I’ve heard it as a teenager.
I’ve heard it at holiday gatherings.
I’ve heard it.
I’ve heard it.
I’ve heard it.
“Set out the candles, please,” Mom calls over her shoulder, seasoning the meat before she slides it into the oven.
I raise my eyebrow at my brother, jerking my chin toward the dining table. “You heard her.”
Krimson swings his glare back to me, narrowing those dark, heterochromatic eyes in annoyance. The orange glow of the oven fire flickers along his chocolate brown hair, casting a rich glimmer in this depressing house.
“You know who I was talking to,” Mom clarifies, wiping down the glossy, garnet countertops. “Krimson is peeling potatoes. How are you contributing?”
I contemplate how I’d like to respond as Mom organizes the glass jars of herbs and seasoning lining the backsplash next to the stove. She’s always so quick to clean up after preparing each dish for dinner. If she doesn’t, Grandpa almost always cleans the entire kitchen, though it’ssmall, Mom doesn’t like him doing additional work.
“I’m using all of my energy not to bitch and complain.” I sit on the chair next to my brother, arms crossed, jaw locked, staring at that front door that seems to mock me as the winter winds bustle against its barrier.
We are twenty-one years old. Why am I letting our mother pressure me into continuing to attend these dinners?
“He’s not going to be that bad this time. Seriously. He’ll be on his best behavior,” Krimson says calmly, tossing potato skins in a bowl.
I raise my grimace slowly, pointedly. My brother meets my eyes and sighs.
“You’re a fool.”
They know why I hate these dinners. They know I can’t stand to be in the same room as Niklaus. They know why I get into a shit mood when Sundays come around. But family is everything here, isn’t it? A toxic idea my mother and her friends inherited from their time behind bars.
“He’s right, Sapphire. Uncle Warrose and Aunt Ruth are coming too.”
Thank fucking heavens.
Almost every Sunday evening Aunt Marilynn, Uncle Niles, and their deranged son come over for family dinner. Regardless of our parents’ epic familial bond, the night always ends with Niklaus saying something subtle, something atrocious to provoke me. I’m apparently not smart enough to ignore the bait. He’s crafty with his words, careful not to alert the parents that he’s tormenting me. I usually hold it together. Simmer in unbearable silence. But there has been the occasional outburst.
Krimson is the only one who can pick up on the subtle digs. He’s the only one who believes me when I come home crying.
He’s gotten in a few fights with Niklaus over the years because of it.
“He’s scared of Uncle Warrose,” I mutter, continuing to study the carvings of trees in the old wood.
“I would too if he threw me off a cliff.” Krimson chuckles.
Mom shoots us a warning look from her crouched position by the oven. But it’s too late, I relish in the memory as it settles into my thoughts.
When I was eleven, Niklaus found me sitting on the cliff of the lagoon, praying to God to wake my daddy up. Praying that I’d get to see his brown eyes that my mother speaks so fondly of. Praying that he’d get to watch me grow up. I was in tears, and Niklaus still said what he said.
“Your daddy would have been a terrible father. He’s got demons in his head and would have killed you for fun, I’m sure! You should be thanking God he’s in that coma, rotting!”
It was the cruelest thing he’s ever said to me.
And at such a low moment too.
But what he didn’t know was that Uncle Warrose had just come back from Vexamen and was standing right behind him. I froze at the look on my uncle’s face, the expression coated in ice, in war, in insurmountable rage. He lifted Niklaus off the ground with one hand by his throat and dangled him over the edge of the cliff.
And his rigid words have haunted me since.
