There wasjustone important topic I didn’t touch.
As I drove past the playground and turned onto my street, my brain remembered the onions.Spending so much time with Ella had made me distracted.Maybe distraction was contagious.But I had left the onions behind, on the market shelf.She had left her purse somewhere, she still didn’t know where.
I laughed to myself, alone in the car, but that laugh quickly vanished as I watched a familiar man walk out of my gate.
It was my stepfather.Or he used to be.Ben.Someone I hadn’t seen in the last nine months.
Ben had always been a broad-shouldered, strong man with a muscular frame, like all my mom’s boyfriends before him.But right there, he seemed thinner, not so robust.He looked a little… shrunken.
And the second he glanced into the car window, he recognized me.
“Miles!”he called, approaching the car.I didn’t return his smile.
“What are you doing here?”I asked, pushing the car door open.I hadn’t planned on ever seeing him again.And I certainly had no intention of pretending I forgave him for ordering my mom out of his house, without much of a goodbye to my face.
“Man, you’ve grown up this last year,” he said, smiling weakly, looking at me with his proud eyes.
“You came to apologize to her?”I barked at him.
“What?”he asked, confused.And I didn’t answer him.So he went on.“Miles, I notice you’re coming at me guns blazing—”
“Yeah, you expect me to hug you hello after leaving me and my mom and showing up from nowhere almost one year later?”I snapped at him.
“Leaving you?”He raised one hand and closed his eyes.“Miles,” he took a deep breath, and this time I let him continue, “I did not leave you.I believe your mother should be the one telling you this, but…” he paused for a second, looking into my eyes.“You two left me.When I came home that Thursday night, you two were gone.I never got an explanation larger than the paragraph your mother wrote in a note to me.I love you both so much.And suddenly life turned upside down.And you left.I didn’t get a phone number, an address, or a reason…”
He looked at the ground, his head hanging down.He seemed defeated.
My heart was racing.I couldn’t respond.I had heard a completely different story.And for almost an entire year, I had believed I should hate him for it.
But now… I wasn’t so sure.
Did I believe him?
Ben and I sat on the ground, resting against a wall, in the shade of a pine tree.He told me about trying to find me by contacting my old school, but they hadn’t given him any information.He shared it with their couple friends, but no one knew where we had gone or saw the situation coming.He spoke to the neighbors in his building to see if anyone knew where we might have driven off to.
But there were no clues, no trail.
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that he ran into one of my mother’s colleagues from her old fitness club, and she revealed something about a piece of land in Evermere that my mother had once brought up to her in a conversation.
“I didn’t know if I should keep looking for you,” he said.“But I couldn’t give up without having a conversation.That’s not me.”
“Then come,” I smiled at him and started to stand up.“Let’s go inside.Let’s have a conversation, the three of us.”
He stood still, giving me a compassionate smile that felt almost apologetic.
“I have to go, Miles.”
“But—”
“Your mom and I had our final conversation before you came home,” he said calmly, gesturing for me to sit back down where I was, next to him.“She wants to part ways.I’m going back to Wayneth, and you’re both staying here.It’s what she wants.”
“But why?”I couldn’t understand it.Everything was spinning so fast.My hands were numb.
He gave me another weak smile.“Sometimes, you won’t understand what a woman wants.You don’t have to understand everything she wishes for, but you always have to respect it.”
I was not used to crying, whether alone or with company.I wrote music, played instruments.That was an expression of sadness.When I was with others, I would sit quiet and let the feeling fade away.
But at this precise moment, my throat tightened, my eyes pricked with tears, I felt my hands again.Ben was saying goodbye to the hope that built inside me.The hope of the three of us together again, as a family.
