Author's Note. Whew, ya'll, this is a long one. Like, I knew it would be when I started, but I'm kind of surprised it clocks in at almost double what the other chapters are. So, yeah, just brace yourself. It takes a while!

Have you read Exeunt yet? This chapter contains major spoilers for Exeunt. If that doesn't bother you, then go forth, my friend! ...But seriously, it's less confusing if you've read Exeunt.

Disclaimer. The characters of The Mummy are the property of Universal Studios. The title and chapter titles are taken from the song "It Ain't Me, Babe" by Johnny Cash (because what could be more fitting than a Johnny Cash song for the Americans?), originally written by Bob Dylan. As far as I know, Blackbird, Texas is a town of my own invention.

IT AIN'T ME, BABE

The Cook Residence: Alexandria, Egypt, 1941

and nothin' more.

Benjamin's mother thought he was asleep, but the truth was, even though he'd properly gorged himself on a fine prime rib and every possible fixing, he couldn't settle himself enough on the sofa to sleep. He could hear his brother snoring away on the sofa across from him, and his sister had slipped up to her room to sleep in a bed. It was about three in the afternoon and it was impossible not to nap after such a luxurious meal in the buzzing, sleepy heat. But Benjamin had always had trouble sleeping, even (or, as his mother said, especially) as a baby, and he laid there perfectly still with his eyes closed. He strained his ear to the quiet voices in the other room.

"Oh, there's no news, Jemima. You know that," his Aunt Tamsin was saying, busying herself with pouring tea. "The most interesting thing to happen around here is that neighbor we've acquired two doors down."

"In the yellow house?" his mother asked with an interest he knew was forced.

Aunt Tamsin let out a sigh. "Yes. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how I feel about him being in the neighborhood."

"Oh?" his mother's voice was genuinely interested now. "Why?"

Tamsin cleared her throat, and probably leaned closer. "Well, he's a criminal."

"What sort?"

"Oh, darling...tell me you were here when that Arab general killed his wife."

In the quiet stillness of the afternoon, he heard his mother suck in a little breath. "I wasn't. But I heard about it."

"The whole story?"

"Well. It's been a few years. But I imagine I remember it well enough."

"It was all on account of that torturer. You remember?"

Jemima paused. After a while, she said, "Of course."

"Well - he's the one who's moved in."

It was quiet for a moment. He could hear - or imagined he heard - his mother breathing very deeply. After a second, she said something that he couldn't quite hear, and then Tamsin said:

"Yes, that's right. How do you know him?"

"Darling, surely you remember he's the man who found the rebels who blew up the Beaumonts' house."

Tamsin gasped. "Oh, dear. I must have forgotten."

"It's been a number of years, I suppose."

"Well, certainly. But just the same. I should remember a thing like that. Gracious, I believe I even met him once now..."

Jemima let out a loud sigh. "Just down the street, is he?"

"Yes." Tamsin paused, and said in a voice that was curious but subdued, "Did you know him?"

Benjamin frowned in the strange quiet that followed, and strained his ear desperately for the sound of his mother's voice.

"I should say I knew him quite well," she said at last, and sucked back a sob.

"Oh, dearest, what is it?"

He listened to his mother's uneasy breathing for a moment as she struggled to collect herself. And then she whispered in a forlorn voice, "Oh, Tamsin, I must tell somebody. I'm aching from it."

"Jemima, you're worrying me."

"Please...I've kept it to myself for years now, and it's bloody near eating me alive."

"What is it?"

"Tamsin," his mother took a breath. "Tamsin, that man is Benji's father."

Benjamin's whole body froze. Her words hit him like a sledgehammer, and he could barely hear his aunt's shocked reaction over the pounding of blood in his ears. His stomach churned with an urgent, sickened feeling, though all the while a strange and calming sentiment started to warm its way down his limbs.

I knew it.

The words spread through his face and down his neck like a heady gulp of liquor. Certainly he hadn't known that this neighbor of his aunt's was his father; how could he know something like that? But he knew, he'd always known, that there was something wrong between him and his father. Between him and the man he thought was his father. Always, always he'd known that. Despite every desperate attempt on both of their parts to find a connection, he'd perpetually found himself removed from the man. How long had he wondered what was wrong with him? Why could Lionel, who wasn't even his father's son, be so close and natural to him, while Benjamin struggled for even a shred of familiarity? He'd always felt there was nothing between them, no matter how hard he searched. No matter how hard he tried to like the things his father liked and act the way his father acted. Nothing about him was natural or meaningful or inherent to Benjamin. And he supposed he'd known all along that he didn't belong to David Daniels.

He supposed even though he should have been, he wasn't angry over it.

