If I Lie : Book 2

78. Forgive Me

Eliza POV

I had spent two years here. Two amazing years in "The Upper" with Dad, Sunday, and Virginia. In my time here I have learned a few things, it's not always sunshine and rainbows here but no one gets in a fight, there is an amount of brutal honesty that somehow gets taken with the right respect and everyone manages to see the best in everything. 

 Most days the girls and I are out in the field picking up flowers, eating cakes, and devour whole plates of cheeses, meats, and mesmerizing fruits, and drinking wine from solitary grapes. Sunday paints to her heart's content, taking after her mother meanwhile Virginia spills poetry with such ease and dances for hours upon hours with no break time in between. Dad watches them, clapping and cheering them on as I watch them all. We manage to share things all the time, popping fruits into each other's mouths in the morning, praising God. Reading, and supping on a well of knowledge until we are drunk with answers to every question. 

Heaven is a funny place. 

Day in and day out at three in the afternoon after we've gathered and collected things or have swam in the pond we will sit in a train and braid each other's hair. I would share whatever design I had come up with my divine knowledge, incorporating colors unmatched and incomparable to the human eye, ones not yet witnessed nor never to be revealed to man

"Maman?" Sunday asked. 

"Yes, starling?" I answered. 

"Tell me about mom, what was she like when you first met her?"

I thought about it. Long and decisive. Ashley. . . What did I think of Ashley? Lanky, blonde, big-frosty-eyed, doll-like Ashley. I scoffed, weaving the braid down her neck, the breeze behind us as another daughter at with me between her legs, braiding cornrows onto my head. 

I smiled thinking longer about my Ashley. "Well your mother was a strange thing really, she was like this canary, singing some strange little song to my ears, her light sang for me. All that innocence can make a person really appealing to others. When I met her as an adult, just like that I knew she was meant to be. She has a talent for art, her paintings inspire me, stir me, scare me but she has never been afraid of expressing herself and speaking her mind. 

When I met her as a young girl I only saw her a few times. I'd see her in afterschool and thought she was-- Is an angel, someone plopped down on Earth to make me question my sexuality for the first time in forever. She was the brightest thing in the world, you know? When we had an actual conversation as kids I could see she was just as wounded as I was, not all angels get to be happy. But even in pain-- Losing your mother like that right before your eyes as a young child, she still managed to put on the best show as if nothing ever happened. Your mom got lost in art as a coping mechanism, she became good at it. She's never asked for a hand-out." Come to think of it Ashley still does not to this very day, she would never ask for help unless she found herself in a life-or-death situation and even then maybe she wouldn't.

In our entire relationship maybe I have trapped her. Created this world in only which I made her think she needs me but she is much more than what she had been recognized to amass too. I realize there are so many mistakes I have made due to my selfishness and if I ever wake up, if she wants out of this life with me after all the pain and confusion I've caused her I will let her go if she decides too that is the right thing. I can't ask her to stay, I can't always tell her life with me will be safe and that there won't be another enemy waiting around the corner to endanger her somehow.

 I've said it a million times that I will hire guards for her to keep her protected at all times but when she's fought me on it, demanding her rights to privacy I so easily gave in because I knew she would feel happier and freer that way but now I know now, if I can make it happen I will proudly override those rights to ensure her safety. I don't care much what happens to me, she is the most important thing to me, next to the kids.