My heart races like crazy and I feel sick to my stomach as I watch my mother, waiting for her to say something to explain this mess. When she just stands there, I get very impatient and damn scared to be honest.
“Mom, what is going on?”
A tear escapes her eye and she quickly reaches up to brush it away. She’s always hated showing her weakness, so she usually puts up a front, but something tells me, it won’t be so easy this time. Hiding her face, she finally speaks, “Your father is seeing someone else, Phoenix. We’re through, done, it’s over. He asked me to leave, so here we are.” Those big hazel eyes fill with tears this time and within seconds, she is on the ground, with one hand gripping the countertop and the other one hanging between her knees as she sobs. “What am I’m going to do? Thirty years. It’s been thirty years since I have been alone. I can’t. I just can’t. I need him, Phoenix. I love him so much.”
Dammit, that Bastard. This is definitely worse than I imagined. I push away from the counter and kneel down in front of her, placing my hand on her shoulder for comfort. This would have to be the first time she’s needed my comforting and I was hoping this day would never come. “What the hell is wrong with him? How long has this been going on? How did you . . .” I stop, realizing, that as distant as my father has been for the last five or nine years, who knows how long it’s been going on. Could be one year or it could be nine. All I know is that he’s an ass. “Just never mind that. He’s a son of a bitch and a piece of shit for doing this to you. You don’t deserve this-“
“Don’t say that about your father, Phoenix. He’s a good man.” She looks up with tear stained eyes and wipes at her blotchy face. “He tried giving it a second chance. That’s why Zoe has been spending so much time here. He tried, so don’t blame him.”
“Are you shitting me, mom! He’s a good man? Why are you and Zoe here with all of your belongings if he’s a good man? Tell me that. He should be the one to leave.” I stand up and slam my fist down on the counter top pissed off that my dad would do such a thing to his family. Family is everything. “Don’t defend him. He hasn’t been good in years and even you know that.”
“Phoenix! Watch your language.” Her voice comes out shaky as she looks up at me with wet eyes. “He owns that house, okay. I haven’t worked in over eight years and you know that. I couldn’t work after Adric died. I just couldn’t function right anymore. I missed my baby-”
“Mom stop,” I cut in, not able to handle this confession. I can’t listen to it. Why bring up Adric now after eight years. No one in this house talks about him and that is how I have made it through the years. Silence has been the key. I start walking away to the living room as fast as I can, kicking a bag out of my way. “Please don’t bring up my brother right now. Hasn’t there been enough tears shed already? Don’t choose right now to bring him up, dammit. Just don’t.”
My mother follows behind me, her red hair matted to her face with tears, she no longer seems determined to hide. “You need to know I loved Adric with everything in me. I still love him. He was my baby boy. My first born-“
“Stop it, please.” Tears well up in my eyes and my whole body’s shaking with nerves. I grab onto the couch, my nails digging in, to hold back my emotion. “You guys are welcome here as long as you want, but please... stop.”
She doesn’t stop though. She doesn’t know how, ever. “He was so good to everyone, so sweet and caring. My handsome baby boy. You look so much like your brother. Those gray eyes and dark hair, easily tanned skin and healthy glow like your father.” She grabs my face and looks me in the eye. “Sometimes it’s hard to look at you without it hurting. Do you get that?” Tears stream down my face as I squeeze my eyes closed, licking away the salty tears that are dripping over my lips.
“You were everything to Adric. He worried about you so much. Protecting you seemed to be the most important thing to him. Even when it came to your father and me. Him and that damn, Kellan kid always acting as if we weren’t good enough. Do you know how that makes me feel to know that I have failed him? Look at me.” She squeezes my face and shakes it, until I finally open my eyes to look at her. “I abandoned you after we found him in the attic. I should have been there for you. I should have comforted you, but I couldn’t, not after seeing my baby boy that way. You reminded me too much of him and I couldn’t take it. Even after you ran off.” She pauses to choke back a sob. “I didn’t even look for you. I just couldn’t find it in me.”
Not able to stand here and listen anymore, I pull my face away and start reaching for the bags. I had no idea she hadn’t even looked for me that day, and that day stings more now, that I know the truth. “Let’s get these bags put aside somewhere. You can take my room and Zoe can take the couch.” I stop to swallow the lump in my throat and to catch my breath. “I’ll sleep here on the floor. I have plenty of blankets so it should be nice and soft-“
“You don’t have to do that,” my mother’s guilty voice cuts in. “We’ll only be here for a few days and then we’ll leave.”
Zoe jumps up from the couch with a panicked look on her freckled face. “Where else would we go? We have nowhere but here. I’m not sleeping outside because you screwed up. Dad left you, not me.”
“Zoe, shut up!” I place my hand on her shoulder and push her back down on the couch. “Don’t speak to mom that way. It’s not her fault that dad’s an ass. Now lay back down and keep out of it.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and slams her head against the back of the cushion. “How am I supposed to stay out of it when you guys are in my new room? Nice try. Why don’t you guys take it somewhere else so I don’t have to be around her.”
“Yeah, and why don’t you learn to . . .” My mother’s words trail off as she turns to face the wall and covers her mouth. “I’m sorry, Zoe. Let’s just get some sleep. We both need it.”
“No! What was that mother? What were you about to say?” Zoe jumps to her feet, grabs a picture frame from the coffee table, and tosses it across the room. The picture shatters causing all of us to stop and stare.
I think it hit us all at the same time. It’s the only picture I have of him. It was taken a week before he died. He was leaning against his motorcycle with his legs crossed in front of him, holding up the rock-on hand symbol. He had just gotten his first motorcycle that day. It was a piece of junk he bought off someone that was moving out of town and planned to fix it up. He was still in the process when he . . . died. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen that bike since the first day he got it. I wonder what ever happened to it.