But who was this man he belonged to? He blinked hard against the swarm of shocked thoughts in his head and strained to listen again, to pick his way back into the conversation...

"Oh, but Jemima, have you seen him? The man is positively grotesque."

"I saw him once," she said softly. "Years ago, when we came to visit right after Betsy was born. He was a mess. You wouldn't believe what those rebels did to him in prison."

"Oh, Jemima, I'd believe anything. They're animals."

"They castrated him."

"No!"

"They did."

Tamsin sighed. "Well, I suppose he's only gotten worse. You know that girl he was married to, that mayor's daughter - "

"Evelyn."

"Yes, Evelyn. You think I'd remember a thing like that. We went to university together you know...Anyway. You know she shot him."

"No...I didn't know that."

"Everyone thought he was finished, but he struggled on. And now he lives here."

"You said Evelyn shot him?"

"Oh, yes, darling. It was quite the scandal. He came to her house after he was released from prison, and nobody was home but her. And she was very far along with her son, and according to her, he threatened her or something along those lines...anyway, she felt so endangered, she shot him."

"Shot him where?"

"In the chest, I think. Or shoulder, perhaps. Anyway, she didn't kill him, but he wasn't in good shape to begin with."

"Oh, darling, he was an absolute mess when I saw him. Do you know he was using a cane?"

"Jemima, he can't even walk now. He's in a wheelchair."

His mother sucked back a breath, like she'd touched something that burned. "Oh, the poor man. Is there anything left for him at all? I mean, even if he doesn't deserve it...I know he doesn't, after all he's done. But isn't there...Isn't there anything in all the world he has that's good?"

Tamsin was very quiet for the sliver of a moment before saying, perhaps against her better judgment, "Well...there's Benjamin."

Benjamin's body tensed, and he held his breath in a silence that seemed to last an eternity before his aunt asked plaintively:

"Does he know...about Benjamin?"

"Yes," Jemima told her quietly.

"Has he ever tried to...make a connection with him?"

"No. Thank God."

Tamsin sighed. "Darling, I'd never say I thought Benjamin belonged to anyone but David...but I must tell you, I've always found it rather suspicious how quickly you got yourself in trouble with a millionaire's baby."

Jemima let out a bitter little laugh.

"That was, until you told me Betsy was on the way. Then I figured you were just so very prone to babies, it couldn't be helped."

Jemima sighed. "Well, I suppose I was prone to babies..."

"Does David know?" Tamsin asked suddenly.

"Of course not," Jemima said in a nervous - almost fretful - voice. "Darling, I can't even imagine what he'd do if he knew. He adores Benjamin. Just adores him."

"Well, he should. Benji's a dear young man. And he's been a father to him, more than Beni Gabor ever has."

Benjamin tried not to suck in a breath too loudly. Beni Gabor. So that was his father's name. He wasn't a Daniels; he was a Gabor. He belonged to some tragically deformed man who lived just down the street.

Just down the street.

He laid there very still and opened his eyes. He stared up at the ceiling, his brow furrowed in consternation. Everything about him and inside him felt light and fuzzy and removed, like he and his body were two very seperate entities, and one couldn't control the other. He was disappointed when their conversation fell to a kind of quiet solace, and then Tamsin changed the subject altogether. Desperately, his mind traced back over the words he'd just overheard, concentrating to re-acquaint himself with everything they'd said about his real father. So many words crowded each other in his mind, and none of them were good. Grotesque. Wheelchair. Prison. Castrated. Torturer. Who was this man? How had he come to be Benjamin's father?

Of course Benjamin knew how technically-speaking, but how? Had his mother been having an affair with him? Had it been some fluke of a mistake? Had he raped her?

How had it happened?

He fidgeted, trying hopelessly to calm this new anxious surge of energy pounding in his veins. He forgot all about the heat and the sleepy meal. Cautiously, he sat up, casting a little glance towards the kitchen.

He could ask his mother about this man. But what would she say? She'd managed to lie to him and her husband and absolutely everyone else for the past seventeen years. Why wouldn't she lie again? It was in her best interest to lie again, after all. And even if she did tell the truth, she'd probably discourage him from meeting Beni Gabor. Maybe she'd even do something to prevent it.

No, if Benjamin wanted to meet his father and really find out who he was, he was going to have to do it all on his own.

He was only just down the street.

Benjamin took a deep breath, and his whole body tingled when he stood up off of the couch. He glanced nervously towards the kitchen again, but there was only the sound of his aunt and mother happily twittering about old gossip, that dark and horrid secret released like a crow and forgotten.

But Benjamin hadn't forgotten.

