Page 32 of Say You Love Me

If I feel, I will crumble.

chapter fourteen

THEN

~

FINITY

I stand at the door and wait. Inside I hear the hum of the television. The volume is loud, too loud to hear my knock. I bang on the door again.

“Mum, it’s just me. Open up.”

The curtains flutter and then the door opens, just a crack.

“It’s me,” I say again. “Let me in, it’s cold.”

She walks away from the door, leaving me to push it open fully. I wrap my cardigan tighter. It’s almost as cold inside as it is outside. I rub my arms, trying to coax some warmth back into my bones.

“Why haven’t you got the fire going?”

Hudson bought, delivered and stacked an entire trailer-load of wood for her this winter, so I know she’s got some.

Mum scowls. “It creates too much dust. It affects Parker’s allergies.”

My mother looks a lot older than her fifty years. It’s nothing to do with the wrinkles around her eyes, or the gray to her hair. It’s the way she keeps herself. Disheveled. Unkempt. As though she’s given up on life. She lowers herself back into her armchair and I look around the room. Not a lot has changed since I lived here. It’s messier and that’s about it. There are still ornamental elephants sitting on the mantelpiece with their trunks all pointing at the door. There’s still the three-piece set of nesting tables, complete with a silver tea set that’s never been used sitting on top. Dust covers the plates displayed on the cabinet. The baseball bat Dad used to keep at the door is still there. It’s the only thing of his that’s still here. Mum threw everything else away.

I sit on the couch. There’s a small, very small and seemingly pointless electric heater in one corner, the elements burning red. The cat’s bed is placed in front of it and Parker lifts his head lazily, only to yawn and curl back up into a ball.

“I’ve come to say goodbye. We leave in the morning.”

Mum makes this sound that’s a mixture between a snort and a sigh. She keeps her eyes fixed on the paused television as I speak.

“I thought you might have come by the house today,” I say.

I notice the blurred picture on the television. It shows a little girl on the shores of a lake, picking up rocks and holding them up to the camera. There’s a smile on the little girl’s face. One of pure pleasure. She looks happy. Carefree.

“It was too cold to leave the house today.” There’s a delayed slur to her words.

It wasn’t too cold for Lori and Lance to drive down and help us pack. It wasn’t too cold for Liam and Megan to stack our belongings into a trailer we’d rented.

My eyes go to the glass on the floor. It’s sitting on a wooden chopping board alongside a decanter of gin, a bottle of tonic water, and a lemon that’s been cut into wedges. At least seven of the small sections have already been used. Squeezed and discarded.

Mum jerks her head in the direction of the screen. “It’s you.”

I look back but I don’t recognize the little girl. Mum presses play on the remote and my father’s voice fills the air.

“What’cha got, Fin?”

“A stone,” my childish voice replies. “A pretty stone,” I declare, as though it needs to be clarified.

“It’s very pretty. I think it might even be a diamond.”

My eyes grow wide and my father laughs.

Tears form a lump at the back of my throat. “I didn’t know we had any home movies.” I’m annoyed at my mother for keeping this from me. All these years and I’ve had nothing but the recollections of a child to remember him by. No photos. No stories told by my mother to keep him alive. No family to tell me what he was like.

“Finity!” On the video my mother’s voice sails on the breeze, but it’s younger, happier.

---