Break of Day

7) Only A Ride Away

It wasn't the first time Maria spoke over Carlton today when someone guessed him to be our father and he tried to explain that was not the case. It unnerved me, the odd sort of joy she got out of that.

As she laughed at something the airport employee said, a cruel part of me wondered if she was initially attracted to Carlton because he made my physical appearance less jarring now that we no longer lived with Mimi. With the red in his soft brown hair and his warm green eyes, our little family was tied together. My sister was immediately pinpointed as our mother's child, with their brown hair and slender bodies. When Mimi would drop us off to ballet or piano or whatever activity Maria had us in, no one questioned that I was her granddaughter.

If Mare was the dark-eyed version of Maria, I was the younger version of our Mimi.

Only my hair and eyes marked me different from my sister, we have the same face. Dad always said that all we needed to be identical twins was to wear a wig and contacts.

And lose 50 pounds.

It would not be wholly unlike Maria to choose a man who could be mistaken as our father, a silent way of getting back at Dad for destroying her life. Had he not gotten her pregnant, she would have been a successful lawyer by now. She would have married a successful doctor with a perfect body and perfect hair. She would have moved into his perfect, large house with its perfect landscape in the perfect neighbourhood. On their perfect porch, they could share wine with their other perfect friends. With her perfect husband, she would have had four perfect children. Two perfect, athletic, smart sons and their two perfect, thin, pretty sisters would follow and have perfect lives.

Instead she became an alcoholic with twin daughters, one socially inept and the other fat, and married to a pilot, living in a small house in rural Texas.

As I watched Maria hug my sister at the gate, a familiar, dark thoughts twisted its way out of the depth of its cage. Did she resent us, for not being the perfect children she deserved? For getting in her way of doing all that she was destined to? A single mother of twin girls can't rise far in the world, even with her mother watching the girls and bringing them to school. Even with child support from their father. Maria wasn't around much when we were really little, but once she got her Bachelors and we moved out of Mimi's, she found a bar. We were too much for her to handle.

"Watch over your sister, baby," Maria had muttered as she moved away from me. Leaving me with a kiss to the forehead, she allowed Carlton to bring me into a hug.

"Stay safe and be smart, Pippen. I love you, kid." With a kiss to the top of my head, I had interlaced my fingers with Mary's, leading her to the plane.

Now, as I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, the faint vibrations of the aircraft beneath me acting as a lullaby, I wondered if I made the right choice. Should I have argued to stay with Lex? If the nightmares get bad again... How long could I deflect until Dad starts asking questions that I am not ready to answer? Would I ever be able to tell him the truth of why I stopped seeing him three years ago? A spike of panic began to roll in my stomach, beginning as a small wave, so miniscule the human eye would not have noticed. What would he say, if I ever told him?

"It was your fault" The sonorous voice would growl, hatred spilling from his lips, disgust colouring his once gentle eyes. "How could I end up with such a pathetic thing for a daughter?"

As I cowered before him, soul bare and raw as my voice from the tears staining my face, the hands that once pushed me one swings, that taught me how to use a gun, that would cradle me after a silly little nightmare about being lost in the woods, that would lead me would betray me, turning violent as they met my cheek. The force would turn my head.