He crept quietly across the room to the front door. He'd always been very good at sneaking out, much to Lionel's chagrin. With surprisingly steady fingers, he grasped the doorknob and turned it slowly, inching the door open as silently as the hinges could allow. He pulled it open just far enough for his slight form to escape through, and -

"Goin' somewhere?"

He bit back the surprised yelp that was ready to burst out of his mouth, and turned his wide eyes to his brother, laying there smugly on the couch.

"Shut up," he hissed, glancing at the kitchen again.

Lionel frowned, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. Before Benjamin could beg him not to, he sat up, following his darting eyes to the kitchen and back again.

"If you're going to shoot craps or somethin', 'least you can do is take me with you," he whispered.

Benjamin shook his head. "I ain't."

Lionel breathed a quiet sigh, gazing up at him with smug, half-lidded eyes. "You either take me with you, or I tell Ma you left."

"Goddamnit," he muttered. "Fine. Come on then."

Lionel smirked, striding happily behind his brother to the door. Benji watched him anxiously. "You gotta be quiet, though."

"I am bein' quiet."

"You're not. That's why you always get caught. That's your whole goddamn problem."

Lionel rolled his eyes and slipped out behind him, side-stepping him on the porch so that Benjamin could close the door in his silent, expert way. They glanced at one another, and hurried briskly away from the house and down onto the sidewalk. Benjamin didn't slow down until they'd passed two houses and stood well out of sight of the kitchen window. He blinked heavily in the bright, overbearing sunlight and glanced up and down the block thoughtfully.

"So where're you goin' anyhow?"

Benjamin huffed a sigh. "I heard Ma and Aunt Tamsin talkin' about somethin'. I wanna find out about it."

Lionel perked up in interest. "What's that they were talkin' about?"

Benjamin's mouth twisted thoughtfully. He'd stumbled upon his mother's secret purely by coincidence, and he knew it was probably best if he kept it to himself. But Lionel was already out here with him. And Lionel was his brother - the only real friend he even had...and besides, Lionel's real father wasn't David Daniels, either. Maybe he could understand a little.

He glanced up and down the street nervously again, and pulled his brother closer. He told him what he'd heard his mother say about his real father. Lionel took a step back and stared at him with wide eyes.

"Are you serious?"

Benji scoffed. "Why would I make that up?"

"That's nuts."

Benjamin shifted his weight nervously. "I'm gonna go see him."

Lionel let out a sigh, eyeing his brother with a look of something like caution and disapproval. "I don't know about that, Benji..."

"Well I don't care what you 'know' about it," his brother retorted. "I wanna see him. I...I gotta see him."

Lionel's mouth twitched with uncertainty. "Benji..."

"Hey," Benjamin told him impatiently, his eyes narrowed and grave. "You can't tell me you wouldn't wanna meet your real dad if you could. Bad idea or not, he lives two doors down. You really think I'm s'posed to just diddle around in there and never meet him?"

Lionel let out a defeated sigh and glanced at his feet. "Okay. I just...ya know...you need to be careful."

Benjamin scoffed, and said a little more bitterly than he meant to: "Well, he's neutered and in a wheelchair, so I think I can handle it."

Lionel balked. "What? Neutered? Like...like..."

Benjamin shrugged helplessly. "That's what I heard Ma say. Happened to him in prison."

Lionel grimaced, a shiver visibly taking over his body. "Shit."

"Yeah..." Benji kicked at a rock in the dust and let out a sigh. His gaze slipped tentatively to the house they were standing in front of, and his breath caught in his throat as he realized it was the very house his aunt had indicated as his father's. When he'd left the house, he'd only meant to get away as quickly as possible and then figure out where his father lived. But here he was, in front of the only yellow house on the block. He stared at it, searching for some hint or suggestion of the man who lived inside, but it was aggravatingly mum on details. The yard was just as scorched as all the other yards on the street; the siding could use a fresh coat of paint, but was several years from peeling off into destitution.

"Let me come with you," Lionel said.

Benjamin's head jerked up, and he started to tell his brother that he didn't want him to come...but he just couldn't say the words. When he looked into Lionel's desperate, sky-colored eyes, he realized two things. The first was that Benjamin was actually about to live a moment that Lionel must have dreamed about his entire life. Lionel had always known Dave wasn't his father. He'd always known his real father was someone he'd never get to meet. But how he must have dreamt, for years and years, of meeting the man responsible for him. What wild, outlandish fantasies he must have entertained, fueled on the vain hope that he might someday get to see Oliver Willoughby in the flesh. And he realized he couldn't send Lionel away during this moment. Lionel had to be there to witness it, if only to know such a thing could happen in real life.

