𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐄

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍

14. | NO VALLEY LOW, NO RIVER WIDE

❝Remember life holds for you one
guarantee... you'll always have me.❞

●

Nearly a month after their trip to Switzerland, Diana admitted something to the girls she never thought she would. They were at the dinner table, her daughters talking amongst themselves about school and future vacations when the need dawned on her.

She had spent a long time avoiding the past. She ducked and dodged every obstacle, made a plucky, huffy stumble over every inconvenience. In a perilous aim for peace, she realized none of it would ever be enough. The truth followed, sitting with her in dark rooms, hitching along to places she thought were untouchable.

The truth was that all her children were irrevocably linked to Michael. Not even the baby doing backflips in her stomach had been given pardon in their story. It felt selfish, criminal almost, to deny Rhonda, Tracee, and Chudney the truth. Letting them into this part of her life could go wrong, but she knew it was time, that they had spent long enough secretly wondering why a major cornerstone in their lives had receded.

Over slivers of pasta, she bided her time, prodding her daughters with small inquiries. Was there anything they wanted to discuss? Did they have any questions for her? It was a custom she put in place around the time of her mother's illness, knowing the changes and revelations that were to come would need as much honesty and air as they could reasonably stomach.

The girls shook their heads, but before they excused themselves from the table, she told them there was something, or someone, she wanted to talk about.

Where should she start? Her and Michael's story was a long one, twisted, tangled realities that had taken time to converge. She began where she could, not necessarily at day one, but somewhere along that road, starting at the point where their time together became fraught with a closeness she could no longer deny. Miami, likely, or the Carribean if she was being honest.

Rhonda or Tracee would be the first to chime in, she assumed, but after she was done working her way through the center—"Michael and I—we were incredibly close"—Chudney shot from her seat and surprised them all.

"I knew it!" she screeched, so loudly Ross had jolted in his bouncer.

Though she never got around to explaining how, Chudney and her sisters did acknowledge one thing. Something changed. Michael's absence stuck out like a sore thumb, and though they had been happy to have a new siblings, the shift in their lives was jarring.

With the floor now open to questions, they began trickling in. She tried to be honest, shaping her answers in ways that were suitable for their ears. In time, when they were older, if they ever asked for more, she would tailor the answers as needed, hoping they would understand.

At night, with Ross' sleepy cooing in her ear, she would think back to her and Michael's last conversation. That day hadn't been her best moment, that much was true. There were things she said that she didn't believe, truths she truncated not out of malice, but out of anger and shame.

Though it took a little time, she finally understood. She reserved the right to make choices about her life whether he agreed or not. The boundary of who she could be to him and who he could be to her was immovable.

The impact, however, couldn't be denied. She had never expected for things to go this way, but maybe that had been her naïveté. His love ran deep. If you loved anyone or anything that much, your response to "losing" them—because she had never really left—could be... striking, and that was putting it lightly. The more resistant part of her still hated his guts, but to a degree, she understood. Maybe. She was still debating that one.