Burning me

Chapter thirty five - Axel

A few days before

I sat at the counter, in the kitchen, watching my Mom washing the dishes after the guests had left. She had on that motherly smile that warmed my heart every time I saw it.

Dad and the kids weren't in the kitchen, they were messing around with Uncle Mason and Calum in the games room. Aunt Poppy was with Valerie, struggling to understand her princess tea parties. Why? Cause Shirley was more of a boyish girl. She hadn't had experience in that grounds.

I couldn't help but remember what Dad had told me two days before, about how I met freckles the first time and how Mom… protected us…

I watched the way she moved her head, in the rhythm of the beat, a feeling of sorrow of what happened to her because of us, filling my gut.

"Honey, do you want to ask me something?" Mom questioned, looking at me over her shoulder.

I frowned, wondering why she asked. She chuckled, looking back down at the dishes she was washing with such joy. "You stare at me as if you want to ask me something."

I gulped down my fear, deciding it was best if I asked her what I've been dying to ask her these days. "Mom, what happened?" My voice was one I hadn't heard before. It felt weak, defeated in some way and mostly, exhausted.

My Mom looked confused at me, unsure why I asked that or what did I mean. She didn't have to talk for me to understand her question.

"Dad told me…" I had whispered, looking with glistening eyes at her for two seconds, before my gaze dropped to the glass in my hands, "what happened to you when freckles and I were kids…" I trailed off again, gulping not that subtly as I fidgeted with the glass on the table.

"He did…?" Mom asked doubtfully, making me nod.

I still couldn't look at her. It wasn't because it disgusted me, it was because I didn't want to see the pain I just heard from her voice. I knew better than anyone that Mom wasn't fond of talking of her past. She never talked about it with us, but never. And I was curious. So damn curious.

"I don't," I bit my lip, shaking my head, "I don't want to ask how or why, but I want to know what else you have gone through. I want to know what else you haven't told us."

I rose my eyes to her, seeing the joy in washing the dishes gone as her lips pursed painfully. She blinked a few times, utter silence filling the living room. There was no word spoken by any of us for a long moment. Until she met my gaze with hers.

"You will never see me the same, Axel." She stated, not warning me, but saying it… to be said. To be known. "I don't know if better or worse, that you'll pick for yourself. Whatever it is, I don't want you to say a single word to your siblings, because I can't have them seeing the world like that." She shook her head, placing a dish in the dishwasher. "Not yet."

"I won't." I promised to myself, watching her as she took a towel and wrapped it around her hands, drying her palms. Slowly, nearly soundlessly, she pulled a whiskey bottle and a glass and walked in front of me, sitting in a chair.

"My father was an abusive man, Axel." She stated, pouring the whiskey. "He was an abusive man that had no kind of remorse to whatever he did to your uncle and I or your grandmother." She sighed. "Before I was five, he was a great father. Then he discovered drinking because of some financial problems we had. I still remember the first day he hit Mason." A rough chuckle escaped her lips, the glass being handed to me. "He knocked him out, then left cig marks on my back. We had no idea that was just day one."

She shook her head slowly, pulling from a drawer a packet of cards. She unwrapped them, starting to spread the cards. Five to me, five to her. "After that, there was no day we got off without a bruise, a scar, anything. Our mother got it the worst. Mason, had it worse than I did. They protected me. But they couldn't always." She put the first card, her eyes narrowing on her others. "When I was ten, one night, I caught my father fighting with my mother. It was the worst fight I'd ever seen at them. They yelled louder at each other, mum too. Dad was pissed and he did what he did best. He acted violently. He grabbed a knife and stabbed my mum with it."