The Girl On The Screen ✔ ~ trixya

Chapter 34: Secondhand Sorrow

Trixie parked her car and stared at the familiar building in front of her.

There it was.
The house she had grown up in.
The house she had run away from.
The house that used to be her hell.

She took her bags out of the car, walked up to the door, took a deep breath and rang the bell. An older woman opened it, she had dark wavy hair and deep honey brown eyes. She looked different from how Trixie had remembered her, but the eyes were a dead giveaway. They were a shared trait between the two women, a bond that couldn't be broken.

"Mama?" Trixie said, the word seeming foreign.

"Tracy?" Her mom, Val, said in shock, almost not believing her long lost daughter stood before her once again. Trixie nodded with tears in her eyes before dropping her bags and throwing herself into her mom's arms. 

"Mom, who's that?" Trixie heard a female voice say. She pulled back from the hug to look at it's source, a beautiful young girl who looked almost like the spitting image her when she was younger, just with hair a darker shade of blonde and stunningly blue eyes. 

"Wait... Tracy?" The girl spoke as she took a better look at her older sister. Trixie felt wierd hearing that name again, but at the moment it still felt better than being called Trixie.

"Hi Samantha." She replied softly. 

"Well, come in, come in." Her mom said.

Trixie took her bags inside the worn down house, sitting down on the couch with her mother and sister. It was awkward, so many questions hanging in the air around them, and yet something about the house she'd spent her childhood in made Trixie feel comfortable. A feeling she never thought that house could bring her again.

"How have you been?" Val asked. It was a simple enough question, but it still felt almost impossible to answer.

"Uhm.. well, good, sorta. I moved to LA, got an apartment, got a girlfriend, did well for myself... But recently a lot of stuff happened and I just had to get out of there. I guess you could say I ran away again.." Trixie said awkwardly. She didn't know if her mom even knew that she was gay, but luckily the woman didn't comment on it.

"You lived in LA?" Sam asked in shock, clearly a little starstruck by that fact. Trixie just nodded a little in response.

"Well, I'm happy to hear you did so well for yourself. I was worried, you know... And no matter what's happening now, I'm sure it will pass. And you're welcome to stay here for as long as you want, of course." Her mom said.

Trixie held back her tears, the thought of her mom actually worrying about her making her emotional. The woman had been so catatonic around the time Trixie had left, so the girl had never imagined her mom actually worrying about her being gone.

"Thank you." Trixie whispered before bracing herself for the question that scared her the most. "Where.. Where's Robert?" 

"Oh.. Well, I suppose it's natural for you to ask.. You wouldn't know... He.. He died, about two months ago." Val said sadly.

Trixie saw her mom's and sister's faces fall at the question, but she still felt herself release a sigh of relief and a smile spreading across her lips.
He was gone. He couldn't harm her anymore. He couldn't harm any of them.

"Why are you smiling?" Sam suddenly yelled outraged.

"Sam, honey, calm down. You know how he was back in the days." Her mom said. Trixie just sat back confused.

"But she hasn't been here! She left us! At least he stayed!" Her sister said.

"Well, sorry, but he wasn't exactly dad of the year! He threatened to kill me, Sam. He beat me, he beat mom. You may not remember how bad it was because you were so young. But he made my life hell! He cheated on mom, and he threatened the two of you aswell." Trixie said, feeling the anger from her memories surge up.

"He was still our dad! And he got better! You know nothing about what he was like in all those years that you were gone. He quit drinking and he got his shit together, Tracy! And no he wasn't perfect, but you don't get to run back here when your perfect life falls apart and smile at his death!" Sam yelled before storming out of the room and slamming her bedroom door shut.

A silence fell throughout the room, Samantha's outburst leaving a strange mood behind.

"He really did change quite a bit, honey. He wasn't perfect, but he wasn't the monster you remember. He tried to do better and sobered up. He became much closer to the man I first fell for." Her mom spoke.

"A man who hits his wife and children will never truly change, mom. He may have been better to you, but violent people don't just stop being violent. Not someone like him who saw himself as above you and us. He wasn't even truly warm to you when I was a kid." Trixie argued.

"He got professional help, Tracy. And no, it wasn't paradise when he died either, but it wasn't the hell you ran away from. And look at it from Sam's perspective, she still lost her dad. He might not have been a father to you, but he was one to her. I'm sorry for everything he did to you and for not protecting you properly, but the man you knew, and the man she lost, they aren't the same people. It isn't as black and white as you might think." Val spoke. "Listen, your old room is still there, just as you left it. So just, sleep on it and we can talk in the morning." 

Trixie took her bags upstairs to her room. The light pink room really did look exactly like she'd left it, just more tidy. It was almost like entering a time capsule. She sat down on her bed as she considered what her mother and sister had said.

But what was she supposed to feel? Sorrow?

She didn't feel sad, so why should she pretend to be?

She couldn't imagine him acting like a real dad or a real husband. So why should she act like she was mourning the loss of him? Why should she fall apart because of him? 
She couldn't lie. She couldn't pretend like she missed him. She didn't, not even a little.

He was a flood who swallowed them whole, always refusing the love they endlessly gave him. He was like a fire out of control, spreading quickly and burning them alive like a blaze that couldn't be tamed.

So what was there to miss?
In fairytales when the villain is slain, no one mourns them, the kingdom just celebrates.
Why should this be different?

Trixie didn't know what to think or what to feel. 
How could her mom claim that it wasn't black and white?
It was, wasn't it?

Who was he, if not the monster that Trixie remembered? After everything he put her through, how dare they suggest that she didn't have it right? And even if he changed, who's to say that change would have stayed?

So why should she have a heavy heart or break in pieces over him being dead?

"I'll mourn loosing Katya, but I won't mourn loosing you. Not after the hell you made me live through." Trixie whispered angrily into her pillow as exhaustion and tears lulled her to sleep.