A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 7: CIRCLE OF TREES

Mom had been right all along. That was the first thought that crossed Airin's mind, as rage bubbled from within her.

Mom had always thought there was something amiss between Dad and May.

Thus Mom had been right. All along.

"Dad!" she tried to sound assertive, but failed. She sounded just shocked.

Dad and May, engrossed in their act of physical carnality, jumped in surprise and they turned toward her. May rushed to fix her shirt, and Dad took a deep breath as his fingers ran past his hair.

"How long have you two ...?" Airin could feel her breath get shorter and she tried hard not to be hysterical.

May darted her gaze above, Dad stared straight at Airin. "Your mom is dead, Airin. But our marriage had been over long before that," Dad sounded callous. "Look, May's marriage was over some years ago. Your mom and I ... all we did was fighting over ... everything. May gave me some ... comfort ..."

Airin could not prevent tears that glided uncontrollably down her cheek. "How long?" she asked again, putting emphasis on how and long.

Dad huffed, combed his hair with his fingers again, took a glance at May, and answered,"Two years."

That was all she needed to hear. Dad had been mean to Mom, and Dad had also cheated on her. A tint of relief in Dad's voice made it all the more painful for her, as if Dad had waited to finally say "two years" to her, to tell her a secret he had kept for these two years. A proclamation, a confession, a revelation that took away his burden of silence.

Dad's thunderous voice asking her to stay, don't go, was all she could hear as she sprinted out of the kitchen, out of the bistro.

Dad had been cheating on Mom. Mom's intuition about it had been right. She was always right.

Even a couple weeks before her sudden demise, Mom would tell her after Dad missed their wedding anniversary dinner. "Maybe he has found someone else, Ai. Maybe ..."

Mom was not sure, she was shivering and clutching her own palms, then smiled at her and nodded with a forced spark in her voice. "Well, he must be so busy tonight. Let's eat!" Mom tucked into her specially-made walnut mayo shrimp, Dad's alltime favourite, tried to look like she was hungry enough to want to eat, and Airin followed suit, and tried not to think much about what Mom had just said.

Airin knew she was crying, her face was wet, even though she was not sure how much of it was her tears and how much was from the droplets of drizzle that fell on her face as she ran, wobbly from the explosions of various emotions that she could not really describe.

Anger, rage even, at how Dad had lied to her and Mom all these times. Mom had known instinctively but was too weakened by Dad's constant criticism of her to trust her own intuition about it. She loved Mom dearly, but she hated her for being right about this.

Her feet felt like jelly now but she kept running and tears kept falling. She bumped some people who shouted some pissed off words at her, but she did not care.

She went up the road to the city park area. The sky was almost dark now and the rows of massive oak trees that lined the entrance to the park looked like giants that welcomed her.

The gravel road was quiet as it wound up to the park forest.

The park was touted as the "lung of the city" where the native forest of gigantic oak and beech was kept in as pristine condition as it could be, with gravel road built winding up and down for a few kilometres in the forest terrain, dotted by picnic benches every hundred meter or so, and manmade-lake for dogs to take a splash and sandy playground for kids to play in.