THE CRUELEST THING

Who let this man into this house?"

The voice came from the front door and landed in the living room like something thrown hard.

Everything stopped.

Zara, who had just taken her first cautious step toward her father, froze on the bottom stair. Dominic, who had stood up when he heard the door, went completely still. And I stood in the middle of the living room holding my glass of water feeling suddenly and very acutely like a person standing in the middle of a road watching two cars come from opposite directions.

Reid was in the doorway.

He was just standing there with his keys still in his hand, his jaw set and his eyes fixed on his father with the particular stillness of someone who had been holding something for a very long time and had just walked into the room where he was finally allowed to put it down.

Dominic opened his mouth.

"Don't even say a thing." Reid walked in and dropped his keys on the side table and the sound of them hitting the surface was somehow louder than it should have been. "Fifteen years and not one phone call, nor any visit. We didn't even know if you were dead or alive for the first two years and then we had to hear from someone outside this family that you were fine." His voice was low and even and completely devastating. "Perfectly fine, chilling abroad and building your life."

"Reid, I need you to listen…"

"I have been listening my whole life." Reid cut straight through him. "I listened when mum said you just needed time. I listened when people said give him space he'll come back. I listened for fifteen years and nothing came." He stopped and looked at his father with eyes that had gone very quiet. "So no. You listen to me now."

Dominic closed his mouth.

"You left mum," Reid continued. "You left her with a seven year old, a ten year old and a mortgage and everything else and you just…left. How cruel dad, how freaking cruel! And she never once broke down in front of us. Not even once. She got up every single morning, made breakfast, went to work, came home and helped with homework and acted like everything was fine so that we wouldn't fall apart." His voice stayed controlled but something underneath it was fraying slightly at the edges. "Do you know what that costs a person? To hold that much together alone for that long?"

"Your mother and I didn't…”

"She never moved on." Zara's voice came from the stairs, unsteady but present. "Did you know that? Fifteen years and she never brought one man into this house. She still had your photograph in her room until last year. Last year, dad. Fifteen years later." She unwrapped her arms from around herself and straightened slightly. "And you got married again. Three years after you left you got married again and we found out from someone at your previous office who thought we already knew."

I stared at the floor.

Watching Reid stand in that doorway demanding to be seen by the parent who left.

I knew this, not their version of it but the shape of it. The specific hollowness of growing up in the space a parent left behind. 

 "We didn't love each other." Dominic said it quietly. Setting it down carefully like something fragile. "It wasn't working. It hadn't been working for years before I left and I thought…”

"That's a lie." Zara's voice broke cleanly down the middle. "That is a lie and you know it. If mum didn't love you she would have moved on. She had fifteen years and she didn't move on, not even a little bit so don't come into our house…” her voice broke again and she stopped and pressed her hand over her mouth for a moment. "Don't come into her house the week she dies and tell us she didn't love you. She loved you more than she ever should have and it cost her everything."

Reid said nothing.

He just looked at his father and the silence said everything the words hadn't.

I felt tears about to roll down my cheeks but I blinked back hard.

No, absolutely not. I was not doing this here.

"I should give you all some space," I said.

I set my glass down, walked to the front door and let myself out without looking back at any of them because if I looked back at Zara's face right now I was going to lose the small amount of composure I had left.

The afternoon air hit me and I walked to the car, got in and closed the door.

And then I sat there.

Through the walls of the house I could still hear them but not words, just the low urgent sound of a family tearing something open that had been sealed for fifteen years. The rise and fall of voices, a silence and then Reid again.

I put my hands on the steering wheel and stared through the windscreen at nothing.

I was not going to cry.

I was not going to sit in this car and cry about a woman I had never met. A woman who left me with an aunt to raise me. I had decided years ago that some people were not built for the things they were supposed to be built for and my mother was one of them and that was simply the shape of my life and I had accepted it.

I had accepted it.

Except Reid's voice kept coming back to me.

You left us. You left her with a seven year old and a ten year old and you just went.

And Zara.

She loved you more than she ever should have and it cost her everything.

And the photograph still in the bedroom after fifteen years.

A tear rolled down my cheek before I could stop it and I wiped it away immediately with the back of my hand and made a sound that was almost a laugh at myself for letting it get that far.

I started the car.

Pulled away from the curb slowly and drove without any particular destination in mind just the need to be moving somewhere that wasn't here.

Some parents left because they had to.

Some left because they wanted to.

And some left and let their children spend their entire lives not knowing which one it was.