I left it there, didn’t elaborate. Didn’t say anything about what came before or after or during. Just that, and it was enough, I saw it in his face. His shoulders dropped again, like something he’d been holding onto finally loosened. And then, a small smile. Just something that settled at the corner of his mouth like it had been waiting for permission.
“Okay,”he said quietly, more to himself than to me.
Okay.
We sat there for a bit after that, neither of us speaking. I don’t even remember deciding to ask, it just came out.
“Do you know where she is now?”My voice didn’t sound like mine when I asked.“... my mother?”
He didn’t look surprised. Something just settled in his face and shifted a little before he answered, like he already knew this question was coming and had been sitting with it. His eyes dropped for a second, and when he looked back up there was something different there. It wasn’t the same careful warmth as before. This was heavier, tired in a way that didn’t come from today.
“They found her a few years ago,”he said.
I felt something on my body stop.
“She was… in the river.”He swallowed, subtle, but I saw it.
“Near Swietokrzyski Bridge… Police ruled it as suicide.”
That word didn’t hit the way it should have. It spread in my brain and in my chest, like ink in water, and suddenly there was too much inside me again.
Not one feeling, all of them at once. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t line up, nothing fucking did. She tried to kill me, shefeared me, she… and now she’s… I couldn’t follow the thought all the way through, it broke apart before it got there. I sat there, looking at him, but not really seeing him anymore.
My focus slipped somewhere between him and the space in front of me, like my mind didn’t know where to anchor. My chest tightened again, worse this time. Like my body was reacting before I could catch up to it. My stomach twisted hard enough that I had to press my tongue against my teeth just to stop whatever was trying to come up.
Little Ghost… I need you to stay with me. Don’t disappear now. You wanted this, didn’t you? You wanted to know what was underneath everything.
This is it. Fucking messy and nothing you will ever be able to hold onto without it slipping.
“If you want to…”he hesitated, just briefly, like he wasn’t sure if he should offer it,“I can write down where she’s buried. In case you’d like to visit.”
Visit, I almost laughed, but instead I nodded, once. He got up. Moved slower than before, like the room had changed for him too.
He walked over to the same cabinet, opened a drawer this time, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. I watched him do it, every movement feeling distant. Like I was watching it through something instead of being there. He wrote it down, came back and held it out to me. I didn’t take it right away, I just looked at it, then at him, then back at it again. My hand lifted eventually and took the paper. It almost felt too light, that was the first thought I had. Too light for something that was supposed to mean anything.
I held it between my fingers for a second before letting it rest against my palm. Then I stood up.
“I need to go.”It came out short, blunt.
The room felt smaller now, like it was pressing in from all sides. The air didn’t move properly. Every breath felt like it stopped halfway, like there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to take in what I needed. He stood up too.
There was something on his face again, that same thing from before, that fragile hope, but now mixed with something else. Disappointment. He tried to hide it, but didn't quite manage.
“I’m glad you came,”he said.“I really am.”
It sounded real and that just made it worse. I didn’t answer, I couldn’t, I just looked at him and I don’t know what he saw because I wasn’t trying to show anything.
“Do you have a number? Or an address, or…”he stopped himself, shooting me a careful smile like he didn’t want to overwhelm me.“Some way I can reach you?”I swallowed hard.
“I’ll come by again.”
The words came out before I could think too much about them. They sounded like something I was supposed to say, not something I meant. I saw it, the way his face shifted. Hope again, stronger this time.
“I’d like that.”Then, after a second, softer, like it slipped out without him planning it,“I really would, son.”
That fucking word, it hit, harder than anything else. My stomach turned immediately, hard and sudden, like my body had finally reached its limit. I nodded once, didn’t trust myself to say anything. And then I moved, fast. Too fucking fast for it to look normal, probably, but I didn’t care. I crossed the room, the hallway, my hand already on the door before I fully registered how it got there.
The air outside hit differently, but when I stepped out I didn’t stop. I walked. Then faster, I don’t even remember deciding to run, but I did. And I kept going, because if I stopped, I was going to break. I can barely remember the first steps, just the feeling of movement, like my body decided before I did.