The second thing he realized was that Lionel, broad and handsome though he was, was something of an oaf, and absolutely couldn't sneak back into Tamsin's house without their mother noticing.

He stared into his brother's eyes a moment longer, and nodded his head. He watched Lionel's face lghit in a relieved smile for a moment before letting his gaze drift back to the house they were standing in front of.

"I think this is it," he told his brother softly.

Lionel glanced at it, and then up and down the street, and agreed. "It's the only yellow house on the block." As if Benji wouldn't have noticed a thing like that by now.

He took a breath, and found himself creeping down the walk and up the porch steps, even though he had no reason to be creeping. He heard his brother's heavy footsteps behind him, but never did glance back. The thought occurred to him to say a prayer about ten seconds after he'd already knocked on the door. He heard footsteps from within, and the anxiety in him quieted for a moment; his father was in a wheelchair, and he wasn't going to be looking at the man just yet.

He heard someone struggling with the lock, and then the door swung open. His wide, expectant eyes collided headlong with a middle-aged woman. She stared back at him, a thoughtful frown on her face, and stepped aside to let them in before he could even tell her why they were there. He saw - or imagined he saw - recognition in her eyes.

She shouted something in a language he didn't recognize, and gestured for them to follow her down a hall. Muffled through walls, he heard a man's voice shouting something back in the same language, and his stomach knotted up within him. His heart was pounding too loud for him to notice the sound of a radio playing, and a gentle shove from Lionel reminded him that he had to keep walking.

The woman led them to a cramped little study. A fan worked half-heartedly at pushing the air around, and the windows were open to invite any manner of breeze inside. The radio was turned up, and a British voice was delivering urgent news about the war; a wheelchair faced away from them, and Benji could just make out the chin and the sliver of a man's face as he leaned it against his hand on the arm of the chair. Even over the volume of the radio, he must have heard them walk in, because he leaned around to shoot them a glare for intruding. The sneer slipped from his face and fell to the floor.

The woman muttered some chiding little retort as she lumbered past his chair and turned off the radio, but he ignored her. Benjamin couldn't read the expression on his face. And he couldn't stop staring at his eyes and his nose and his lips and his ears. He wasn't even aware of the shocked way Lionel kept looking between them, his mouth gaping for something to say, and thinking better of it.

A kind of smirk found its way back into Beni Gabor's mouth again. "Hello, Benjamin."

Benjamin swallowed hard, planting his feet to keep his legs from shaking. "You know who I am?"

Beni snickered, and Benjamin got the impression he was amused by his accent. "Of course I do." He raised his eyebrows. "Do you know who I am?"

Benjamin nodded slowly. "You're Beni Gabor."

"Yes." He eyed him with something like expectation.

"You're my father."

Beni's face split in a yellowed grin, and Benjamin found himself staring at the gold teeth there, right in the front. Beni gave a nod into the room.

"Sit down. This is hurting my neck."

Benjamin nodded and darted across the room to the nearest piece of furniture, a sofa not-quite across from Beni's wheelchair. Lionel joined him, and Beni watched him stride across the room with a kind of leering amusement on his face.

"Look at how you have grown, Lionel."

Lionel froze before he could take his seat, and whirled around to stare at Beni with wide eyes.

"You know me, too?"

Beni scoffed, picking up a carton of cigarettes from the end table beside him and drawing one out. "Oh, yes. I used to hold you while your mother got dressed, after I was finished with her." He found his lighter and lit the cigarette, breathing in the first drag. He seemed amused by the disgusted expression on Lionel's face. "Would you like a cigarette?"

Benjamin shifted his weight nervously. "Ma doesn't like it when I smoke - "

Beni laughed and held out the carton to him.

"Then I insist," he said. Benjamin pressed his lips together, and then took the carton with a shrug. He slipped a cigarette between his lips and took the lighter Beni offered. He pretended that the first drag was calming his nerves.

Beni watched him sit down again, a peculiar and studious kind of smile on his face. He was pleased the way people are always pleased when their children undeniably resemble them, and Benjamin found something both comforting and unnerving about the way this man, who was his father, kept looking him over.

"So your mother finally told you, eh?"

Benjamin shifted in his seat and took another anxious drag off the cigarette. "Well, not - not exactly - "

Beni's eyebrows rose, but he didn't look particularly surprised.

"I overheard her talkin' to my aunt," Benjamin explained quickly, before his father had a chance to ask.

Beni nodded, sitting up in interest. "So what did you hear?"

Benjamin shrugged stiffly, stooping over his cigarette and taking in quick little drags. He didn't know where to start. Everything he recalled from the conversation was bad, and he didn't really want to bring any of it up. He glanced up and said cautiously:

"Not as much as I'd like."

