt wants to help, but he also wants what's best for Charlie, and at least as of this afternoon he thought that meant not uprooting him again." She snorted. "At least there's one sane one in that family," she muttered.

"We need to talk to a lawyer," Michael said, hoping that sentence wouldn't set his mother off. "Who'd you use when you got Charlie?"

"I didn't. Ruth did it in Vegas. She just gave me a power of attorney for him."

"I'll get some recommendations," said Michael. "We'll figure out what's next."

Madeline coughed and cleared her throat again. She opened her mouth to talk, then hesitated.

"What, Madeline?" asked Fiona.

"You should have custody."

"What?" Fiona wrinkled her brow and looked at Madeline in confusion. "What are you talking about?" She looked at Michael while waiting for Madeline to answer. His jaw had dropped. He was trying to collect himself, but there was no hiding his shock.

"I'm not going to live forever. He needs young people. He needs two people."

"Madeline, you're 68," Fiona laughed nervously. "You've got plenty of time left."

"I don't know about that. I'm feeling pretty mortal these days." She coughed again. This time it took her a while to catch her breath. "I rest my case."

"Ma, you've got a virus," Michael said, rolling his eyes. "You're not going to die."

"Haven't you been the one hassling me about lung cancer and emphysema and whatnot all these years?"

"Look, this is not the time to make this kind of decision," he said. "We'll find a lawyer and we'll go from there."

Madeline nodded. "All right. What are you going to tell Charlie?"

Michael looked at her like she was crazy. "What do you mean, what am I going to tell Charlie? Nothing."

She threw her arms up in disgust. "Michael, did you not just hear what I said about her mother?"

"Yes, I heard it, but they were teenagers. He's not even three."

"We can't not tell him, Michael."

"Yes we can. For a while. Jesus, Ma."

Fiona broke in. "He's not asking about her much at the moment, Madeline. Let's just – let's follow his cue. When he starts asking about her more, we'll figure out how to tell him."

Madeline nodded grudgingly. She leaned back on the couch and took some long drags.

Fiona looked to the kitchen. "Have you eaten anything?"

"No."

"Can I make you something?"

"No, I don't want anything. Where's Charlie, by the way?"

"Jesse's with him at home."

Madeline smiled. "Good. They're good for each other." She snubbed out her latest cigarette. "You should get back to him."

"We can stay, Madeline. Jesse's fine and Charlie's not expecting us back."

"No, go. I'm going to try to go to bed."

"How about I make you something in case you get hungry?" Fiona suggested. "You said it's hard to manage with that thing." Madeline still had a hard cast on her wrist.

"Really, honey, I'm fine," she told Fiona, patting her hand. "Thank you, though." She looked at Michael. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Well, obviously I've had better days, Ma, but I figured that goes without saying. Am I going to fall apart? No. So I'm fine."

"Whatever. I'm too tired to argue." She sighed and looked around. "So you'll call me tomorrow? About a lawyer?"

"We'll call you in any event, and I'll work on a lawyer."

"All right." She turned to Fiona and they hugged each other, again long and hard. Then she looked to Michael and held out her arms. They hugged the same way they always do: she holds on and he waits to be released.

Michael was driving them home. He and Fiona didn't talk at all for a couple of minutes. If it were up to him, he wouldn't've talked at all. But it wasn't up to him.

"What do you think about what your mom said?"

He stared straight ahead at the road. Fiona waited for him to say something, but when it was clear he wasn't going to talk, she started to take off the gloves.

"Michael, why do you think your shock somehow entitles you to shut down? You think I'm not going through just as much? You do not have the option of not dealing with this."

He quickly pulled over to the shoulder of the freeway, put the car in park, and turned to face Fiona. "I know exactly how much you're going through, and that's the reason I wasn't going to say anything, but apparently we're doing this. So I say this. Grow up, Fiona. You're 45 years old and you still haven't figured out that people grieve differently? Handle stress differently? What," and here he laughed loudly, "I mean, what, in all the years we've known each other, would make you think that I'm suddenly going to be this geyser of emotion? My entire life has required me to put all that away so I could survive. Survive, Fiona. And I'm not just talking about my work. You know why my dad didn't kill me? Because I learned early on to stop reacting. If I stopped arguing or fighting, if I didn't give him fodder to be even more of an asshole, then he'd go away.

"But sure. I'll play. I'll play. I'm going to allow myself to really feel my grief about Ruth. To know that she killed herself because she was so devastated that my brother died. So then I'll think about how my brother died because I involved him in something he had absolutely no business being involved in. And then I'll just have a good cry while I think about Charlie—my mother's only grandchild, her only link to her dead son—losing both his parents before his third birthday, and it's my fault. And I'll be sure to remember what you said earlier. You know, about how he'll never recover from this.

"And I'll definitely schedule in some time to freak out that I basically have to decide now if I'm ever going back in the field, because we all understand that I can't be in the field if I'm Charlie's de facto father. I'll make sure to focus on the fact that the field, the agency, serving my country has been my identity, my reason to live, for thirty years. You know. Just so I really feel how fucking huge a decision this is." He turned away from her, disgust on his face.

Fiona, of course, was silent. Nobody could say something after that.

Michael waited another few moments, then put the car in drive and pulled back onto the main lanes.

Author's Note: I thought long and hard about if having Ruth die would jump the shark. I hope you agree it's a realistic scenario, given the premise that she was hospitalized for several months due to severe depression. And, though the subject matter is horrible, I hope you liked the writing. I'm proud of this chapter, especially Michael's speech.

Someone mentioned in the comments that I must be a writer or have taken writing classes. That's an incredible compliment, because nope! I'm not and I haven't. I write quite a bit for my job, but it's not creative writing. I've always enjoyed writing, and fortunately it comes pretty naturally.

So, thank you as always for the kind and supportive comments, and please continue to let me know what you think of the story.