Summer Rain

XXVII ~ Hear Me

{I Found - Amber Run}

...I found love where it wasn't supposed to be, right in front of me, talk some sense to me...

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{FLASHBACK}

        It was autumn, and school was in full flow. I was knee-deep in reports and geometry questions that I would never be able to answer. As the leaves piled on top of one another in their own burned colours, I took to walking home from school. It was a long walk, but I knew that it would give me some time that I loved having alone. No parents. No school stress. Nothing but the world continuing around me as though I barely touched its surface, unimportant and totally inconspicuous.

        Mom usually went shopping in the city with her girlfriends on weekdays, so I was left home alone, leaving some food in the fridge for me. As the size of the house gradually increased with Dad's paycheck, it became too big to clean regularly. So, being the uptown girl that my Mother is, she hired a maid. Talulah Casey. Young, red-head, smart, with legs that travelled on for miles. Her maid uniform was ridiculously cliche, and no matter how long the hem was, her legs made it seem all-too-short. Thank God Bodhi was away at college at this stage, or his jaw would have permanently been dragging on the floors that Talulah cleaned, her headphones usually blaring so loud that even I could hear what she was listening to.

        The emptiness of the house was peaceful, but as I turned the key on that one autumn afternoon, my bag heavy with homework to be done, and my feet sore from walking the long stretch to our lonely house just outside of town with land to ourselves, something felt wrong.

         The floors were half-finished, the windows hadn't been washed, and all of the cleaning utensils were still lying around. For all Talulah was young, she was efficient, and the family fell into a routine with her, and we became used to the way she worked in the cleaning cycle.

        Setting down my bag and peeling off my shoes, I heard the repetitive creaking of the floorboards from one of the upstairs rooms. My feet took to the steep, winding staircase as it led to the first floor, my heart in my throat as I felt the stillness in the house that was filled with an air of me intruding in my own house.

        The doors of the long hallway were closed with a shaft of light coming from an ajar door on the corridor to my right. The rug that covered the waxed wooden floors made my footsteps light and almost silent, and my breathing was uneven. My eyes were steady on the light that came from Mom and Dad's bedroom, usually left closed on this day of the week when Dad was at work, and Mom was off gallivanting.

         Yet there came a sight that stung my eyes like poison, and I wished I could have scrubbed the image clean out of my memory. I was stuck in the space in which I stood.

         Dad was home, and Talulah was helping him mess up the bedsheets, their bodies writhing together so freely, unabashed by the way their sweat-stained the cloths that shielded their bodies from my eyes, to be forever tainted with Dad's betrayal of Mom.

        Telling Mom was all I could think to do. I thought that maybe it would help their marriage if Talulah didn't come by the house anymore. The stillness that overcame Mom when the words hit her was unnerving like her world was crumbling around her and the pretence of picture perfection was no longer a reality.

    "Thank you for telling me, dear, you did the right thing." She was just as naive as I had been.

        My Dad was no longer my Dad anymore. He was Father. His loving cuddles and stories when I couldn't sleep were gone and the smile behind his eyes when his mouth widened to reveal his pearly teeth had died, leaving darkness behind them that only ever appeared when he looked at something that he no longer cared for. He knew I had told Mom, and in Talulah's absence, I saw a change in him that I could only blame myself for.