Beni scoffed and leaned back in the chair. "What do you want to know?" But before Benjamin had a chance to answer, he was grinning, trying not to laugh. He shouted something in that strange language, and that woman came back. He asked her something, and she turned and stared at Benjamin, and started chuckling to herself as well.

Benjamin frowned, self-conscious and confused. "What?"

Beni waved his had dismissively. "Nothing. You look like my father, the way you are sitting. I had to show Piri." He turned and said something else to her again, and she chuckled again, shaking her head as she walked away.

Benjamin watched her leave, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Is she your...?"

"Sister. Well," Beni shrugged, "half-sister. We do not have the same father, because like your mother, mine made her life as a whore."

Lionel crossed his arms over his chest and glared, clearly still bristling over the last thing Beni had said to him. " 'Cept yours pro'lly made a career of it."

Beni laughed. "And yours has not? I saw the ring your father gave her. She has done much better than my mother ever did."

Lionel got out of his seat, his hands clenched at his sides. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

Beni raised his eyebrows, a cajoling condescension lining his face. "You mean she did not tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

Beni eyed him cruelly. "The only reason she married your father was because her family was in debt. She would have married any rich old bastard, but yours was the one dumb enough to take her."

Lionel sucked in a deep breath, pointing at him accusingly. "That's a lie."

"It's not."

"My father was a good man."

Beni snickered, taking another easy drag from his cigarette. "I suppose as long as you are not talking about his work in bed, that is true."

Lionel's eyes narrowed. "Well at least he's still got his balls."

The corner of Beni's mouth twitched. He glared back at Lionel for a moment before telling him evenly, "I think by now they have rotted with the rest of him."

Lionel huffed, whirling around to stare at his brother. "I ain't stayin' with this son've a bitch any longer. I'd think you'd be about done with 'im, too. Listen to 'im talk about Ma like that..."

Benjamin stared back up at him in desperation, painfully aware of the jeering way Beni was watching them.

"Oh," he said, mean as ever, "but Lionel, your mother did not lie to you the way she lied to Benjamin about his father."

"It's with good reason she did," Lionel retorted, giving his brother one last glance. "You can stay if you want to. But I'm leavin'."

Benjamin gazed up at him and begged, "Just please be quiet goin' back in - "

Lionel muttered something about being quiet and stormed out of the room. Benjamin watched him go, and for a moment he sat there in silence with this man, under the tired whir of a ceiling fan. For a moment there was only the sound of the fan and the steady drags his father was taking on what was left of his cigarette. Benjamin turned and looked back at him.

"How did you meet my mother?" he asked.

For barely a second, Beni looked surprised that Benjamin had resumed their previous conversation without acknowledging Lionel's sudden exit. But then he smiled and told him, "At a New Year's Eve party. I was an interrogator for the British at the time. She wanted to 'thank' me for finding the men who killed her husband."

Benjamin blinked. "By 'thank,' you mean..."

"I told you," he sneered, "she was a whore."

Benjamin pressed his lips together thoughtfully, snuffing his cigarette into an ashtray nearby. "Was that when I, uh..."

Beni scoffed. "Not much of a head for numbers, eh? No, Christmas Boy, that happened around Easter sometime - "

Benjamin's eyes snapped up in surprise. "You know my birthday?"

His father offered him a stiff shrug. "It is an easy one to remember."

Benjamin nodded his head slowly, staring down at his hands in his lap. He had a thousand questions and he didn't know how to ask a single one. It was more than obvious that Beni was still bitter at his mother - or maybe just at life and the world and everything in general - and Benjamin supposed he had every right to be. He wasn't sure how old his father was, but he got the impression he was younger than he looked. He was so very thin, and he had a face and body worn down by hardship. Benjamin hadn't been one to miss that he only had seven fingers between his two hands, or the ridged scar around his head. He'd noticed after a few stares that one of his eyes was glass. Life hadn't been kind to Beni Gabor; it was as if for years on end, he'd been slowly devoured alive by every conceivable hardship. Benjamin found himself wondering if his father's life would have been better had he been a part of it. And he found himself wondering if his own life would have been worse.

He looked up into Beni's eyes, and asked him quietly, "Why didn't you marry my mother? Why didn't you claim me?"

Beni blinked, and he stared back at him with a perplexed look on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by a loud noise from the other room, and then the angry, determined footsteps of heeled feet.

Benji couldn't say he was surprised to see his mother burst into the room, but he secretly cursed his brother's big, loud feet just the same. Be quiet going in, his ass -

"What on earth are you doing here, Benjamin?" she demanded, doing her very best to focus on him in spite of the distracted way she kept glancing at Beni.

