Page 84 of Chasing Blue
“When you’d come in from work or be sitting at the dinner table, I tried to think of everything I could possibly do to make you happy. To make it so you wouldn’t get angry and storm off. So that you wouldn’t leave us and go and find another wife or a brand-new family.” I don’t sob as I speak, but tears spill continuously from my eyes.
“Because of you, I’m terrified that everyone will one day leave me, so I do everything in my power to make them happy, to please them, thinking . . . hoping, it’ll make them want to stay, to be around me. I take on responsibility for their happiness. I take on their problems, even though it’s not me who caused them, and I invest so much energy into making them happy, I end up empty, with nothing left to deal with my own problems. It exhausts me, but I still do it obsessively.”
“I fucked up so badly.” His words are almost a whisper, and I barely make them out. “But honestly, Scar, I want to try and build some bridges. Even if you can never forgive me, please, I’d really like to be a part of your life.”
Tears drip from my chin onto my chest, and again, all I have is a head shake.
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know if I can take that chance. Take a chance on letting you in, only to have you leave me again. Because on top of the other ways you fucked me up, you also somehow, left me only feeling in extremes. If I’m sad, I’m mostly devastated, and if I’m happy, I’m ecstatic, which means I slump from the highest of highs to the very lowest of lows. There’s no in-between with me. When I hurt, I really fucking hurt, and I’ve never had anyone other than Asher there to catch me. Right now, I’m at a place where I’m reasonably happy. I mostly have my emotions under control. What if I let you back in and you decide to hit the bottle again, or just take off and disappear from my life like you have in the past?”
I let out a long breath when I finish talking. Getting those words out should be cathartic, but they give me no relief as I watch my dad cry.
“Shit.”
I look up to see my brother walking towards us with a cardboard tray of coffees in one hand and carrying a large paper takeaway bag in the other, eyes slicing between us.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left you two alone for so long.”
I give my brother a quick eyebrow raise and ‘no shit Sherlock expression’ as he sets the tray down on the table.
“It’s all good. If I’m ever gonna fix things between us, I need to be told and accept what I put you all through. I know I was a dick. I just didn’t realise how much damage I’d done,” my dad says as he wipes at his face.
“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” I say again. Not in a nasty way, I’m genuinely curious.
I watch as my brother sets a to-go cup in front of each of us before sitting down and rummaging through the bag he brought with him.
“Despite what you might think of me, Scarlett, I’ve never stopped loving the both of you. And I hated the thought of you dealing with your mum’s death alone.”
I watch in silence as Ash puts four different kinds of muffins on the table, and without asking anyone else first, I take the raspberry, white chocolate, and orange one for myself.
“Believe it or not, even though I wasn’t in love with your mum, I did still love her. I just had a really shitty way of showing it.”
Taking a sip of my coffee, I decide I’ve had enough of dealing with my feelings for now, so, through a mouthful of muffin, I ask my brother, “So what else is on the agenda for today?”
* * *
I’m drained.Mentally, physically, and in all the ways possible, I feel completely wrung out. On top of waking up to my dad’s guilty apologies, he then accompanied us to the funeral home, helped us pick a casket, and make arrangements for the service.
The lady at the funeral home had asked if we wanted a time to come in and ‘view’ my mum. Before I’d even had a chance to answer, Asher had jumped in. “No. Absolutely not, Scar.”
My mouth opened and closed multiple times as I looked from my brother to the funeral home lady, to my dad.
“I had to identify her. I had no choice in that, it had to be done, but you? You don’t need to see that,” Ash says, and that’s the moment he breaks. Right in the middle of the casket showroom, my big strong brother falls apart, and for possibly the very first time in our lives, our dad is not only there, but he holds on to us as we cry.
* * *
Once we’d pulledourselves together, we’d gotten on with what needed to be done, but I can’t stop wondering how bad she must look. If my brother is denying me that last chance to say goodbye to my mum, she must’ve really made a mess of herself, and tryingnotto picture that image is another thing exhausting me.
We didn’t have the greatest of relationships. She was too busy wallowing in her self-pity caused by my dad’s behaviour to ever be emotionally attached or available to us.
Maybe I’m just too harsh, but I’d like to think if I’d ever been lucky enough to have children, I’d do my utmost to protect them from everything, not constantly weaponise them in an attempt at holding on to a man that didn’t want me. But she was my mum, I loved her as any kid loves their mum, and I feel like I should say a more private goodbye than the public one at her funeral service.
I sat on the edge of my bed at Asher’s, processing all of this. Then just because I felt the need to add to my angst levels, I’d read Zoe’s texts and listened to the voice message she’d left telling me Eden had lied. There was no reconnect between her and Jack, no reconciliation, getting back together, or whatever other way she could think of trying to get her point across that Eden was a ‘bare-faced lying bitch’.
I’d then listened to Jack’s message telling me we needed to talk. Eden might have lied about getting back together with Jack, but she hadn’t lied about telling Jack the secret I’d been keeping.
So, after grabbing six cans of premixed pink gin and tonic from Asher’s bar—paying for them first, obviously—I headed straight for my happy place, the beach directly opposite.
The sun has gone down, but the temperature is still up around twenty-two, and for the time of year, the humidity is high.
