I never knew how to place it. Never knew how to ask about the pictures, the crying, or the cat. I was more than surprised when the words came out of my mother’s mouth that morning. It was crisp and dim out, my father wasn’t home, my brother sat depressed from his break up, and I simply didn’t want to go to school. She got about three words into it before I realized what she was talking about. My mind took in every word and drew them into pictures during school. Her arms stretched out for me that night while I cried myself to sleep and after the nightmares of all the bold, wasted and split, left to spoil and rot into the soil the game makers could call their own. The flashes from the revolution were caused from too vivid detail, too much stuff I didn’t need-didn’t want to know.
The man, Gale is his name, stands in front of me. In front of the sunset my father paints, behind my mother’s sorrows, next to the song of a mocking jay, far away from us. The snow falls, a woman carrying a baby, holds the hand of the girl who broke my brother’s heart, stand next to him. She must feel as if she matters, as if she’s his missing puzzle piece, but she must not be by the look in his eyes. The broken pieces of his heart swim in his eyes and spill out his mouth when he says.
“I’m here to see your mother.”
I stare at them like he just spoke a different language, my mind was blank and confused, but most of all it was going over how her words spilled out. They were regretful but angry at the same time.
“He’s not even your real uncle!” she’d said, “He disrespected your father and cast me out with him!” She also added that he knew what happened to my father.
“Let them in” I jumped at my mom’s calm, sweet voice. She might’ve been mad at him but she wouldn’t leave him, and especially a baby or kid, to die. To fight the blizzard that wafted lightly into our house.
I stepped away from the door while my mother stepped deeper into the warmth of our home. He let the woman carrying the baby and the child in first before stepping in, closing the door behind him.
I stood at the corner of the hall everyone walks through to get into our house. It was an arch, made of mahogany, the door way and the edge of the arch lined with a single rope of roses, fit to match the vast garden of Primroses that would be awaiting outside if the weather was warmer. They caused a commotion on the brown, spiraling rug.
“You can just take them off.” I whispered. The woman stopped trying to kick the ice and snow off her boots and gave me a quick smile of thanks to me before peeling them off her feet, placing them out of the way and hesitantly wandering into the house. Kat, who had taken her shoes off had taken her shoes off long before her mother had, shot me a dirty look.
Kat Hawthorne, the girl who broke my brother, Fin’s heart. She had broken up with him because she thought he was cheating on her. It was still early in the relationship, she hadn’t met me, my mother or my father. Just Fin. And when she found out she apologized, but Fin wouldn’t tolerate it. And now he wants her back and now it would look foolish if they both got back together. And they knew it.
He was leaning on the counter next to my dad, the usual mess of pans and mixing bowls and measuring cups behind them. Gale nodded kindly towards them before walking into the house and standing next to his wife’s seat.