Growing up, Dad was distant and quiet and Mom was reserved and hesitant. She tried to talk to us but it felt like she was nervous so she’d back away or watch us from afar. Our family dinners were filled with awkward silence and stolen glimpses. The four of us didn’t know what to talk about or how to talk to each other. It felt like we were a couple of strangers locked in a room than a family.
It made me wonder, why they had us in the first place? Why they tried to conceive us if they were going to abandon us? What was the point of making a family when you weren’t going to live with it?
I feel physically sick because I don’t have answers and the worst part is I’m looking for them.
Despite saying I don’t care, I want the truth.
I want to know why they live somewhere else and not with us—me?
“Heath, what are you doing here?” Dad speaks from behind me.
“Mom is here,” I answer him.
His footsteps near me and then walk past me as he reaches for Mom who’s now full on sobbing and screaming.
Lost in my thoughts I didn’t hear her.
They are loud enough to tune out the world and sharp enough to dig into me like claws.
“Mia, wake up,” Dad says. What he says next is in a foreign tongue. I don’t know what he’s saying. It’s my first time hearing him speak another language.
I had no fucking idea that he knows a language besides English. Are there more languages that he can speak? Does Mom also know other languages?
How much of it is that I don’t know about these people?
Dad’s voice and touch wake Mom up and she quickly folds herself in his chest as she cries. She looks small and breakable against him.
I look at Dad who looks equally fragile as he holds her in his arms and kisses her forehead. His palm rubs her back, in up and down movement. A movement that is practiced as if he’s rehearsed it every night and now he can do it in his sleep. It’s become a muscle memory.
At two in the morning, he’s dressed in a charcoal gray suit with no tie. His hair looks wild as if he’s run a hand through it a million times due to stress and his face is mirror of tiredness and lack of sleep.
“Stop crying, please,” he assures her. “It isn’t good for your health.”
His words do nothing to her as she keeps crying.
So he just holds her.
The sight reminds me of Hope and I. All those times she was hiding things from me but also couldn’t keep them inside, she’d cry. The only thing that helped was holding her.
Dad looks at me. “Get me a glass of water.”
Without a word, I make my way to the kitchen, fill a glass of water and return with it in Emery’s room. Stepping inside, with them sitting on her bed and me standing beside them, I realize it’s the first time the three of us are together after her deathandin her room.
There are no family pictures of us four but still, that’s exactly what we are.
A family.
No matter what I say or what happens, the truth can’t be fucking erased or altered.
Mom calms down after Dad makes her drink a few sips of water and tells her to not cry anymore. She half-listens to him as her tears keep spilling down her cheeks.
Looking up at him, she asks, “Where’s Heath?”
He cups her cheek and wipes away all tears. “He’s right here, Mia Cara.”
Mia Cara? Is that his nickname for her or what?
Gently, he turns her head in my direction, and Mom’s face gains some color.
