Patriots & Tyrants (Rebels & Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Brian Cotton Page A

answers
from Reed. A lot of the time, especially tonight, he questioned whether or not
it was really worth it. Did it really matter how Julie died? Did it really
matter if the USR or the resistance did it?
    “Can I please come
home with you?” Davie asked.
    Sullivan shook his
head. “You like staying here, right?”
    “I do, but I want to
come home.”
    “I know you do, but
Daddy’s got work to do, you know that. I’ve got to figure out what happened to
Mommy.”
    “I miss Mommy.” Davie
replied.
    “I do, too.”
    “Where do you think
she is now?”
    It took a moment for
Sullivan to come up with an answer. Sullivan knew that she ceased to exist and
there was no afterlife. Only annihilation awaited the dead. It was an awful
thing, he thought, to not believe in anything other than his own existence. One
had to make the best out of what he or she had now and then, when it was all
over, nothing mattered. He thought about Father Francis’s interrogation at
times like these. Those church people he would interrogate seemed to think that
there was a Heaven that all the good people went to.
    “She’s up in the sky looking
down on you. She’s so proud of you for being so brave and such a smart boy.”
    “Yeah?!”
    “That’s right. Why
don’t you watch the TV a little bit more while I talk with your Aunt Mary?”
    “Okay!”
    Davie ran back over to
the front of the television set and resumed his comfortable posture. Sullivan
felt a sense of guilt for encouraging his son to watch the hatred that went on,
but it wasn’t like there were any kid friendly shows he could watch. Sullivan
turned to Mary and summoned her to the kitchen. She reluctantly stood up from
the recliner and followed him in. At the sight of the shoulder holster, with
the Glock 17 attached, she groaned. They took a seat across from each other at
the red oak table.
    “You can’t keep doing
this to him.” Mary said.
    Sullivan breathed in
deep. “I know. Don’t you think it doesn’t kill me not to have him all the
time?”
    “This is exactly why
Julie wanted to leave you.”
    There she went again,
another tirade about how the only reason that Julie never left him in the first
place was because she couldn’t afford it out there, on her own, with a small
child. She loved Davie too much to lose him, because Davie would almost
certainly have ended up with Sullivan. Sullivan placed his opened hand in the
air then moved his index finger to his lips. He didn’t need this, not tonight.
    “That boy needs his
father,” Mary continued. “Why do you still ignore your responsibilities?”
    “I’m not ignoring
anything,” Sullivan replied, fighting back the urge to raise his voice. “What
I’m doing is for him, can’t you see that?”
    “No.”
    “Then, you really are
just like your sister.”
    Mary slammed her first
on the table. “You don’t talk about her, you hear me, you son of a bitch?”
    “That’s not
necessary.”
    “She’s gone, William.
We are all trying to move on from it. Maybe I am just like my sister, but at
least I’m not like you.”
    “Look,” Sullivan said
as he continued to fight back his temper. “You need to calm down. I told you
before. I’m trying to find out what happened to her, who the parties
responsible were. Things weren’t the greatest…”
    “You can say that
again.”
    “Listen to me. I know
I screwed up our marriage, I get that. But, even if things were shitty, I still
loved her. That’s why I didn’t leave her . I want to know what
happened.”
    “And, you just ignore
your son, you can live with that?” Mary demanded.
    “There are a lot of
things I’ll have to answer for when the time comes. More things than you could
ever imagine. But, I can’t just forget it ever happened.”
    “I’ll tell you who was
responsible. It was them .”
    Sullivan leaned
forward. “Them, huh? Well, they claim that it was the USR.”
    “Of course they did!
Why wouldn’t they? They aren’t just going to come