Speechless (Harry Styles AU)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My mother’s hand softly caressed over my hair as she sat beside me on the couch watching with hurting eyes as the tears streamed down my face.  We had been like this ever since Caroline had called my mother and explained the situation. I could never have imagined the emotions my mom was feeling when she walked through the coffee shop door. Her eyes stained red from tears, her hair a frizzy mess atop her head. Before a single word was spoken she had wrapped me tight in a hug and whispered how sorry she was.

I figured she would be angry at me but yet there was an understand I felt from her. She seemed to know the anguish I was feeling.

Once we returned home I had found my place on the couch and my mother sat beside me and we hadn’t moved since.

It was an odd feeling, crying in front of my mother. For years I was the one comforting her after my father left. I would come home from school to see her sitting in the kitchen over a half cooked meal sobbing or her bed room closet clutching an old sweatshirt of my fathers, staining it with tears. The smallest things would crack open her barely healed heart and I was the only to help her mend herself back together.

This time I was the one who needed mending. I was the broken one who could be found sobbing over a half cooked meal or staining an old sweatshirt with my tears. I knew the pain that she was feeling. But, my mother had lost a marriage, a happy and long marriage that ended in turmoil and unexplainable aching. 

“Genevieve,” my mother spoke breaking the silence.

Her hand slid from my hair to my hands that were clutched in my lap to control the urge to rock back and forth in my tears. Keeping my eyes down and away from her she spoke again.

“We will get through this,” Her other hand slid under my chin and she moved my chin up so she could look me in the eyes, “together.”

I nodded taking a shaky deep breath in trying to retract the tears that were forming in my eyes. This was my time to be strong, to prove that I was tough enough to make it through heartbreak.

Pushing myself to my feet I walked into the kitchen, I could hear my mother do the same close behind me. I placed my hands on the kitchen table taking a stronger, less shaky breath.

Turning around to my mother I signed, “I’m going to work on some homework.”

My mother let a weak smile cross her face and she nodded. She had gotten my stuff when a panicked teacher called the office saying I had missed all of my class after lunch yet my car was still in the parking lot and she was called in to the school to figure out where I had gone.

My mother walked forward and wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close in a hug. “You don’t need to worry about school,” she sighed burying her face in my hair, “you go back when you feel ready.”

Nodding I turned my back to her and ascended slowly up the stairs with my backpack slung over my shoulder loosely. The air was cooler up here, I was the only one that even dared to enter the upper level of our new home so everywhere I looked there was something of mine either placed as a decoration or carelessly tossed on the floor because I was too lazy to put it in its proper space.

As I entered my room I took a deep breath and dropped my bag to the floor. I never actually planned on doing homework I just needed to escape from the pity of my mother. I needed to grieve in solitude. Without turning on my light I let flopped onto the bed. The dark was the only solitude I was able hold onto. The moment light spilled in through my window or glowed bright from an incandescent bulb above my head it forced me to remember the horrid world I was living in. The loneliness I was truly experiencing.