Eye for an Eye

Sam?’
    ‘When the wheels start falling off in life, it’s often difficult to keep pedalling.’ MacMillan crunched the last bit of toast with a determination that spoke of bitter memories. Maybe the pedals had fallen off, too, Gilchrist thought. Silent, he watched the old man take a mouthful of tea that emptied his mug.
    ‘You’ve got two kids, son.’ A statement, not a question.
    ‘Jack and Maureen.’
    ‘I know. I seen you over the years.’ MacMillan’s eyes narrowed, and gave Gilchrist the impression he was trying to recall the last time he had seen Gail and him walk the streets with their children. It seemed so long ago to Gilchrist that he imagined buckets and spades and sand-covered feet.
    ‘She left you,’ MacMillan said.
    ‘She did, Sam. Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    Things never seemed to go the way he intended with Sam, but Gilchrist decided that a bit of give and take was as good a policy as any, so he said, ‘For someone else.’
    ‘You miss the kids?’
    Gilchrist felt his lips tighten. More than anything, he wanted to say. But all he dared allow himself was, ‘Yes.’
    ‘How would you feel if something happened to them?’
    ‘I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.’
    ‘That’s not what I asked.’
    ‘What’s your point?’
    ‘How would you feel if one of the kids was in an accident and left brain damaged?’
    ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
    MacMillan grunted and turned once more to his feeders, glaring at them as if he no longer found pleasure in watching birds. ‘It’s the worst thing that can happen to a parent.’
    Silent, Gilchrist watched the old man’s lips tighten, as if he was torturing himself with the memory of something he could perhaps have prevented.
    Still facing the feeders, MacMillan’s voice lowered to a grumble. ‘How would you feel if the accident turned out to be no accident at all, and that the brain damage had been caused by someone you thought you loved? Someone who then buggered off and left you holding the baby, so to speak.’
    A frisson ran the length of Gilchrist’s spine. ‘Is that what happened, Sam?’
    MacMillan took a deep breath, and sadness spilled from his face in shuddering waves. ‘Aye, son,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened.’
    ‘Louise was no accident?’
    MacMillan raised a thick-fingered hand to his eyes and dug in his thumb and forefinger. Then he lifted his chin and whispered to his birds, ‘She tried to hide it from me. But I could tell something was wrong the moment I set foot over the threshold. Louise was asleep. But she never woke up when I kissed her. I loved to do that. Wake her up, like, and play with her. I seen something was wrong from the look on Margaret’s face.’
    ‘Your wife?’
    ‘Not any more.’
    ‘Go on, Sam.’
    ‘Louise fell in the bath. She hit her head against the side. That’s what Margaret told me. Except I didnae believe her. I seen the way she treated her. She’d a right temper on her, so she had. When she lost it she would shake Louise till you’d think her head was gonnae come off at the shoulders. I done nothing about it and regretted it ever since. Should’ve clouted her into the middle of next week.’
    MacMillan’s hands had curled into white fists that he used to dab spittle from the corners of his mouth. Then he looked down at them, as if surprised, opened them and placed them on the table, palms flat. He stared at his fingers for several seconds, then said, ‘But I couldnae hit a woman.’
    ‘Would it have made any difference?’
    ‘She would have thought twice about doing what she done.’
    ‘Did you not try to talk to her?’
    ‘Talk? I shouted myself hoarse.’
    ‘Did you not report her?’
    ‘What good would reporting anything have done back then?’ He shook his head. ‘We took Louise to the hospital, Margaret and me. Told the doctors she’d cracked her head on the side of the bath.’
    ‘And they believed you?’
    ‘Aye, son. They did.’ MacMillan stared dead-eyed at his birds. ‘Louise widnae wake up. The doctors said she was in a coma. For three whole days I prayed to God. I never missed a minute, not one minute. But when she woke up, her eyes were glassy like. God was nae bloody use to me then and He’s been nae bloody use to me since.’
    Gilchrist waited several seconds before saying, ‘And what did your wife say?’
    ‘Say?’ MacMillan shook his head. ‘She said bugger all. I told her to bugger off out of it.’
    ‘And you told no