The window was pushed open to let in the smallest of breezes. Though the air in the room was warm, hence the open window, the bitterness that radiated off the woman could be felt by the man, who sat facing her with his glasses hanging on his nose and a notepad propped on his knee. The reason for her bitterness was truly lost on him. The silence that followed their mundane greetings was wearing on the man. His need to speak was bubbling up inside him, ready to pop at even the slightest of sighs or coughs produced by the woman.

    The woman sat with her head facing the window, trying her best to ignore the man sitting down facing her. The bitterness was finally beginning to stir inside herself, she needed to tell him something, anything. If only to break the silence that was starting to choke her. She wanted to speak but couldn’t form words that wouldn’t get her kicked out of his office right away.
“Are we just going to sit in silence or are you going to say something,” he paused, trying to reevaluate his harsh words. “You came here to talk. If you wish not to then that’s fine, but I believe it to be in no one's but interests if you stay silent.” She didn’t turn her head towards him, she only sighed and let her shoulders fell in such a way to let him know that he can ask questions if he pleases.
“Let’s start with something simple, something that you can dip your toes in or simply not answer. Is that okay, Mrs. Knox?” She still didn’t turn her head, but she nodded. “How are you today?” He questioned, pulling out a pen.
“How am I?” She questioned with a malicious glance towards him, making him glance away for her look shot daggers at him. “Do you really want me to answer that, truthfully?”
“Of course I do, Mrs. Knox. Truth is all I seek from you. All I will ever seek from you,” her look of malice was washed over by a look of pain. His surprise was found in the fact that she wasn’t wincing or calling out for just her look made him feel some sort of way.
She looked away and watched the window, “I feel cheated.”
“Cheated? That’s pretty ambiguous, Mrs. Knox. Could you please explain?”
“I feel cheated…” she glanced at him, her look of malice was gone. Her look of pain also. The look that resided on her face was blank of all emotions as she continued, “By you.”
He tried to recover from his surprise fastly but she noticed and frowned. “Why do you feel like I cheated you?”   
“The truth was all there, all of it. From the way he began to talk, walk, to the way he began to lie. All of it the signs were there, screaming ‘HELP! HELP!’ yet it seems help wasn’t enough or at least your help. You did nothing. NOTHING!” Her voice was rising and rising with each word spoken.
“Mrs. Knox, surely you must understand this can’t possibly be my fault. Surely these are just comments of someone who is going through much, too much pain,” he didn’t move to her, he stayed in his seat for the simple reason being any forced touch could only call for more tears. And more tears were not necessary for the women was crying too many already.
“I am most definitely in pain, heartbroken if you dare say. But that doesn’t mean I am unreasonable.” She looked at him with eyes of resentment, such loathing in her look that he did feel in some way responsible, even though he was beyond reproach.
He thought for a moment about the questions he had planned to ask, the ones he went over and over again the night before were lost to him as he watched her eyes, trying his hardest not to look away for he had a need to stand his ground, “What can you remember before me?”
“I remember,” She turned her eyes away from him and let them wander to the window. For a reason lost on her, she couldn’t help herself from looking out the window. “I remember watching him become nothing, an attitude with legs. A liar,” she broke off and for the first time since entering the room she smiled. Though it was small, barely noticeable, the man took it as a good sign and kept quiet for he didn’t want to intrude on her flowing thoughts. “Can you imagine?” Her question more so directed at herself. “Whenever asked about his character I always talked about his honesty. Because that’s the one thing about him that I thought could never falter. He was always truthful, even as a little boy. Always right out with it. You can understand then why I thought it odd when he began to lie to me. Small lies at first but then only lies were leaving his lips. Lies from where he was going to who he was going with,” she was still facing the window, tears still streaming yet a smile was on her face. “But I believe the real problem was in the fact that I didn’t push for the truth. I didn’t push. I just assumed,” She cut off again with a cry. Her beautiful smile lost. 
“What did you assume?” The man questioned from the edge of his seat.
“I assumed he would come to me when he was ready. Never thought his ready would look like this.” Her tears were still coming. He had not expected such openness so fast.
They were again eye to eye, his eyes showing deep blue, her eyes were hidden by puffs of red. “Did you get help right away?” He questioned, alluding to himself.

