“Told him that if he wasn’t going to fight for you, he needed to let you go. He had already scheduled that stuff to be delivered before I talked to him.”
Every molecule in my body went numb.
I didn’t even feel the impact of my body meeting asphalt as I dropped to my knees.
“No,” I whispered.
The tears started trailing down my cheeks.
“Fuck! Cree!” I heard my brother, Connor, shout.
Then moments later, the phone I still held pressed to my ear was taken away.
Some part of my brain recognized it was my brother standing there, talking to our dad.
“Dad?” he asked.
He was silent for a beat.
“That motherfucker,” Connor growled.
“Don’t tell me to watch my language, around my sister, Dad. He fucking deserves it,” He bit out.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
Tears fell in earnest down my cheeks then.
Connor held onto me as I let all the pain I was feeling pour out of me through my tears.
I didn’t hear it.
Not until I saw a pair of motorcycle boots in front of me.
“Come on, girl. Let’s get you inside,” Uncle Knox said.
I didn’t help them as they lifted me up and off the ground.
I didn’t recall walking through the yard.
I didn’t remember being sat down on the couch and Uncle Knox asking for a word with me.
All I remember is him pulling me into his embrace and wiping the tears from my cheeks, which were still falling.
“He shared something with me. Going to tell you. It doesn’t make it right. But maybe you’ll understand.”
I didn’t reply.
“He’s been having nightmares, Cree. Nightmares that will eat away at a man’s soul. But one nightmare scared the shit out of him.”
Numbly, I asked, “What was it?”
“It wasn’t his sister that day... it was you.”
***
As my dad, my mom, and my two brothers all left me alone, I stood there in my college dorm room during my junior year and felt... nothing.
The same kind of nothing that I had been feeling ever since he left to go to Pinewood Lake, SC.
