Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
I couldn’t imagine the amount of emptiness she was feeling.
It wasn’t until I crossed her path in the kitchen that I saw her reality. She was alone in there when I walked through her French doors. She stood in front of an open cabinet with a coffee tin in her hands. Inside the tin were all of PaPa’s homemade recipes that he’d written down.
I walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped slightly and wiped at her eyes. “Oh, sweetheart. Hi. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Quiet on my feet.”
“You always did move around like a mouse. I swear, when all the other kids ran around wild, you were so quiet.” She turned to face me and placed a hand against my cheek. “PaPa always said you were the quietest with the loudest thoughts.”
“Why do I get the idea that your thoughts are pretty loud as of late?”
She smiled and sniffled a bit. She glanced around the kitchen, then back to the recipe cards. “It’s loud in the house, but it feels…quieter. Doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“I miss him.”
“Me too.”
She smiled, but it fell quickly to a frown. I was glad she didn’t find the need to pretend to be okay around me like she did with everyone else. “Theo, I—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the French doors were pushed open, and a woman wearing all black entered. Who in the hell would wear all black to my grandfather’s funeral? Color. The theme was fucking color.
It wasn’t until I locked eyes with the woman that I realized who exactly I was staring at.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I barked out, my whole body heating instantly.
She blinked a few times before she parted her lips and said, “Hi, son.”
My mother.
My fucking mother.
She stood there in the kitchen as if she weren’t a ghost who’d just barged into my grandparents’ home. I hadn’t seen or heard from the woman since she walked out of my life when I was twelve years old. Yet now there she was, on the day of PaPa’s funeral, saying, “hi, son.”
Did hell just freeze over?
Was I hallucinating?
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I repeated because those were the only words that could shoot out of my mouth.
I stood in front of Grandma slightly as if to protect her from the daughter who broke her heart all those years before when she walked out and left us all behind.
To my surprise, Grandma didn’t seem nearly as shocked by my mother’s presence. “I told you not to come today,” Grandma scolded my mother. “You swore you wouldn’t.”
Mom tugged at the sleeves of her black dress and bit her bottom lip. “I know, I know. I just couldn’t miss this. He was my father.”
My eyes darted back and forth between Mom and Grandma. My mind buzzed with confusion as I stared at the two of them. I looked at Grandma, feeling hurt, betrayed, livid. “You’ve been in contact with her?” I asked, pain soaking through my words. “You’ve been talking to her? For how long?”
Grandma parted her lips to answer me, but instead, she shook her head and turned toward Mom. “You swore you wouldn’t come.”
“He was my father,” she repeated, this time the words irritating me more than the first time she’d said them.
“He was my father!” I shouted, gesturing toward her as if she had lost her damn mind. How dare she claim PaPa as hers after she broke his heart? She didn’t know it, but I sometimes heard him crying over his daughter. Worrying about her safety. Mourning the loss of a daughter who was still living. How dare she show up to his funeral to mourn his death as if she had been there when he was living? My chest burned with anger the longer I looked at my mother because she looked like the best parts of him. In her eyes, I saw PaPa. In her frown, I saw him, too. But he wasn’t hers. He was mine. “He was my father, he was my mother when he had to be, and he was my friend when I had none,” I choked out. “How fucking dare you show up today and act sad for a man you abandoned? For a family you left behind.” And for the little boy who begged for you to come back night after night after night.
Mom parted her mouth to speak, but no words were produced.
Tears kept streaming down her face, but I didn’t care.
She had no right to be fucking sad. She could’ve spent the past decade loving PaPa, but instead, she left. What did that say about her?
“I-I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, hurrying out of the room.
Grandma raced her hands over her face as her overwhelming emotions grew stronger. But I still wasn’t up to par with how she didn’t seem beyond surprised by the first-time arrival of her daughter, who had been in no contact with the family for over eighteen fucking years.