Nathaniel Mordue
March 15, 2021 8:14 PM
Tidying up, I suppose (Kir) by Nathaniel Mordue
Nathaniel had debated the matter at some length, but it all came down to the same thing in the end. He knew what the right thing to do was, and that the only reason not to do it was a desire to not take on any more potentially dangerous associations. This was not a good reason not to do something, of course – but it was, nevertheless, one he couldn’t deny did bother him.In the summer, he had had an excuse, the same excuse he had used for not seeing his mother in the same time: he might have been caught out. Jeremy, Sylvia, even Aunt and Uncle, perhaps…any of them might have chosen not to trust him, to keep an eye on his movements. Finally, though, the summer had ended, and Jeremy had gone back to Sonora. After that, it had only been so long before he’d been able to determine a day was going to happen when everyone had plans – the only possible complication could potentially be Simon, but he was, at least, supposed to be occupied, and in any case, Nathaniel had reasons enough to suspect that if his cousin wasn’t where he was supposed to be, the alternative wouldn’t be following Nathaniel around. That meant he’d run out of reasons to avoid seeing his mother again – and had gained a few days to brood over it all beforehand.
It was not, on the whole, a trade he thought he’d come out the better in.
It seemed silly when he put it into such terms, but he felt like he was approaching a…crossroads, he supposed. And when he chose which path to walk down, there would be no turning back from it. One way – he continued as he was. He read law, went into politics, married one of Sylvia’s friends. He made Sylvia happy, kept working on his relationship with Jeremy…died inside in various ways as he went along. The other way – well, he didn’t know where that one led, really, only that it would almost certainly mean losing Sylvia and Jeremy – one of whom he needed, one of whom he thought needed him, which all his years of therapy told him meant that he actually probably needed Jeremy more than Jeremy needed him, too – and, of course, dying in side in various ways as he went along….
He was afraid of making that choice, but he knew that he could not put off making it forever. First, though (whether it was simply a means of delay or not, he neither knew nor cared), he needed to set all his past affairs in order, as far as he could. And thus, one afternoon, he opened his writing case, took out the necessary supplies, and began to write in a small, neat, slightly left-slanted hand.
Mr. McLeod, he wrote,
I knew you in school, and I owe you both thanks and an apology. You were kind to me at a time when very few people were, and when you had absolutely no reason to do so. At the time I was too preoccupied to appreciate it properly, but that’s hardly an excuse for ingratitude, and so I hope you’ll accept the very belated appreciation.
Signing his name like a man was, of course, not an option. He knew it was more than a bit cowardly, but there were limits even to his capacity for honor, and placing openly signed blackmail material directly in the hands of the McLeod Foundation crossed one of those lines in the sand that he refused to cross. It was bad enough to do this, where he could most likely bluff it out if it was somehow figured out and leaked to the press – even if the bluff was not called, or at least not conclusively proved to be a bluff, there would be people who realized it was true, or at least believed it was simply because his name was so tainted already by his parents’ scandals. To go any further than this would be madness, and it had been a good while since he had been dangerously close to that. He scrawled, then, only an illegible scribble which only had a hint of something that might have been a capital M in it, and went to the post office with it before he could change his mind.
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Nathaniel Mordue
Tidying up, I suppose (Kir)
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