A moment of silence washed over them, as his question hung in the air. He didn’t push for an answer right away. For he knew a vague version of her pending answer. And her reason of silence was simply the fact that if she spoke, her words would be the truth and she had yet to figure out the real truth and she didn’t know if she wanted to figure it out with the man sitting in front of her.
The silence was once again building between them, “If you wish not to answer my question there is no harm in doing that. But let me ask you another question, maybe one you will be willing to answer. For this silence is overbearing.”
She simply shook her head, “When he first began lying to me, my first thought was to get a therapist. My very first thought was to get help but then after asking around, rather discreetly, I began to think about how it would hurt him. I thought about the pain it might have caused him if he thought I was trying to get him medical help. I thought it would be too much for him to handle if he thought I thought he wasn’t– I thought idiotically that being labeled a medical patient was worse than what he was going through.” No tears were rolling down her face. She had a frown on her lips but her eyes were blank. “He must have thought I didn’t notice at first. But I did. I hurt, physically hurt knowing that I waited to get him help. Though words weren’t spoken, I believe he thought I didn’t care. But I did, I do. But apparently too late for it to matter.” Her eyes were facing the window as she spoke the last words.
“Can I tell you something?” The man questioned. She nodded her head. “Whether you got help the moment you assumed something was off or whether you didn’t notice at all, all roads still would lead here. All of them,” he paused. The man stood from his chair and walked towards the window, he stood in front of it and stared out of it. “Mrs. Knox, he wasn’t w–”
“Don’t you say THAT!” The woman yelled, moving her eyes and body from the window to face the chair the man had vacated. “He wasn’t perfect but he was as close as anyone can get. And you, of all people, can’t talk about his well being like that. How dare you. I might not have gotten him help right away, but you–You were no help at all.”
“But Mrs. Knox, he wasn’t. He truly wasn’t… Mrs. Knox, you had no blame for anything and neither did I. But if you need an outlet to blame then go ahead blame me. For my feels are nothing compared to yours. Let me take the blame, not because you are to blame but because you need an outlet for your pain, your anger.” He turned around, facing the woman's direction, his back facing the window.
The women turned her head towards him. Though she was extremely beautiful, all he saw was a brokenness that was far from recovery, if that was even possible. “Can you remember anything else you would like to share? Maybe something good, something that you loved about him.”
She smiled again, brighter this time, more teeth. “He wasn’t a boy of simple answers. To him everything had a meaning, good or bad. He didn’t care just as long as he received an answer. It was both frustrating and aweing. Maddening and amusing. He wasn’t one to go down without a fight. No matter what he was fighting about,” her smile never left her face as she spoke.
The man wanted to smile too, to feel the warmth from the memory but he did not want to push, he simply asked, “Do you know if he had any friends? Anyone that loved him besides yourself?”
“You should know more in that department than I,” she clapped back. He waited a beat then she spoke. “Maybe. There was this one boy. Just one day he started to show up. He was oddly beautiful, nothing compared to him, but still a beauty. He was also very kind. He was the first and only friend I met of his. They were close, closer than most people would think.”
“Close?”
“As Forster would say, ‘an unspeakable’,” she turned away from him, her eyes looking around the room, everywhere but at him.
“An average day Achilles and Patroclus?” He questioned, this time breaking into a smile.
She simply nodded her head, very slowly.

“Do you think missing him would become easier?” He questioned with no aforethought to provoke anger.
“Missing him? Missing him will become like breathing yet it’s something I am prepared for. Something I will wonder about but believe maybe in some ways better. Not better, not even fair. But maybe right. For him, anyway. I will love him forever, forever, and forever and ever,” her words held so much pain that the man had to sit back down, for his emotions were hard to contain.
In the moments that had passed the woman emotions ran the course of many. Though only one emotion continued to resurface time in again, making the woman even more determined to find some way to either reverse her constant emotion or push it down deep enough that she may never feel it again.
And as the man continued to talk, he found himself taken back by his abilities. But also ashamed of the blame she had posted on him. Though his attempts to help didn’t pan out, the man was not of any blame. But his mind began to play a cheap trick making him question his true ability to help those who are seeking it.

