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Seraphina
“Are you sure?” heasks, but I hear it. My body is begging to shake.
“I'm fucking sure.” I snap, swallowing hard to ease the lump forming in my throat. The shaking intensifies as my stomach knots tighter and tighter. No matter how hard I breathe, no air seems to reach my lungs.
“Antonio, I want to leave. Get me out of here. Now. Please,” I beg as tears stream down my face in salty rivers.
He starts the engine. “It might not be him, little bird.”
I lean forward, digging around in my handbag, finding what I'm looking for. I pull out the photograph and hand it to Antonio.
He is about to turn the wheel of the car and pull into the street, but he stops to stare down the picture of a black man with short-cropped hair. The edges are the photograph are torn, and the picture is cracked, faded over time, but it's him.
He is older now, he looks more worn down, as though life has been hard on him. But there is no mistaking the fact that the man we just saw is my father.
For the entire drive back to the hotel, I'm contemplating everything that this could mean. It's beyond what I can comprehend in this moment of absolute shock.
I just go numb, unable to deal with the horror of what I have just learned.
I follow Antonio up to the penthouse, not registering my surroundings or anything he says to me.
He guides me toward the sofa in the living room, saying something about tea. I sit still, staring at the wall, trying to get my thoughts to either process or quiet down. Neither seems to work. I feel nothing at all.
“Seraphina?”
I glance up, staring at him. “Your tea is cold. Do you want me to make you another one?”
I look down at the teacup sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I do not know when he put it there or how long I have been sitting here. “Little bird?”
His voice is soothing, but I can’t seem to reply.
Antonio leans over me, wrapping his arms beneath me. He lifts me up, cradling me against his broad chest, and carries me to the bedroom.
He places me on the bed, then kneels down beside the bed to remove my shoes. I watch him without a thought.
He unbuttons my jeans. I don’t say a word.
Then pulls the covers back and places me beneath them, pulling them up over me. He climbs into bed next to me and, wrapping his arms around my waist, he snuggles me against his chest, holding me close, his presence a comfort I wish I could feel.
I don’t know if I slept or not. I seemed to just lay in bed, drifting on nothingness.
In the morning, I don’t remember waking up. I'm just lying here, staring at the same spot in the ceiling's corner, wondering if what I saw was real.
Antonio is already up; I can hear him in the kitchen. I roll over, forcing myself to look at something else. I close my eyes as tears sting against them.
I have one thought, one prominent fear, that has crept into my mind over the hours since I found out my father was alive. I came to this, considered, but.
My father has been alive all this time, yet he has never once tried to reach out to me. He must have known where I was. And if he didn’t, then it would not have been hard for him to find me. I kept his surname. I'm on social media. I have not hidden or lived in secret.
My father did not want to find me. He was not interested in knowing me, or speaking to me, or explaining anything. The only reason I can imagine for doing such a thing is - he killed my mother.
All I saw that night was a man standing over her. A man leaped from the window, shattering glass across the room. A man who could have been anyone. Who could have been my father? Where was he otherwise? He wasn’t in bed next to her. He didn’t run in when my mother was shot. Where was he?
“Little bird, I made you some coffee.” Antonio places a cup of coffee on the bedside table, and I watch the steam drift off it, disappearing in long tendrils into the air.
Antonio leans over and strokes my hair, his fingers brushing across my cheek.
“I'm going out for a few hours. I don’t want to, but I have to. I will be back as soon as I can. If you ask me to stay, though - I will?” he looks at me with what appears to be hope in his eyes.
