6 siblings turned strangers that complete each other in all the wrong ways.
☾☾☾
Estranged from her family since nine years, all it takes is one phone call from the hospital to send Thea Reid's past launching into her present.
As old severed t...
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☾☾☾
LIVING IN A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY like mine meant that it wasn't the trauma that makes me nice. I consciously made myself nice because I don't want to see anyone else suffer the way I did. Trauma didn't make me strong, I made me strong.
It's almost unfair because I was so little. It almost never bothers me anymore, but meeting my brothers again has reopened the wound yet again and it's bleeding fresh. It hits me out of nowhere, how little I was, how young and helpless I was. Dad never knew. How much seeing him getting shot in our living room affected me that I cried in my room for weeks and Vincent had to coax me out with my favourite uggs and the promise of hot chocolate. He never knew how much I dreamed of being a journalist, that I preferred logic over emotion. Sometimes, I see pictures of a little girl in old photos, with the same caramel freckles, and the same black hair. Her eyes sparkle with the promise of a good life. But that was before she knew how much she'd have to lose and how hard she'd have to fight to make that dream a future. I see pictures of my old self with my brothers and my heart breaks a little every time for that little girl who carried something so heavy with her – who reached for light and cried when she caught it because she thought it was over.
There is no vengeance for that girl. She is still there in me somewhere, resurfacing during my lowest moments.
Here I am, grown now, on my hands and knees picking up pieces of broken glass with my fingers. Cleaning up the mess. Tucking that little girl into bed. Trying to live a life where none of this ever happened.
"Mama, I've finished my homework!" Jordan shrieks as he lunges for the TV remote.
Not the TV. For sure, not the TV.
"No, TV on school days, remember?"
"Please? You bunked work too, yesterday."
The young man has a point. Because of the hospital call and Logan-scare yesterday I had to feign being sick to work, which I cannot afford. But it had been a Friday and the magazine's work had been largely covered on Thursday so here I am today, lulling about what happened yesterday like a fool.
I need to do something to take my mind off the run-in with my brothers.
"J, let's go for ice-cream."
I wear my leather jacket, put on some small gold-hoop earrings. I wear my favourite uggs. I wear all the chunky transparent faux-jewel rings I have, colourful, large, glistening ones that Jordan chose for me. I look and feel like a New Yorker, which works because I need to feel good about myself after yesterday.
I make sure Jordan wears his coat, and sling my bag around my shoulders. Jordan grabs my hand and he skips his steps, stepping on only the cobblestones and not the lines. I remember doing that too as a kid.
The day I packed my stuff in a small suitcase and left, I'd promised myself on the train that someday I'd have a place of my own. My world wouldn't be confined to one lived in fear. I dreamed of how I would stumble through the house and have a slow morning, drinking coffee and opening blinds to let the light in. I wanted to sit in the backyard and look at the stars. I will go out whenever I want to. And now I have that. But it came at a great sacrifice.