"He came to visit me," Beni told her, smug and amused. She shot him a glare.

"I'll be getting to you in a moment."

He let out a scoff and found himself another cigarette. "I am petrified."

She raised an eyebrow. "Look at you, expanding your vocabulary."

Beni's eyes narrowed. "Fuck you, Jemima. I can speak nine languages."

"Knowing how to say one word nine different ways doesn't quite constitute having a wide vocabulary."

"What if it was nine different ways of telling you to suck my - "

"I came here for my son," she cut in sharply, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She turned briskly to Benji, jerking her head at the doorway. "We're leaving now."

He swallowed hard, edging a few glances at his father. He was trying to come up with the right way to tell her he wasn't ready to leave just yet. But Beni wasn't interested in telling her anything the "right way" at all.

"He is not going anywhere. After keeping him from me for years, you will take him away now?"

She whirled around and glared at him. "As a matter of fact, yes!"

His mouth twisted contemptuously. "When did you become such a bitch? You were never so cruel when we were fucking." He smirked. "You were actually quite accommodating..."

Her lips twitched, and she glared at him. "What is the matter with you, speaking that way to me?"

He threw her glare back in her face petulantly, pointing an accusatory finger at her. "What is the matter with you? You come storming into my house and start shouting at me. Are you just drunk, or have you actually turned into an American?"

Jemima shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "You know, Beni...Benji meeting you is one thing; but you telling Lionel that I only married his father for his money is quite another."

Beni sniffed. "Perhaps I only wanted some time alone with my son."

"Then ask for some privacy like a normal person. For heaven's sake!"

Benjamin watched them, uncomfortable but fascinated, and he tried not to make any sudden movements or sounds for fear they might remember that he was there listening to everything. He didn't want to get dragged back to his aunt's house. He wanted to stay...even though he was rapidly finding out just how unpleasant of a person his father was. He wanted to stay, and he wanted to know. He didn't want these things hidden away from him any longer, like he was stupid and innocent. He wanted know.

Beni crossed his arms over his chest and stared hard at Jemima. "Fine. I am sorry I told Lionel you whored yourself out to his father."

She pursed her lips, her teeth clicking as if doing their damndest to keep every horrible thing she wanted to say to him in check. She suddenly glanced past him, her glare no less severe even when she turned her attention to her son.

"Come on, Benji."

"He's talking with me," Beni said, whiny and insistent.

Jemima pretended to ignore him and straightened her shoulders. Her brow had furrowed with an urgent kind of expression. "Your father just got back."

"His father is right here."

She sucked in a deep breath and turned back to Beni again. "Stop it," she told him. "Stop! Do you think that I've forgotten, for even a sliver of a second, that he's your son? Do you? I've been staring you in the face for seventeen years! Believe me, there's no forgetting."

Beni eyed her suspiciously. "Uh-huh. And when, since I am always on your mind anyway, were you going to tell him about me?"

Benjamin swallowed hard, and stared at his mother in expectation. She wasn't facing him, but he could see the side of her face and he watched it intently, anxious and desperate for her reaction. He saw her swallow nervously, and glance away from Beni's hard, leering gaze. He saw her as she was for maybe the first time, as another person instead of his mother, who'd been young once. Who'd made decisions out of passion and fear, and who hadn't even noticed she'd gotten older since she made them. She'd taken each day as it went, and he wasn't nearly as upset as he might have been to see that she didn't have an answer for Beni. Because he knew that someday, surely, she had meant to tell him. Someday, even if she didn't know when. Even if it wasn't supposed to be this soon. Someday -

"I don't know," she murmured.

Beni's eyes narrowed. "What's that?"

She met his glare evenly. "I don't know, Beni. I didn't...I suppose..."

Beni raised his eyebrows, and he stared at her, mouth gaping with an exaggerated kind of incredulousness. "Surely you do not mean you would never tell him?"

Benjamin glanced at his mother again. He expected her to snap that of course she was going to tell him. That someday, she'd always planned to...But Jemima stood there in silence again, more uncomfortable than ever, shifting her weight in her heels and never quite glancing back at him.

Benjamin felt as if he'd been hit in the face. It was all he could do just to stare back at her when at last she did look up into his eyes. It was all he could do to see how sorry she was. But he had to look away.

Beni's mean, taunting voice added insult to injury. "Really? You were not going to tell him? Not ever?"

"People do it all the time," she said under her breath. She stood up a little straighter and squared her shoulders. "And you aren't his father."

