Just when Kat was looking up more porn, so she could claim her brother had watched it, her mother happened to look over.
Their mother hadn't believed Dan when he claimed that Kat was framing him, but the clearly malicious expression Kat had while doing something on the iPad made her hesitate. She carefully leaned over to see what Kate was doing, and her eyes widened in shock.
Kat wasn't even looking through "Dan's" search history anymore, she was on a fetish porn site, adding every tag under the 'extreme' section of the search engine. It was obvious that she was planning to open a video and claim it was something Dan had watched.
She felt betrayed and ashamed. Kat had used her and lied to her, and she had said horrible things to her son because she had simply believed everything Kat told her about him, and what really made her feel ashamed about that was that she had believed Kat because she had seen her as more valuable, more important, than Dan.
Worst of all, she had actually believed everything she had told Dan. That she thought he was a failure. That she thought he wouldn't amount to anything. That she thought he was worthless compared to his sister.
And the reason Kat didn't really see Dan as family may even be because she had picked up on that, had realized he wasn't valued.
When had she started seeing her own child this way?
She grabbed the iPad from Kat's hands, just as Kat was about to open a video, and gave her a stern look.
Kat realized that she had been caught and shrunk back a bit, while their mother turned the iPad off, trying not to look at what Kat had been about to press play on. "Go back to the house, we will have a talk about this later."
Kat quickly left the shed, almost running, while their mother turned towards Dan.
She hesitated a moment, before gesturing towards him, untying the rope on his wrists and making his clothes re-appear.
He had seemingly realized that he was safe now and wasn't panicking anymore, but he was avoiding meeting her eyes, rather looking down and rubbing his chafed wrists.
Janice felt a bit unfomfortable and tried to start a conversation.
"Dan, you know I didn't really mean-" "No. I know what you really think now, you don't have to pretend like you care."
He said, interrupting her, rubbing a bit harder at his wrists. Her words had clearly hurt him and she wasn't sure what to do.
"Dan, i'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. I was originally here to make sure that your sister wouldn't go to far, to make sure she wouldn't do more than play a prank on you with her magic, but then Kat showed me those things she said you had looked up and-"
She stopped, realizing that she was trying to deflect the responsibility onto Kat.
"I'm sorry I- i'll leave you alone for a bit. I'll have a talk with Kat, just come inside when you're ready, and we'll think of some way to make it up to you, okay?" Dan nodded slightly, but she wasn't sure he had really paid attention.
Just when Janice was about to leave the shed, Dan suddenly exploded. "Don't pretend like you care! You don't even know I-"
Dan suddenly stopped, just when his mother turned back to look at him again. He was still looking down, trembling a bit, though whether it was with anger or something else she couldn't say.