One Ticket to Fill a Lacuna

Chapter 30 || One Ticket to Fill a Lacuna

Chapter 30-

            December 30th.

            The snow falls elegantly outside. But here, in my room, the furnace rages and floods the air with warmth. Heat circulates through the entire house, warming the myriad of tenants living here. I’ve come to know them all by now. How they took my father in after Flordellis invited him to come. Laurie—who told me my father was dead—has become one of the people I seek the most. With a past of teaching science, my worst subject even at a new school, she helps me plod through my homework.

            They have all accepted me as they did my father. For once, I have more than just Blaine to support me. I have a whole house full. And for once, life is calm; a passing storm.

            The walls in my room are bare for the most part. Only right above my desk does my wall have things pinned onto it—letters from my mothers. Her own updates to me since we’ve left her to get better. Trusting her in Candace’s hands. We send a letter to each other each week, just writing about life and feelings. We could just send emails, but getting a physical message from her makes me feel better and more connected to get.

            Blaine and I skype at least every other day. She tells me about school and all the silly crushes she has. She keeps an eye on Orson for me, though I’ve learned to just let him be and trust that what happens will happen.

            Orson and I actually communicate the least. He’s become very insistent on the whole, “distance makes the heart grow fonder” riffraff, and talking constantly breaks that, according to him. He calls me once a week at the most, for maybe just ten minutes at a time. Every time he hangs up, I long for more of him.

            I have managed to hold onto the image of his eyes, at least, but not seeing him, even through a grainy webcam video, for eight weeks makes his image fade. Even though, thankfully, the emotional tie somehow grows stronger. It flourishes with the anxiousness of two months growing nearer. Time to see him again dwindling.

            As for my father, we have grown closer in every way from being around each other constantly. He doesn’t work other than selling his paintings, so he picks me up from school and we often talk for an hour at a time about the past twelve years. There’s still so much to catch up on, even after two months. Sometimes, I’ll even go into his room to watch him paint or just sit in curious awe of the paintings already finished and beautiful.

            Myself, I’ve been re-stitching and combining old clothes into newer pieces lately; something I’ve always wanted to do.

            For my seventeenth birthday three weeks prior, my father replaced the crusty, half broken machine with a clean, glistening one. It was all that I received, but being able to do something that I love and half looked forward to doing for years now is enough of a gift. I’m actually doing something that I enjoy. Something that brings me happiness. I believe that being with my father once more has relit the passion that he showed to me, of sewing and creating clothes. I’m doing the things that make me happy around the people who do the same, and life couldn’t be better. No stress. Nothing.

            “Taryn?” The door creaks open and I turn off the sewing machine, its dull whir subsiding. I brush a piece of my hair out of my face. Ever since I cut it to below my ears, small pieces of it are constantly floating around in my face. But I have no regrets. When I cut it, it was liberating. Like letting go of part of something from the past; when life wasn’t so great. It’s like my hair, that I hadn’t cut much since my father left, was part of what was dragging me back into past times. Now I have nothing holding me back. It’s just one less thing to worry about.