Deal With It ✓

Twenty-Four: The Concert

Video:  Arctic Monkeys @ TRNSMT Festival 2018

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Enjoy!!

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I truly didn't understand the reason Elise decided to show up now. She had fourteen years to make up for her absence, but she chose to make a reappearance after dad had died?– It just didn't make any sense.

What Elise had done was unwarranted. Amber and I were finally okay, we had established some sort of balance; we dealt with dad's death; we've formed a bond that didn't exist years ago; and we finally understood each other. Like a storm, Elise had come and knocked everything off balance.

I was angry– how could she just barge into our home, built on memories without her, to disrupt our lives. The fact that we were related to her made me want to bury my head into the earth like an ostrich. Whenever I thought back on how badly she treated my father by discouraging him and refusing to believe in his dream, I only felt overwhelmingly confused.

How could someone as kind-hearted as my father choose to marry Elise? Had he not seen her for her true colors when they dated? I know I never considered my mother to be a bad person when she raised me. Up until I turned ten, Elise had been nothing but kind to me– she treated me like any mother would treat their child. She showered me with kisses in the mornings; she helped me complete my homework; she loved me.

But then dad announced how he was going to start his own business, and her love for us disappeared. She became a selfish, shallow, money-hungry woman who rarely acknowledged my existence.

I never saw it coming.

She didn't seem excited to give birth to Amber, either. Dad had to drag her to the hospital for their check-ups and had to coax her into taking her prescribed vitamins. When Amber was born, she didn't ask to hold her; she didn't care when they wheeled her away for check-ups; she ignored her cries.

Amber, of course, didn't know this. Papa had made it a point to not mention any of it to her– he'd ingrained it into me when she first asked if she had a mom. I remembered the day vividly.

Dad and I were sitting at the small round table in the kitchen in our old home. We'd rid the place of any pictures of Elise, even if it meant that the house didn't have pictures of us either. Amber was four at the time and she was upstairs playing with her dolls. Dad was showing me the blueprints to our new home and I remember being gobsmacked at how big it was.

As dad pointed towards the kitchen's outline, we heard Amber's small feet pad into the room. She barely reached my hip at the time, she was tiny. Her curls were set free, but she had a Dora The Explorer headband pulling her hair away from her face. She walked towards our dad and his face instantly lit up at the sight of his daughter. He picked her up by her underarms and placed her on his lap.

"Papa," She called in a small voice as she craned her neck up to look at him.

"Oui?" He replied giving her a questioning look.

"Do I have a mama?" She asked innocently.

Dad and I weren't expecting her to ask that. He froze at the question and I tensed at the mention of my mother. We should've been prepared to answer this question since she was in the 'curious stages' of her life. Amber turned her head in my direction, her curls flying around as she did so. She looked at me with her doe eyes, expecting a response, but I just averted my gaze back to the blueprint.