Beni scoffed. "Oh, come on, Jemima. Anyone can tell I am his father - "

Jemima shook her head. "You've never done a thing for him. David has loved him and raised him. He has David's name."

"It does not work that way."

Her eyes narrowed at him, but something in her face looked too desperate and too determined. "It does work that way."

Beni leaned on the arm of his wheelchair and brought his cigarette to his lips. He stared at her with a kind of dark and petty amusement lining his face. Benjamin suddenly didn't doubt that he used to be a torturer.

"And how much would your precious rich husband love him if he knew Benjamin was my son?"

Jemima tensed. She stared at him for probably a full minute before startling, as if she'd come out of a dream. She glanced back at Benjamin. She assured him, "He'd love him the same. He'd love you just the same, darling - "

Beni let out a loud, "Ha."

She turned back to him, hopeless and pleading. "It's me he wouldn't love. I'm the one. Surely you can see that. It's me - "

"Of course it is," Beni threw back at her darkly. "It always was about you."

Jemima let out a frustrated, powerless sigh. She stared at him with wide, glazed eyes. "What do you want, Beni? What is it you want from me? Money? I'll pay you, you goddamned insufferable little bastard! I'll pay you anything at all!"

Benjamin was too shocked to feel anything. He'd never seen his mother so upset. He'd never heard her swear, that he could recall, either. Cautiously he glanced at Beni, who was finally too disconcerted to hurl back a smug, bristling retort. He stared up at Jemima and she stared back at him. For a moment Benjamin saw, or imagined he saw, something pass like a ghost between them. The tattered shreds of a memory, perhaps or something...something that had laid buried deep inside both of them; a sort of affection for one another they'd never fully released. But then that smirk crawled back up his father's face, and Benjamin couldn't be certain he'd ever seen such an emotion in the man's eyes at all.

"Jemima," he said in a tone that was false and sweet, "after all we have been through, you will ask me a question like that?"

Her hand flexed on the shoulder strap of her purse.

He nodded towards Benjamin. "My son has returned to me, all on his own, after all of these years, and you would ask me to stay away from him?"

Jemima raised her eyebrows. "How much?"

Benjamin watched his father and held his breath. But Beni didn't even bat an eye in his direction, and met her gaze. "A quarter."

She scoffed. "A quarter of what?"

"Of what do you think, Mrs. Oil Tycoon? A million."

Jemima stared coolly back at him with half-lidded eyes. "How exactly do you propose I move that kind of money around without my husband noticing?"

Beni offered her a sarcastic smile. "My dear...you will think of something. You always do, don't you?" His eyes glinted, dark and cruel. "I would daresay, even, that there is nothing you do better than taking large sums of money from men."

She stood tall and gazed at him. "Do you know, I really did care about you. I thought you were very fascinating, and clever, and I was attracted to you, too. Nobody ever believed it, but I was."

Beni took a final drag from his cigarette and snuffed it in the ashtray on his table. He looked almost bored in his bitterness, as if it was so much a part of him that he'd forgotten there was any other way to function. "That is very sweet, Jemima."

"You don't believe me. You never did."

He scoffed, staring up at her incredulously. "Forgive me if I still think it was cruel of you to fuck that American behind my back so that you could pass off my son as his."

Benjamin felt a sudden sharp pain at his words, and an exhilarating anger started pounding through his whole body. He stared at his mother in shock and hurt and animosity. But she didn't even glance at him. All of her energy was focused in a furious stare at Beni Gabor.

"What would you have me do, Beni?" she demanded. "You were married! And while I'm sure Nigel Carnahan would have personally funded a very expensive abortion - clean knife and all - the truth of the matter was, I didn't want to live that way anymore. Now I'm very sorry for everything that's happened to you, but you can't make me feel guilty over this. You didn't want to be a father then, and you don't want to be one now. Quarter of a million dollars to never see your son again! What kind of person are you?"

Beni looked past her to Benjamin, as if just noticing him there on the couch. But something about the keen, cold look in his eyes told Benjamin that he hadn't forgotten him through that whole conversation, not at all. He stared at him with some distant, vacant kind of emotion that Benjamin couldn't read at all.

"You are keeping me quiet with a quarter of a million dollars," Beni said slowly, never taking his eyes off of Benjamin. "But what about him?"

Jemima glanced back at her son, startled and perhaps even outraged by the suggestion that Benjamin would betray her secret. But when she looked into his eyes, her face became pale.

"Go on, son," Beni said in that self-amused sneer. "Ask her anything, up to half of her kingdom, and it shall be yours."

Benjamin gnawed on his lip thoughtfully, distracted for a moment by his surprise at Beni quoting the Bible just then. He would have pegged his father for the sort of person who'd never even picked up a Bible.

