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I guide us to a shielded area. I don't know why I chose to eat outside. The pancakes may freeze. We probably should have gone to my apartment, but Austin has a way of getting me into the bedroom, and then we do everything but talk.
He smiles. "We're made of tough stuff, and those pancakes won't last five minutes once I get at them, you know that."
He reads my face too well. How the hell have I managed to keep this secret for so long? I nod and drop down on the blanket I've brought with me. He joins me, pulling open the packaging and begins eating. I shake my head. Even when things are hard, it doesn't take away his appetite.
"Amazing!" He grins around the pancake in his mouth.
I smile as I look around us. It's pretty here, even if the big freeze is killing things off. Dog walkers are scattered as burnt orange and yellow pop in the leaves either clinging on for dear life or crunching underfoot. "I need to talk to you," I say as I turn to face him.
He stops chewing, hazel holding me in place as he bops his head in a go-ahead motion.
He's been waiting for this. I haven't fooled him at all.
I breathe deeply. "My dad died when I was eleven."
He stops chewing but I don't give him the chance to respond.
"We didn't know at the time what he was going through. It all came out after... after the suicide."
Austin puts his remaining pancakes back into the aluminium wrap. "Mia—"
"I know," I interject. And I do. He's lost someone. "He felt like he didn't have any other option and I can't imagine what that must have been like for him. He was a carer. A giver. The man of the house. And he'd gone to the hospital alone, he wouldn’t have wanted to worry us about the cancer..."
I can feel the hot ball of emotion sit in my throat. Warring between anger that he'd left me and sadness that he'd gone through that alone.
Austin allows me the time to gather myself, but I notice that he’s moved closer to me. "There was no cure. He'd been told that there was nothing they could have done for him. He didn't have insurance because he'd lost his job six months before, and that had been another secret he'd kept from Mom. We think he'd believed that he'd find another job in time, before he had to tell anyone. He hadn't expected the diagnosis. I guess he felt like it was the only way out. Things must have felt very heavy for him, and I hate that he carried that burden by himself." I stare down at my one pancake. I know it will stick in my throat. "He killed himself at home. I found him."
The rope.
His eyes.
No amount of therapy releases those images.
"Mom refuses to leave the house because there are too many memories, despite the most horrendous one. We don't use the dining room anymore."
His hand brushes against mine.
"It didn't end with Dad dying. It went to court because it was believed that Mom was involved in some way. To get money or something, I was young, and she kept so much from me, to protect me. We've never really spoken about it since, and now I don't know what to say to her after all these years."
"I'm so sorry," he murmurs.
The comfort he offers keep the ice at bay. "I was so angry at him. For a long time, I hated him. My own father." The words rush out of me. Never having told someone about this before. "And with it being in the papers, I'm now constantly terrified Harry will find out."
"He won't," Austin promises angrily.
"You can't guarantee that, Austin."
"I'll kill him."
I sigh. "That won’t help things."
His jaw pops as hazel looks deep into my soul. “It’s the only thing I can do to protect you.”
We sit in silence. I love that he wants to protect me, but he can't save me from this if it came out, and I think a part of me needs it out in the open to heal and forgive my father.
"I had the same angry feelings towards Matt." He breaks the silence. "People make their own choices, ones they believe were right, even if we don't feel the same way. What I've come to accept after all these years is there's nothing that we can do to change what has happened. Your dad chose his own way."
The tears choke me, but I push through them. "But he might have survived the cancer... maybe... if he'd pushed to get help."
