“Abe’s mother married my father when I was six. Abram was seventeen at the time. He was a quiet teenager who was closed off. He almost never spoke and was always in the storage room that my father converted into a studio for him.
“My real mother died while giving birth to me, so I never got to meet her. My stepmom is a kind woman, and I immediately fell in love with her. I was so excited at the prospect of having a new mom and a big brother. I thought it was a great bonus. He’s always been enigmatic, too, and so he fascinated me. I always followed him everywhere, but he never glanced my way.
“To him, I wasn’t even a nuisance...I simply didn’t exist. Dad also tried to bond with him, but no one could get through his stoic silence. Especially not Mom. It’s like he harbored a deep resentment for her that nullified all our efforts. Then one day, he suddenly left without a word to anyone. He was twenty, and I was just nine at the time. I remember I cried for days for a brother who didn’t even notice me. Mom and Dad looked everywhere for him.
“Mom blamed herself for his disappearance. It’s why she’s so sickly. Years later, I started to see him everywhere in the papers and on the news. He’d become a famous artist. I remember being so happy that I called Mom in tears. I found out all I could about him and flew to London to see him at an award gala organized in his honor, but Abram treated me no less than a stranger. After dad died, I sent him tons of emails, but he never responded to any of them. I know he read them because he sent his secretary down here to attend dad’s funeral. She brought a large amount of money, but I refused it. I gave her the key and the deed to this house. Dad left specific instructions that it be given to Abram after his death. You know that painting of him in the living room?”
I nod wordlessly in response, too overwhelmed to utter a word.
“Abram heard it delivered to me some years back,” Brenda says. “I don’t know why he did that, but I placed it in his living room as some sort of, I don’t know, something that signified his presence, I guess. Later, I read in the news that he’d stopped painting and that painting of him, his last work, is worth millions of dollars. I wanted so badly to ask why he sent me that painting? Why he left home so abruptly? This is the first time in twenty-nine years that he’s returned home, and I don’t get to ask the reason for that, either. Twenty-nine years and he’s not changed his opinion of us one bit.”
“Do you know what happened to him before he came to your house?” I ask, tilting my head to the side in a bid to organize my thoughts.
Abram had mentioned his real father abusing him, and that part had bothered me ever since. And that too seemed to be the root of his trauma.
“I don’t know much about that,” Brenda says with a slight shrug, her brows pulling together in a deep frown. “What I do know is that his real father was a drunk who took out his frustration on his wife and only son. I have reason to believe he was physically and emotionally abused.”
I gasp softly, my heart breaking into painful pieces for young Abram.
He must have been badly hurt to close himself off from people totally.
Unsurprisingly, the one who should have loved and protected him at all costs was the one who hurt him most.
I, more than anyone else, understand how he must have felt. After all, I was in the same shoes...except his shoes probably hurt more.
“Anyway, that’s his story to tell,” Brenda says with a soft sigh. “I believe he’ll trust you enough to open up to you when the time is right. I also believe you’re the only one that can heal his old wound.”
Am I?
I suddenly don’t feel confident about that.