There was so much he didn't know about his father. There was so much he didn't know about where he came from.

He stared steadily at his mother. "I just want...I wanna be able to see him."

She let out a sigh. "Benji, you don't know the sort of man he is..."

"I know that," he said pointedly.

Jemima gazed back at him. "And if I arrange that, you'll not breathe a word of it to your...to David?"

Benjamin nodded his head. Her shoulders slumped, and she let out a sigh. He thought she looked defeated, standing there in the middle of the room, and the way she flexed her legs made him think she was tired of being on her feet.

"Alright," she said at last. "But it's time to leave now. It's getting dark, and he's been expecting us."

Benjamin nodded and stood up. He crossed the room to Beni's wheelchair and held out his hand, trying not to look squeamish at the strange and claw-like grip he took with his remaining fingers.

"You will come back and visit me like a good boy, won't you, Benji?"

All Benjamin could do was nod, staring into his father's smirking face, because just then a strange sense took him and he wasn't so sure he did want to see Beni Gabor again. He found something chilling and lifeless about the man's eyes, something that told him that a hundred visits with his father would cause him to like him a hundred times less...and that maybe he, like his mother, should shoulder his new secret and go on living a lie.

Beni released his hand, and something about the way he let go - or perhaps the way his hand reached readily for that carton of cigarettes as soon as he let go - told Benjamin that as long as his mother delivered on that $250,000, Beni Gabor really didn't mind if he never saw him again.

He followed his mother down the hall and out of the house. They broke into the growing darkness of the evening, and his mother took hurried steps away from the house until she reached the sidewalk. She glanced at Benjamin, walking beside her.

"Whatever you want to know about him, I'll tell you," she said quickly. "Anything at all, and I swear I won't spare any details. If I know it, I'll tell you."

Benji frowned curiously. She stopped, turning to stare at him with wide, urgent eyes.

"Just please, don't go and visit that dreadful man again."

Benjamin stared back at her. He didn't know what to say. The set of her mouth softened a little, and she suddenly took him in her arms, holding him very close in the chill of dusk. He felt her body trembling, and knew she was crying.

"I'm so sorry," she told him. "I'm so terribly sorry that man's your father. I never wanted him to be..."

She held him out at arm's length and looked him very seriously, very desperately in the eye.

"David's been a good father to you, hasn't he? He's been a real father - "

Benjamin ran his tongue over his lips, and said calmly, "But he isn't my real father."

She sniffed, blinking the tears out of her eyes. "Yes. I know."

Benji sighed, staring down at his shoes on the sidewalk. "Just wish you wouldn'ta made it out like he was. Wish you would'ta lied to me."

She nodded her head, giving his arm a squeeze before letting hers drop to her side.

"I don't know what to say to you, Benjamin," she said after a moment. "I'm sorry. I did the best that I could. And I love you so very much. I've always been happy I had you."

He pressed his lips together, and started walking again. She kept up with him, step for step.

"I feel like there's this whole half 'a me that's missin'," he said. "I feel like...like I don't know nothin' about myself. He called his sister in to look at me, and they said I looked like his dad - and, and Ma, all I could think was, 'I don't know nothin' about myself.' I don't know my grandpa's name, or how many aunts and uncles I got. I don't even know what language they was speakin', you know? That's half 'a what I am and I don't even know what it is."

Jemima stared at the sidewalk. They'd come to Tamsin's house, and the lights from inside pooled over them and all around them. They stood there, with the knowledge that David Daniels was inside waiting for them to come, waiting for them to step back into the lie again. Benjamin felt like an actor standing just behind the curtain, waiting to make something real on stage.

"Well, they were probably speaking Hungarian," she said awkwardly, after just a little too long. She glanced up at the front door, and took a breath. "But let's talk about this later, alright?"

Benjamin nodded his head, and they started down the walk and up the porch steps. As her hand twisted the doorknob, she added, "Just promise me you'll never grow a mustache like that."

Benji started to laugh, but David Daniels' impatient, inquiring voice silenced him where he stood:

"Like what?"

He watched his mother glance up at Dave, eyes bright and twinkling, and tell him playfully, "Why, like Adolf Hitler, of course."

She waltzed in and kissed him, and twittered an apology about their lateness, making up some excuse about some thing, and Benjamin watched her in the doorway, his body frozen and removed and cold. He realized suddenly how long this had been a part of his mother's life, hiding this lie. He realized how smoothly, how naturally she covered it, like that cowlick in the back of her hair she perpetually patted down. He saw his mother for what she was, and -

"Son, you just gonna stand there lettin' flies in or what?"

Benjamin stepped inside quickly and shut the door.