The Hanging Tree

After: Sins of the Father

The lost child lay between us like an unfathomable chasm, something I could never cross or even attempt to do so. Yondrie's silence almost swallowed me whole. I knew she blamed me and perhaps always would. One day she would talk again, maybe even forgive me, but she would always bear the scars of what I had done. 

I had traded one evil for another. I had become the Hanging Tree. 

Suddenly I understood my father so much more. 

Less than a year later when the sun stretched long into an afternoon and her silence had broken into short words, Yondrie sat across from me at the dinner table. 

"I'm pregnant," she stated simply. 

And there was only one thing I could say, "That's wonderful." 

The front door banged open as Dahlia came bounding back from school, from her first year in the real world. 

"Mom? Dad?" 

Yondrie leaned in. "I'm keeping this one, Jay," she whispered to me, her eyes fierce. "No matter what happens." 

I didn't dare disagree. 

"Mom?" Dahlia said, coming in just as Yondrie left. She looked at me for an answer. 

"Don't worry about it, Dahls," I said, gesturing for her to sit down. "How was school?" 

"It was good." She shifted in her chair. "My teacher talked about you actually." 

So this was finally the day. "Really?" 

"Yeah." 

"And what did she say?" 

"That you're a victor," Dahlia recited. "That you're the only victor in all of District 12 and that I was really lucky that you were because that's why we have such nice things." 

I winced. I was always worried that Dahlia might be picked on because she dressed better and ate better than any other child around, including the mayor's. 

"And did your teacher explain how I became a victor?" 

Dahlia nodded her head. "It has to do with the Games. You won out of all the kids in all of the districts because you were the last one alive." She seemed to think on this for a moment. "What're the Games like, Daddy?" 

"They're scary," I replied. "It was more luck than skill that made me win." 

And I realized that that line, that one line spoken to my child was the truest thing I had ever said about the Games. 

"I suppose it must be hard," she said. "If I was in the Games, I would fi-" 

"No, Dahlia," I cut in. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that. You are not going into the Games. Understand?" 

"Yes, Daddy," she said. But I saw the spark in her that said otherwise. 

"Good." And I quickly changed the topic to something else before she came up with some other notion on the Games that I never wanted to contemplate again. 

*** 

The child was born in May, between Dahlia's and the lost child's birthday. From the beginning he was a quiet one, birth so quick and him barely even making a cry. Even in my arms he slept easily and without a fight. 

He looked exactly like me. 

His birth seemed to heal Yondrie as much as she ever would be. She laughed at Dahlia's smug little smile that it was the boy she had always wanted. She even smiled at me.