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At least she was aware of that.
I smiled tightly and looked at Sly, squeezing his hand gently before looking back at Mom. “We’re not doing anything to punish you. We love each other, and our love has nothing to do with you or Dad.”
Sly’s thumb caressed the back of mine. He was silently agreeing with my words.
“And you expect us to accept this?” she asked.
“You must,” Sly replied boldly. “Like you said, you’ve never given us the attention we deserved because you were too busy loving on Wavel. If you want to make up for that, you accept and respect our relationship.”
They sat there in silence for a while, letting Sly’s demand linger. Mom was the one who didn’t look pleased. Even though Dad had gotten out of our way too, I felt as if he had already accepted our relationship.
I looked from him to Mom, waiting for her to give a response. She looked away, arrogantly tipping her head back. “Well, I cannot promise you that I will ever understand why a brother and sister would ever want to be like…this, but I won’t stand in your way. I just don’t want to see you do all that nasty stuff. Hearing you is enough.” She muttered the last part, and Sly chuckled, making me purse my lips to hold back a laugh.
“That’s fine,” I said.
Dad leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together. “I’ve been thinking about your relationship, and how easily I’ve accepted what you have. I believe you have unresolved trauma, and you’re trying to push it aside by acting like this.”
“Acting?” Sly asked.
“Unresolved trauma?” was my better question. “You blame it on our unresolved trauma when you’re the ones who traumatized us.”
“Yes, and we acknowledge that we were the ones who damaged you. Don’t we, Alanis?”
Mom kept looking away. She just couldn’t keep eye-contact. I wasn’t surprised though. I never took her as a strong and confident woman. She was weak. Always had been.
She confirmed just that when she started crying.
“Please excuse your mother. It’s not easy for her to see you two so intimate.”
“We’re holding hands. We’re not being intimate,” I stated.
“But we will be tonight, so if you can’t handle the idea of that, you should probably talk to someone about it to resolve that trauma. Dad’s a psychologist. You should talk to him about it.” Sly was mocking them now, which he never would’ve done while Wavel was still around. But he did it to show how much he loved me. He was being protective, and he wouldn’t let anyone give me shit for loving him.
I squeezed his hand again, smiling gently, and he gave me a reassuring nod. Nothing and no one could ever come between us.
Not anymore. Not with Wavel gone.
Dad sighed, turning toward Mom with a smile. “What I’m trying to say is…if this is the way they deal with their trauma, we should probably let them. We may have lost our Wavel, but we can’t stop being their parents because of that. Sly and Caia are our children too. We neglected them, and we won’t be able to ever give them that time back and be better parents.”
Dad admitting to them being shitty parents was amusing. Good thing he acknowledged it though.
Dad leaned back with another sigh. “I say, we let them live their lives. They’re old enough to make their own decisions. We’ve never intervened in their lives before, and we shouldn’t do so now.”
There was silence again, and though Mom was still inaudibly crying, I could see the acceptance slowly filling the space between us. They didn’t have to say anything else. They wouldn’t anyway.
Our family had never been normal, and it was stupid to assume that any of us would’ve turned out normal. Even if Wavel were still here, things would’ve never turned out normal.
I still missed her, but I was thankful for one thing. Wavel’s passing stopped the jealousy I felt all my life. She wasn’t the centre of attention in this family anymore. No one was. And that’s what brought me joy and contentment.
I had missed out on so much because of my parents, and now, thanks to Sly, I would see the world and experience new things.
But most importantly, I would experience the love I’ve always longed for.
