Five Seconds After the Flash

Chapter Twelve

When we got back home after our visit to Salty's, Mom and Ryan took some time to catch up on everything that he had been doing since his last visit. I took the opportunity to hole up in my room with the journal.

I flipped ahead a bit, and realized that there weren't many more entries. I don't know why I had assumed this entire time that the journal was full, but seeing just a few more pages of writing had me feeling inexplicably upset. How did I only have a few more pages of him to hold onto?

October 20, 1988

I can't help but ask myself how I failed so completely as a parent and husband.

Rose has come back home from staying at her sister's house for a few days, but she will barely speak to me. She puts on a pleasant face in front of the kids, but she sleeps in the guest room now, and ignores me if we are alone. I know that I have let her down, but I'm not sure how to prove that I can change if she won't give me a chance.

And Amy...

Today, she was buzzing around the house cleaning, her face flushed. I stopped her, laughing, and said, "Amy, dear, slow down. The place doesn't have to be spotless constantly."

I pulled her into a hug, and I felt it. She has a bump under her oversized shirt that is undeniable.

There is no disguising that sort of bump.

When she saw my face change, she pulled away from my embrace quickly, averting her gaze and closing herself in her room.

I have not seen her since, and I do not know what to say. How far along is she? Does her mother know? Who is the father?

I feel like a stranger in my own house, and I feel the call of my old demons, beckoning me to embrace their familiarity and their comfort.

My little girl... my Amy...

She's going to be a mother.

And she didn't even feel like she could tell me. She has always been open with me, and this is the biggest and undoubtedly scariest thing that has happened to her in her young life. But she didn't feel like she could tell me.

What am I, if I cannot be a good enough father?

There was a knock at my bedroom door, and I looked up, expecting to see Ryan.

But it was Grandma who entered. She looked at the journal in my hands, then sat down on the bed next to me.

"Looks like you've gotten pretty far into it," she said, "There won't be many more entries left." She sat down on the edge of my bed.

"Grandma, did you hate him?" I asked. It sounded harsher than I had intended. I didn't want to ask her, but I had to. I couldn't take all of the secrets that had wisped through our house over the years that I had been oblivious to.

"My sweet girl," she said, with a sad smile, "You are so very like him. Did you know that? You feel everything so deeply."

I was reminded of Reid's words. Both he and Grandma had said it as a compliment, but it was starting to feel like a curse.

"I feel everything, but that doesn't mean I understand it," I said, "Why did you just leave him? He needed support and you just left him."

She clasped her hands and stared down at them. They were pale white and wrinkled, but her wedding ring was still on her left hand and I saw the white gold shining, though faded from the years, against her skin.

"The people that we love the most are the ones that we give full power to hurt us at any time," she said, "And they don't always mean to, but sometimes they use that power. And then we are left to wonder if we should ever open up again to the possibility of that kind of pain."