Disclaimer/Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed. If you're not, I won't respond to your comments. Heh.

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends does not belong to me.

Chapter Eleven: Confessional

"All right, maybe I made him run away!" Terrence snapped into the relative silence of the apartment. He paced angrily, glared at the mirror, and heaved a tremendous sigh. For the last few hours, he'd been rehearsing how exactly to tell his mother about Mac without implicating himself. Unfortunately, every excuse was feebler than the last. He was growing exceedingly frustrated.

Telling her Mac had gone plumb crazy, screamed at him, and then took off wouldn't work either. But he couldn't tell her the truth- he'd decided on that a while ago. After all, explaining to her not only had he permitted Mac to take off, but he hadn't told her a week ago would put him in possibly the biggest trouble of his life. Besides, it wasn't like it was completely his fault. Er, right?

Yet the nightmares he had involving his younger brother and horrific deaths, including one where he awoke screaming, convinced Mac had been run over by a tractor trailer, told a different story. The guilt was burning into him and searing any chances of a normal day. It destroyed his dreams, obliterated sleep, and reduced him to this. He'd never suspected before that not only did he have a conscience, but that he actually cared about him enough to enact it. Sighing, he dragged his fingers through his unruly hair and glared at his reflection as though it had betrayed him.

Yes, lay the blame on someone else so he didn't have to think about the repercussions of his actions. Unfortunately, that tactic hadn't worked well on Monday and now utterly failed him. He had to resort to Plan B, loath though he was to touch it. He had to tell the truth.

"Okay, so maybe Mac and I got into a little fight and he said some things, I said some things, and then he ran away, but it's not my fault!" he protested, eying the mirror and then falling to his knees as if to plead with it. The Terrence reflection gave him a cool, apprehending look like it wasn't buying his story either. And the reflection behind that…dropped her bag on the floor in surprise. Oops.

Shuffling around on his knees, he glanced up to find his mother, thunderstruck, staring right back at him. Her jaw agape, she peered at him like she'd never seen him before. For a moment, she merely stared dead ahead, unable to speak. Silence fell upon the apartment and he quickly rose to his feet. He had to say something, especially since the astonishment was being replaced by fury. Surely she wouldn't be too angry with him…

"Mom, it's not my fault! I mean, how can you predict what that kid's gonna do? He's like a teapot ready to explode-" he protested, but she grabbed him by his collar. Up close, he saw the red eyes, but not entirely from exhaustion and stress. No, this was because other than her husband leaving her, this was the angriest she'd quite possibly ever been in her life. Terrence gulped, averting his eyes. This was bad. No, that was an understatement. This was cataclysmic.

"Let me get this straight. Mac has been missing for almost a week now and not only do you know why he ran away, but you've been hiding it from me? And not only that, but you're the reason he ran away?" she growled, hoisting him with alarming ease over to the couch where she half flung, half laid him down. Terrence unconsciously wormed his way to the corner and grabbed a pillow as if to shield himself from her temper. Her brown eyes flashed dangerously as she threw herself into the easy chair and glared at him.

"Start explaining."

A half hour later, his mother, cup of tea in hand, sat calmly back down in the chair. A moment passed in which Terrence poked a hole in his corduroy shirt and she sipped. The clock behind them ticked steadily and the faucet dripped like Chinese water torture. Badly, he longed for something to break the silence, anything to let him know the extent of his punishment. He wondered if it was too late to plea with her.

Finally, when the tension escalated and he opened his mouth, she spoke. To his astonishment, no anger remained in her voice, merely shock and dismay. Her fingers wrapped around the warm mug and she inhaled the rich aroma of Earl Grey. Whenever she was truly upset, she always prepared a cup and had even made hot cocoa for him. However, he hadn't touched his, laying on the coffee table. His stomach clenched and twisted too much to permit him to try it.

"Why didn't you tell me you felt this way?" she inquired and sighed, looking older than her thirty some odd years. Indeed, she felt like it too. She ought to have guessed, but with her jobs and now, her anxiety over Mac, she'd overlooked the possibility. Now she wished she'd been more attentive to her children than her jobs or at least managed to balance them better.

"Huh? What way?" he replied, dumbstruck. "You're not mad at me anymore?"

Maybe, just maybe, his story had persuaded her that he wasn't the one at fault here. Unfortunately, he hadn't figured out who was, in fact, but if she thought it was someone else, then he was in the clear. Normally, he'd grin triumphantly and pump his fists in the air, but strangely, the victory seemed hollow. Even if he was indeed "off the hook", Mac was still missing. He hated to admit it, especially to himself, but he worried about the little guy. His stomach twisted again as he recalled the sound of him smacking into the truck's grille.

"Oh, believe me, Terrence, I'm furious with you. That's not going to change so easily," she said and then sighed again. Okay…the more she sipped her tea and remained calm, the worse his nerves handled it. If she was so furious, why wasn't she screaming? Why was she just sitting there and looking at him? Ranting and raving he understood well…but not this, the chilly reception. He'd never been subject to it before from her and it bewildered him.