“I watched as his inner battle let out cries of actual war and as all the light from his beautiful eyes diminished to be seen. As his attitude for danger increased and his self-loathing nature showed just as much as his apathy for life did. He was himself no longer. Simply a stranger taking over the body of the boy I loved,” she paused. Her eyes were filling up with tears once again.
“Mrs. Knox, please don’t cry.” The man spoke, though his words didn’t reside with her. If anything making her produce more tears. “Emotions are clouding your judgment, there clouding the truth. His truth. Your truth,” he spoke full heartedly.
“I am–I am at a loss. I am completely lost. I feel so many different emotions. Yet one keeps on growing more and more, almost like it’s feeding off my breathing, my actual life. I feel sick each time I think about it,” The woman’s tears had stopped.
“What is the emotion you keep on feeling?” The man questioned with intrigue.
“Guilt.”
Once again the man was caught off guard by her admissions, “Why do you feel guilty? Of the all the emotions that could be running through you continuously, why guilt?”
“Because I was there, I saw it all. And my ability to hope did nothing, helped with nothing,” her look moved towards the window. “I hoped that pushing him towards other people's help would help him, but what I should have been doing was helping him myself.”
“Hoping isn’t a bad thing. Being hopeful is helpful.You were helpful. You are hopeful,” he watched her. He wanted to say more, to make her understand. But she seemed to be swimming too deep in her guilt. “It’s okay to feel sad, to feel mad, it’s okay. But it’s not okay to feel guilty when you are beyond blame. Mrs. Knox, you did nothing–”
“That’s right, I did nothing. Nothing. I want to blame you, I want it to be your fault because I can’t take the blame but I know it’s truly my fault. I know I could have done better, could have been better,” she was looking at the man now. Her eyes large.
“You could do nothing. His road was already paved, you couldn’t have done anything to change his path, his mind.”
“I could have destroyed his road,” she spoke.
“But then think about what he would have done then. Think of all the ways he could have hurt you more,” he questioned.
“I hurt too much now for that to matter,” her eyes were now on her intertwined hands on her lap.
“And you would be hurting much much more if you would have tried to stop it with force. His path wasn’t easy, but it was his path. And in some ways, it’s time to come to terms with that. Or it will haunt you forever,” he watched her hands, also.
“It will already haunt me forever, don’t you get that?” Her voice was rising, “I got him help, not my own and it failed. I pushed him away from myself in his moments of weakness. I am the one to blame, the only one to blame,” she looked up from her hands. “When he was a baby, the first night I stayed up all night, not because he was too much to handle, but because I couldn’t stop thinking about the amazing boy he was going to become. Not because I was his mother, now. I stayed up all night thinking because I knew he was going to be better than what anyone would have thought and that was all on him. I was going to play no major role in the truest man he was going to become. And  I didn’t play any part in the amazing man he did become. He was an amazing man,” she smiled.
“He very much was, Mrs. Knox. But let’s be honest, you did play a major role. A very major role, he even said so. You saved him more than once.”
“But that did nothing in the end.”
“Sometimes, sometimes even though we do hope, some people are beyond help. Sometimes people can’t be saved and in those cases there is no one to blame. You are not to blame. I am not to blame. And he, Ansel, is not to blame.”
“Ansel.” She smiled brightly. “I didn’t like his name at first because I always wished to name my son Fitzwilliam, but I decided that he should keep the name he was given by her. Not because I or Ansel owed her anything but because I thought he should have something that connected him to a life he might have had, could have had. And I don’t regret it one bit,” her voice was calm and low.
“What was it like having him as a son? Knowing that she was out there,” the man questioned.
“It was truly amazing. I never thought about her because she never mattered and she never would. He knew about her, I told him when he young enough to truly understand. I was expecting him to care or if anything want to meet her. But he didn’t. He didn’t even want to know her name. When I asked why, he only said, ‘Because she may be my mother but you are my mom and that’s all that matters to me’.” The man smiled too.
“He was an amazing man,” the man added. He leaned in to touch her knee with his hand, ever so gentle. “My words and my ideas may mean nothing to you but I need you to know that he loved you, very much. Though biologically you were not his real mother, you loved him more than I have ever seen a mother love her son. And Ansel knew that. He knew you loved him and that you were trying to help. But like I said, some people are beyond being saved,” he let his hand drop from her knee, bringing it back to himself.
She sighed, letting her shoulder fall again. “Maybe there were signs, maybe he was yelling at me each day telling me he was ready to point the gun somewhere, somewhere I wouldn’t like. I thought I was a good mother, I thought I loved him enough. Maybe I was a good mother and I did love him enough. But I guess even that wasn’t enough. I miss and will miss him every day, each moment without that smile.”
The man and the woman sat in silence once again.

THE END.