Foggy Mirrors | Max Verstappen

Chapter 26 - THE PRESENT

"You are so quiet." Max noted, which caused Leanne to look up from her bowl of pasta, food Max made just like Leanne enjoyed it as they were mere teenager, but she hadn't eaten much, all she did was poke at it, which would normally annoy Max, but he could feel that something was off. Even more than it already had been before.

"I feel like I'm picking us apart again already." She uttered after letting out a long breath, which caused Max to reach over the table to settle his hand on top of hers.

"I told you that I forgive you. I don't blame you for not wanting me to know about this whole mess. I think I might have done the same if I knew and you were in the dark." Max told her honestly. He had time to think about it in the last few weeks. His decision to speak Leanne free of fault was the right decision, well maybe not the right, but the one which let him sleep at night. The one that brought him peace.

"It was too easy." Leanne replied. "You let me off the hook too soon."

They were glancing at each other. Leanne's gaze one of confusion and conflict, while all Max did was look at her softly, gently, lovingly. Other women would have been glad to be off the hook as Leanne said it, but Leanne couldn't let things go, she wasn't one to forgive herself. Other, yes, every moment of her life, but never herself. She was her hardest critic, punishing herself, self-sacrificing. Pathing the way, her loved ones walked on with her bare hands and still thinking it wasn't enough.

One of these days there wouldn't be anything let of her, Max feared. On one of these days, she would give her all and perish. And then Leanne would have the right to ask God how he could make her go through hall this, how he could watch her endure it all, but she wouldn't. She would stand there and asked to be send to hell because that was the place, she thought she belonged. For all her sins, sins that she carried on her shoulders, inherited from people who were unworthy of her love. Max intended not to be one of them.

"You want me to be angry with you, because you tried to protect me?" Max pointed out and it would be ridiculous to answer with yes. It would be self-loathing and not deserving, it would be maddening but to Leanne to a tiny part deep inside herself it was as true as truth got.

"I want you to be fair." Leanne said instead, the watered-down version of how vast her self-destruction reached by now. Asking what she believed to deserve.

"I have kept a secret, so has your father. You are sitting here, eating dinner with me, but you haven't spoken to him in weeks." She pointed out and Max knew that she was right about this part. He understood that Leanne saw no logic in his act. For her, they were both equally at fault, but Max saw through these wrongly looked upon facts. Maybe he saw what suited him better or it really made such a difference.

"That's different. My father isn't a good person." Who in this world could really say from themselves that they were a good person. Leanne thought they all had to lie if they dared to clam goodness to their name. She only knew a few who would be worth that title.

"Me neither." She pointed out, before pulling her hand back to get up from her seat. Her bowl of pasta in had to clear the dishes away.

"Now it's you whose being unfair." Max called after her, before he reached for his class and emptied it in one swift gulp. He waited, for a moment, listened in to Leanne's steps, before he got up from his chair as well and followed her into the kitchen.

"I am old enough to see the difference between what my father did and what you did. I know that the intentions behind keeping it a secret are vastly different." Max told her while he was leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, watching Leanne as she stored the leftovers away, before she went to wash the dishes, despite Max owning a dishwasher. He had watched her often enough over the years to know that the mundane work of scrubbing dishes clean somehow helped her keep calm, hold her head levelled. It was always the same task, always the same procedure. Not much changed. It was a constant and Leanne never had much of those over the years, which is why she made her home and the state it was in to one of the only constants in her life.