"Then why aren't you screaming at me?" he said stupidly, blinking. "And punishing me?"

"The punishment will come later," she snapped icily, fingers tightening around the mug to the point where her knuckles whitened. Little steam tendrils rose into the air and then vanished. Meanwhile, on the table, his hot cocoa cooled.

Silent once more, he gazed at the coffee table instead of her. A mug clinked beside it and she knelt down to lift his head. Abashed, he glanced away, but she neither returned to her former position nor released his chin. His eyes darted towards the clock and he swallowed hard, guilty again. His mother was already ten minutes late for her second job and, by the look of things, wasn't coming in at all. His guilt doubled.

"Mom, your job…" he protested weakly. "You're going to miss work-"

Shaking her head, she placed her hands on either side of his face to force him to look at her. This he did, albeit reluctantly. Every second ticking away meant another wasted dollar thanks to him. Then again, he'd already caused sleepless nights and exhausted days, so the pursuit of fleeting money shouldn't have been too foreign. Grr, why had his conscience chosen now of all times to pipe up and annoy him? Things would have been a hell of a lot better if he'd simply been born without one.

"While I was waiting for the pot to boil, I called in sick. This is more important than secretarial work," she asserted, releasing his cheeks. The instant her hands left his face, he glanced at the clock; she had to steer him back again.

"Why didn't you tell me you felt this way?" she repeated, brown eyes rooting him to the spot. He swallowed hard, unable to look away. His stomach churned again.

"Wasn't it kind of obvious?" he said quietly. "I mean, you've seen me ripping on Mac…"

She sighed, rising to her feet and staring out the window. Condensation on the glass obscured the wonderful view of weeds and a parking lot nature slowly reclaimed. She wiped it stubbornly, then turned around to face him; her arms folded across her chest. Raven hair hung limply, the product of careless washing and fatigue. Half heartedly, she shook her head.

"That I knew about. I may be at work three quarters of the time, but I'm not blind or stupid. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how much you resent him and your father," she said softly and he hung his head. All of a sudden, his feelings were not only important, but valued. It was a very new and rather uncomfortable concept. He'd rather go back to being ignored than discuss this.

Grabbing her mug, she seated herself beside him. He finally retrieved his own only to discover it had already gone cold. Ah, well. That was the way everything was here. As soon as he wanted something, it lost its appeal or was no longer available. His granite eyes swept the brown carpet.

"Your father and I got married at a young age. We thought we were in love and…for a period of time, I guess we were. He had just gotten out of college and I was struggling to pay for it myself. He offered me paradise compared to what I was used to and I thought that was what I wanted. Then again, I thought he was what I wanted.

"When I became pregnant with you, he warned me that his father had left him when he was a little younger than Mac is now. He said that he wanted to be better than that for the sake of us, but I could tell being a father made him jittery. He started staying out later, sometimes not coming back until odd hours of the night, and he was always very nervous around you, like you might spontaneously explode.

"As you got older, he was getting a little better, but he still wasn't comfortable with being a father. I sought counseling for the two of us, but there's little any one can do when one party refuses to admit they have a problem. But on his own, he seemed to be coping better and when you were five, I thought he could handle it. So I told him I was pregnant with Mac.

"He panicked. He wanted me to have an abortion and when I refused, we began to argue fiercely. I don't know if you remember this, but a few months before Mac was born, your father threw a pot…and it knocked you out cold. We spent the night in the emergency room thanks to that, but while we were sitting there, your father was second guessing himself. How could he raise another child when he couldn't even deal with what he had right now?

"But he was wrong. When Mac was born, he doted on him. I thought for sure everything would be all right. That was, until Mac was two- yes, the year before your father left. He started getting antsy again, like he had when you were a toddler, and complained he couldn't deal with the marriage or you two.

"Then he decided he couldn't handle it any more and told me he was leaving for a little while. That little while became a week, a month, and then a year. I received divorce papers in the mail and that was that. We were finished.

"Do you know whyI'm telling you all this? Not to make you blame Mac, but for you to realize it's not his fault or yours. Your father got frightened and thought I'd be a better parent alone for his two children than he would. Mac didn't make him leave and there's no reason to blame him for it. I'm sure deep down, you realized that.

"Now, I'm going to ask you again, do you know where your little brother is?"

Awestruck, processing everything she'd said, he couldn't even begin to explain that he couldn't because he didn't know, when the phone rang. It jarred him out of his reflective state and, taken aback herself, his mother let it rang a couple times before answering. Silence reigned in the apartment while she listened and he forced his brain to accept the past. Already, he struggled to alleviate all the resentment he'd placed squarely on Mac's shoulders.

"That…was your father," she said, placing the receiver down. "He's in Townsville."

Rising swiftly, she strode over to the coat rack and retrieved hers and then tossed Terrence his. He caught it deftly, off guard but at least good with hand-eye coordination.

"And you're coming with me to get him."