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When I stare at my reflection in the mirror, I see the same haunted eyes, the same tortured soul. It’s not my face I see, but my father’s, his sins etched into my own features. Work is a distraction, a way to keep the demons at bay, but today I can’t focus on anything. The same phrase torments me like a broken record, a taunting reminder of my sleepless nights, “Like father, like son.”
Shaking my head, I drive past the turn to home and keep driving. Last night was worse than most. I need to know the girls are safe.
I’m still on autopilot, too far gone in the depths of my own thoughts when I pull up to Skip and Cora’s house.
There’s always something special about coming home. Even if it’s one I’ve been in countless times.
The smell: a distinct flowery potpourri Cora always insists lie in a bowl in the hallway, the baking of something different every day, and the pine from the trees surrounding this house. The wind chime that’s been there since I first arrived at age fourteen, clanks in a breeze.
It’s a home I rejected for so long, not wanting to believe this is where I belonged. I was a city boy, born and raised. The people inside this house were outsiders, no matter how hard they fought for me and my bothers over the years. I was strong headed. I didn’t need them. I was doing a good job with the boys myself.
Fourteen-year-old me didn’t realize that’s not how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t my job to bring them up, even if it’s all I knew. It wasn’t my job to pick my mother up from the floor and stay watch all night so she wouldn’t die from an overdose. It wasn’t my job to get in the middle when my father decided to drop by and win his argument with his fists.
I still remember the drive to Pine Falls after my mother’s death. Skip and Cora were granted full custody. Not hard when the only living parent is nowhere to be found and doesn’t show up to court.
I was enraged, quiet, and already planning my escape when we pulled up to the house. Cora tried to pry a sleeping Jaxson from my arms just to allow me to get out of the car, but I wouldn’t let her.
I could do it by myself.
I didn’t need them.
They were temporary, and I was determined to get us out of there as soon as possible.
But like most things in my life, it didn’t work out to plan.
Weeks turned into months.
Cora was the mother mine failed to be, but I couldn’t trust her. I thought she was faking it.
Jaxson was only four and soon fell in love with her. Before I knew it, he was calling her mom. Archer soon after. I wasn’t mad at them for it. I was mad at Cora and Skip for being the parents mine couldn’t be. I was mad at my mother for leaving us, for choosing the drug in her veins rather than the flesh and blood she gave birth to. I was beyond the point of being mad at my father.
Back then, being here, in this house, the only good thing I could see was that Archer and Jaxson were away from him.
The days blended into one, and I hated every second. Chaos followed me wherever I went. I made sure of it. My high school was close to kicking me out for my “unruly behavior”. Girls were too many and studies too few. It wasn’t hard considering I was the city boy who already had too many tattoos.
It’s my biggest regret, the worry I put Skip and Cora through. They tried everything. They planned family nights—I never showed up. They grounded me—I always found a way out. Weed in my pocket—I asked them if they wanted some. They showed me love—I rejected it.
I can’t imagine the hell they were going through. A couple who never had kids of their own were suddenly thrown into a world of two little boys and a disgruntled teenager who felt like the world was out to get him.
They did everything parents should do, proving themselves every day that they weren’t going anywhere.
I thought I knew better. I knew what they really were.
I didn’t know a damn thing.
I was hurting and scared, desperate for relief. I wanted out.
I pushed them away because I didn’t know what else to do. Survival was all I knew. I didn’t know how to accept love and be taken care of. So, I did everything in my power to make them hate me just so they would send us back.
On my fifteenth birthday, after too many run-ins with the wrong crowd in town, I wrapped poorly made sandwiches in foil and stuffed them in a bag with a bottle of water. Then I took my brothers’ hands and snuck them out of the house.
When Archer and Jaxson’s legs grew tired, we sat under a tree and ate. I let Jaxson nap in my arms while Archer asked questions I didn’t know the answers to. All I knew was that we needed to get away. We were doing fine before. We could do it again. We could do it on our own.
I didn’t have a plan, but I was going to find one.
It felt like days before someone found us in the forest. In reality, we were less than a mile away from the house and only gone for three hours.
But it’s Skip and Cora’s face I remember most. The relief overshadowed any anger. Cora fell to her knees as the boys ran into her waiting arms. I remember her tears most of all. How, as she held the boys close, she looked up at me and smiled. It was shaky and her hand trembled when she reached out and grabbed mine.
