“I wish you’d never began that program, Mom,” I whispered, all cheeriness sucked out of the room. It was silent before, but now I had the room’s attention.
Dumbfounded, she wasn’t connecting the dots at my statement. “W-why do you say that?”
I broke eye contact first. Inhaling a deep breath I didn’t realize I would need in order to make this statement out loud. I finally exhaled and said, “Because I’m in love with a woman that’s in it.”
“The program is very much reversible,” she began automatically, trying to soften the blow. “And the person involved can drop out anytime with no barriers or conflict. It really is—”
Then she froze.
“Lennon.”
Hearing her name from my mother’s mouth felt intimately sad. Heavy.
Her hands lifted toward her mouth. Her saddened eyes reached across the table at me. I hadn’t realized my eyes were welling up with tears.
“I think I love her,” I admitted, my heart shattering into pieces.
Mom’s expression softened. “She is remarkable. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know her through her therapist’s case notes and the application process.”
“What’s so wrong with her that she wants to kill herself?” my uncompassionate father muttered.
I stiffened, but my mother responded instead. “She was handed the world’s shittiest life. In fact, you were there when her father passed. You were the lead investigator. So mind yourself before you speak too quickly.”
My dad’s face went stark white. The colour completely drained from him. He stared at my mother for far too long, a question in his eyes. I looked between them, unknowing what was happening. She nodded once in his direction, affirming something on his mind.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed.
Curiosity consumed every thought and potential question on my lips. I asked outright, “What? What do you know? I know her dad died in a car accident, but not much more. I’m too scared to ask her anything else honestly.”
My father gulped.
He wasn’t much of a conversationalist when it came to his line of work, but he appeared to be gearing up to tell us something important.
“Well, that evening, I was working the night shift. It was the first call, right out of the shoot we got an accident, likely an impaired by the fact that guy ran the red light. We got on scene, and found Todd Becker pinned inside the vehicle. He was still conscious, but declining rapidly.”
His jaw tightened, obviously affected by this story himself, but he proceeded on.
“I took one look at him and knew he wasn’t going to make it. The way the vehicle had him pinned, the blood that was, well, everywhere. I lied to him, telling him we’d get him out of there,and return him home to his family. He—uh—he knew. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. But I stand by the ways that you don’t tell the people who are dying just how bad it is, okay? But he knew. He fucking knew he was dying. He looked me right in my eyes and told me, ‘Just check on her, okay? Make sure her mom is taking care of her’ and then the light went out of his eyes.”
My father was now unable to look at any of us, shame crawling all over his skin at the things he’d seen over the years. Decades of wear and tear on his soul.
“I did go, but I didn’t go right away,” he finally confessed.
The room was suffocating.
“I wouldn’t have even gone had I not gotten the report of a potential breaking and entering at the house where he lived. Just seemed too suspicious.” He made note of the events in his head, trying to compartmentalize which was important, and what was not.
Mom reached for his hand. “You don’t have to relive this one. It wasn’t your fault.”
He shook his head. “No, it was. I should have checked in. But when I went there, she was so hungry, and filthy, and neglected. Her piece of shit mother had fucking left her, just left her like that. She was fucking six years old. She just left her there to die, and he had asked me, on his death bed, to fucking check on her.”
The sombre air sat heavy on all our shoulders.
We never fully understood the weight of what my father sat with each shift when he came home quiet and short-fused. Never really understood the full extent of what he carried each day he saw something traumatic. Or something he felt he could’ve prevented.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I finally said.
He looked up at me. “Why are you sorry?”
