The woman lie across the bed on her side. Her red hair fall across her face. She reached out for me, “Come on, Silvia, lie down with me. We’ll have a little kip.”
I wasn’t tired, but I lie down and crawled up beside her. I put my hands against her swollen tummy. I could feel a baby move inside. Lucy. It was Lucy. I rolled away and stared at a dressing table, stained in a dark brown. It had a pink tea cup and saucer on top of it and a large mirror with a black and white photo of a man taped to it.
“Dad,” Suddenly back in the moment, I interrupted him, “I remember something. Tell me where this was.”
He nodded his head as I described the room. “That was her bedroom when she was a girl at your Gran’s house. The photo was of her father.”
I listened to him keep taking, telling me what she liked, what she ate, what her favourite colour was. I could finally see her. I still couldn’t make out her face, but I saw her body as she lifted me up. I could feel her. I could feel how soft her hair was as I buried my face into her neck. I could feel how strong her arms seemed as she cuddled me close. “It’s all right, Silvia,” She whispered, “They’ll be brighter days, Darling. Always remember that there will be brighter days.”
With a swirl of lavender and vanilla, sitting on a wooden chair next to my dying father, I remembered my mother. I heard her voice. I could smell her. I could feel her. Not just in a memory, but in the room with me, all around me.
Soon after, he drifted off to sleep again. It was all right. He’d given me what I had come for. I let him rest. I wasn’t angry anymore, not really. I’d never understand why he’d made the choices he had as a parent, but there was nothing either of us could do to change any of it now. After a time when he didn’t wake, I stood and kissed his forehead.
“Thank you, Daddy,” I whispered, “Thank you for giving her back to me.”
I drove back to my father’s house and told Oliver alone.
“She would have come back to you in your time, ,but I’m glad he reminded you” He told me, “The ones who share your heart never go very far, Sweetie. They never go very far at all.”
As before, Dad tried to send us packing. He was doing just fine, he told Lucy and me. We needed to go home, but every time he told us, his voice would be a little weaker, a little less convincing.
Finally, in the middle of the night, the hospital rang. It was a nurse doctor telling us that he’d slipped into a coma and it would only be hours until he was gone. The cancer had metastasized into his brain and it had taken him quicker than anyone had expected. Oliver and Alexander put us into Alex’s truck and we left off almost immediately.
Our father died at hospital less than three hours after we arrived.
It was so bizarre. Just bizarre. Lucy fell apart immediately, but I couldn’t even cry. My father had kept me at such a distance my whole life that his passing was almost a relief. I know how awful that sounds, but it’s the way I felt, like some sort of bondage had been lifted. I went home I made all the phone calls to my uncle and some of Daddy’s friends. Three days later, as he had made his own arrangements, Lucy and I buried him quietly beside our mother.
“I’m so sorry,” His friends told us, “You two were his pride and joy.”
I thanked them and told them truthfully that was a comfort.
Months after he left us, Lucy and I sat alone in the kitchen of the house where our father had lived for fifty years. Everything had been taken out of it, every corner had been scrubbed. It was ready to go on the market and I was ready to leave it behind. It wasn't any sort of home to me anymore. It was a place where I had lived, but without Dad there it was nothing more than an empty shell.
“It’s so strange,” Lucy told me, looking around the room, “Knowing that I’m never coming back here again.”
“Not to me,” I told her honestly, “I was never much attached to this place.”
She seemed surprised, “This was home.”
“For you maybe,” I looked at my sister, “I didn’t have a home until I met Oliver.”
“What?” She seemed offended. Her pale face was suddenly flushed, her full lips twisted sideways, “What are you talking about?”
“Dad never wanted me here,” I explained, still feeling the ice that surrounded his place in my heart, “He was always too busy to take any time for me.” I could feel myself becoming angry again and the look on her face, like she wanted to slap me, only made me angrier. She really didn't understand. She really didn't get it. He'd always treated her differently than he did me. Babied her. Spoiled her. Kept her close while he sent me away, “I just stayed here,” I continued, this time challenging her, “The same as I stayed at my schools. I wasn’t really wanted anywhere. Not until I met Oliver.”
Lucy's expression changed. She stared at me with a look I’d rarely seen on her face. I couldn’t place it. She didn't say a word, but her eyes smouldered.
“Lucy, are you upset with me?” I played innocent.
“God damned right I’m upset!” She shoved herself back in her chair and huffed, “Do you really believe that he didn’t want you here?”
“He loved you better,” I responded. “I know he loved me, but he loved you better.”
“Like hell!” Lucy’s face went bright pink. Her brown eyes brimmed with tears, “You are so stupid if you believe that! For all your brains, Silvia, you are so god damned STUPID!” She made a move like she was going to stand up, but didn't, “Do you realise you were all I ever heard about?” She slapped her palm against the table, “YOU! All he ever talked about was YOU! Friends would come over to visit and he’d tell them all about his Silvia!” She snorted, “‘Silvia got the highest marks in her class this semester!’ ‘Silvia won the science competition!’ ‘Silvia looks so much like your mother, Lucy! So much it takes my breath away sometimes!’ He never said a thing about me! Not to me, not to anybody...”
“He always pampered you!”
“I’m not saying he didn’t!” She was still shouting, “He did! Poor stupid Lucia who couldn't do a thing for herself! She needed looked after! Either by him or her big sister! I never even COMPARED to you!” Her face was bright red now, wet with the tears that were pouring down it. Whether they were tears of rage or sorrow I had no idea, “But you are so fucking selfish and so arrogant and so BLIND that you never saw he tried to do the same thing to you! You needed something, he saw you had it, didn't he? Train tickets and clothes and all your books and your extra classes! You told him you needed ten quid and he gave you fifty! And you never came out of your bloody bedroom!” Lucy threw a crumpled serviette at me, “He tried, Silvia, to be good to you and you shut him out!”
“He gave me things! Things! I didn't want things!” I screamed, chucking the serviette back at her. It hit her in the breast and fell to the ground. She was bent over reaching for it as I laid into her, “I wanted a father! I wanted a home and a family and I got a school! I got a fucking school because he didn't want me here! He wanted to work and he only wanted you! I was too much bother!”
She lobbed the serviette back at me, but I deflected it with the back of my hand and it sailed into the sink, “Shut up! Just shut up! He did what he thought was best for you! You were so bright, Silvia! So bright that your teachers didn't know what to do with you! Put you up a year? He gave you professors when all you had before were dimwits!”
“I didn't have to live there!”
“Maybe you didn't! But maybe he didn't want you wasting away here where you weren't being raised properly!”
“It doesn't matter! I needed him! And what about when he moved us all to Wales so we could all be close? He never sent for me!”
“You were always with Oliver!”
“He could have stopped me!”
She was silent for just one second, her eyes wide with disbelief, “Do you really mean that? He could have stopped you? Really? Do you think he wanted you at Oliver’s constantly? Do you?” She demanded, “He hated it! He told me he hated it. He worried! He worried that you’d wind up pregnant! He used to tell me to go along when you'd invite me to keep an eye on you!” She drew a sharp breath, “But when I told him you weren't having sex...and believe me, I left a whole lot out in the area of details!” She laughed out loud, quickly shaking her head, “And I mean a WHOLE lot out...then he saw you were finally happy. You were always so sad, so fucking MISERABLE and there wasn't anything anybody could do to ever make you happy! So he let you go. You never listened to a damned thing he told you anyway! You‘d just run off, I told him, and you and Oliver were right and proper. No worries, I told him. I had to tell him because you never listened to anything he said and if you fucked up, it was me who was going to have to listen to it because I was the one he always dumped his shit on…”