The next day a friend had called him and there had been something... off... in the conversation. He'd suspected his mother had asked his friends to look after him and he'd been hurt that his mother felt the need to do this, that she'd felt that his friends had to be asked to do this. He'd felt as if he was observing someone else's life.
He was a good man. Someone once said he was too good for his own sake. Maybe, but he realized that was the only way for him to be. He'd wanted to make all the pressure go away, wished that all the people who wanted something from them would just let them be. So he'd started solving problems. The problems that his father didn't have the chance to solve, the problems that had arisen as a result of his sudden death. One after another, trying to keep his family from falling apart because of the hardship. All that he'd wanted was for his mother to understand that he was tired. That he needed to rest. But she'd been worried about him. Worried about what others might think of him. He'd tried to ignore his worries, hoping that with time his relationship with his mother would return to normal, until the night his mother finally brought up her concerns.
"What're ye going t'do with your life, Carson?" She never called him Carson. It sounded so distant, like it wasn't his name at all.
"Mother, it'll be fine. I'll take all my exams and get a job here."
"There's only one job here, Carson. And ye have t'be really good t'get it."
He'd always had confidence in his skills . He'd always known that if he worked hard enough he could accomplish anything. Until then. His mother - the one who had always had faith in him - doubted him.
"Don't worry, Mum. Everything'll be okay." He hoped she would just say that she believed him and leave it at that.
"Do y'really think that? I've hopes for you... t' become what we dreamt for you. But you're choosing t' take a path that's so wrong."
"Mum, I..." He'd felt there was nothing more he could say. His mother had made up her mind. She didn't want to know how he felt, what he thought, she wanted to tell him something.
"I've sold th' house. And I'm going t'move in with Betty. "
His mother had wanted him gone. Away from her. She'd wanted him to go somewhere else when he finished Med School.
"Is there anythin' I could do that'd make you..."
" I've put an ad in th' paper."
With that his mother had left and Carson had realized that he'd failed. He couldn't save his family.
Time went by and no one came to look at the house. Sometimes Carson thought his mother had changed her feelings towards him, but that happened rarely, and only in the presence of others.
After graduating he was given the opportunity to work in London, at one of the best hospitals. But he chose to remain at home, hoping things would change.
Then John had come to visit. He was in highschool and was the perfect example of what adolescents shouldn't be doing with their youth. But Carson's mother seemed to like him. Love him, actually.
"So, Carson, how's life?"
"Great, lad." He had to be nice to this obnoxious young man, for his mother's sake.
"So, what do ya do?"
"I'm a doctor."
"That's not what I meant."
"That's what you asked."
"How's your social life?"
Carson didn't have a social life. He went to work and then he went home again. He had three colleagues born in the same decade as he was, and they were all men.
"It's okay."
His mother brought in a plate of biscuits and placed it on the table in front of John.
"Carson, stop being mean t' your cousin."
He was a thirty year old man and he was being treated with condescension by an eighteen-year-old who was loved by his mother. That was not how his life was supposed to be.
The next week he'd received a letter from the Health Ministry. It had been a job proposal. In Antarctica. But he'd seen it as a chance to do what he was trained to do. To see if he could be more than a regular physician. To see if he had it in him to be someone.
So he'd left for Antarctica and never looked back. It was a world away from home, but he'd felt no one would miss him back there. And when he'd had the chance to go to the lost city of the Ancients, he'd been happy to take the offer. He was finally achieving something.
He'd only had one day to go to Scotland and announce it to his mother. He'd been afraid of her reaction. But she'd been sweet and caring, even loving.
Now he realized it had been a mistake to return home and expect things to have changed. They were both trying to reclaim something that wasn't theirs anymore.
Everything that he was, that he had, was connected to a snowflake far, far away in the Pegasus Galaxy.