“Your call has been forwarded to…” The phone goes to voicemail again for the third time in as many minutes. He stares at the screen mocking him with its blankness, a familiar heaviness settling into his bones. No surprise, really. It had become somewhat of a familiar sight over the past few years. He’d made it very clear he did not wish to be contacted any longer a long time ago. The thought makes his stomach twist anyway.
He sits down on the bathroom floor and tries not to shiver at the feeling of cold tile on bare legs. Aimlessly flicking through his phone’s myriad applications, he considers how long it had been since he’d talked to that man’s children. Cousins. If they even called him that anymore. If they were allowed to think so. It had definitely been a fair few months, if not a year, he muses. He wonders how they were doing. Their brick wall of a father was certainly about as forthcoming as one.
He misses them.
The boy in the bathroom huffs in a hollow facsimile of a laugh, remembering how one of the last calls that had gone through had been picked up by that man, wordless until he’d handed the device to one of his children without so much as a greeting. It was clear to see what the message was. You’re not worth my time. Or, perhaps: I don’t want to be reminded. Weren’t we a family once, he thinks bemusedly. We used to spend so much time together. I guess you used to seem happier, too. You used to talk to us, without using your own children as go-betweens and avoiding contact like the plague. So much for caring.
Times like this he feels her absence more than anything. She’d loved them all, he knows. Of course he knows. He’d only ever known her as someone who loved. That was hardly ever all there was to it, but that’s how she’d been. That’s what he remembers. He has never quite reconciled himself with the fact that she is gone. He remembers the last time he’d dreamt of her. That morning had been an unpleasant one, cheeks stained with tears as he’d woken up. And oh, what a hit to the face that had been, to remember that he’d never gotten to say his goodbyes after all.
(He wishes he had hugged her a little tighter on that March morning.)
Sometimes he still expects her to be right around the corner when he turns, that she’d be there with a beaming smile to talk about everything that had transpired between the last time he’d seen her and now. It’s like she is barely out of sight– call her number and you’ll see, the traitorous voice inside his head whispers, she’ll pick up, when has she not? He still even has all of their old conversations stored on his phone from years and years and years ago. His phone keeps asking him to delete old conversations to ‘preserve storage.’ He always hits ‘delete’ on old, pointless photos instead. They mean less anyway. Everything is bent on forgetting, foremost among them the man who’d sworn ‘til death do us part to her hand. He’d promised, and yet.
Her text bubbles are still blue. So are her husband’s, but the timestamp on them is much more recent. Unanswered, of course, like the calls are.
The boy remembers that no one had even told him the truth of the matter for years. He’d known she was gone, yes, but getting the news of why exactly later down the line had hurt almost as much as the first time. He supposes he cannot blame them for trying to process first before telling. It is like mourning twice. He thinks that the man he once respected was a coward, and then tries to remind himself that grief is often unfair in its manifestations.
He hates him anyway. She’d gone in the end, hadn’t she? She’d made her choice and gone and left it all behind and from what he’d been told that man had at least been somewhat responsible (majorly responsible wasn’t out of the question, oh no, it was likelier than ever) and now the gutless wonder was running from what was left of her, running from the consequences, running from his guilt, running and running and running– at least let us talk about her– you came into this fucking family and took her– she was ours first and you took her away–
Well, who can you blame, save for those left behind?
He ponders what must have gone through that man’s head in the days leading up to radio silence. His one and only connection vanishing was apparently reason enough to cut ties completely with everyone else he’d previously cared for, and he simply disappeared, leaving the rest to piece together bits of the oh-so-messy narrative he’d left behind. Sometimes the boy thinks that perhaps that man cannot bear to look anyone in the eyes for the fear of what he’s wrought. He might understand, then. Other times, on less kind days, the vanishing act becomes, in his head, a direct result of blame being placed on the family’s shoulders. And isn’t that a funny thought, when the evidence so clearly states otherwise. Or maybe not so clearly. It’s not like he ever bothered explaining.
He remembers the look on his uncle’s face by the riverbank. Remembers the past few years with some bitterness. He knows he was willing to forgive once. So was everyone else, before the quiet.
You love her, don’t you? You cried. I saw you. Through my own blurry sight, I saw you. And you didn’t look like you were lying.
You know how much we love her too. We salted the earth with tears and ash, that winter before you hung up forever. We live a world apart. You know this too. You have never come back again anyway.
You love her, but you killed her.
She loved you, but you killed her.
Didn’t you?
Do you know what you have done?
