Sarah
Two nights later, I finally tell my brothers what happened between Dad and me. While we sit in David’s kitchen, they listen with dropped jaws and pursed eyebrows, trying to wrap their minds around the story as I explain the day I sat our parents down and told them I was pregnant. I relive my fear and confusion. My knowledge that I wasn’t ready to be a mother and my absolute certainty that I couldn’t get an abortion—my heart wouldn’t have survived.
I explain the way our father’s face turned to stone. My horror when he said he wanted me to end the pregnancy. His insistence that his way was the only way even when Mom suggested adoption as an alternative and I cried and cried and cried, knowing I couldn’t put an end to the life inside me. The life that bled out of me just a few days later.
Dad drew a hard line, one he didn’t explain and one I didn’t understand. One I still don’t understand to this day. I pour out my confusion to my brothers and they watch me, understanding dawning on their faces as all the things that never made sense suddenly become crystal clear.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Colton asks. “We could have helped you through it. Jesus, Sarah…” He looks to David who nods and voices his agreement.
I hang my head, remembering the urgency in Mom’s voice as she pulled me aside. Her voice was little more than a whisper, harsh and hard, tears filling her wide eyes.
Don’t tell a soul, she said. Not David. Not Colton. Not your friends.
The memory still hurts. It tugs at my heart and reminds me that whatever I used to be to my parents, from that day forward I was nothing but an embarrassment to hide from the rest of the world.
I blink away the memory and meet my brothers’ eyes. “Mom told me not to tell anyone. I think she was ashamed of me.”
“I wasn’t ashamed of you.” Our mother’s voice comes from behind us and I turn to find her leaning in the doorway, looking older and sadder than I remember her. “I was scared for you. Shocked that we had to deal with something that big when you were still so young. But I wasn’t ashamed of you. I was ashamed of your father.” She smiles weakly and then sighs before pushing off the wall. “I didn’t want the boys to know what he was asking you to do because I was afraid they’d think what he was doing was right.”
“So instead, you let me think everything about me was wrong?” I sit back in my chair and swallow down the rest of my words, hurtful, toxic things that have been sitting in my heart for too long.
“Really, Mom?” Colton holds out his hands and then lets them drop to his lap. “You let Sarah go through all of that alone because you thought we couldn’t tell right from wrong?”
David makes an exasperated sound. “I don’t even know what to think right now. I spent the last couple years believing my sister was a spoiled brat, and now I find this out…” He trails off and shakes his head.
Mom pulls out a chair and sits. “You kids don’t come with instruction manuals and sometimes it seems like the only choices in front of us are bad ones. When all you see are hard decisions, how do you know which choice will cause the least pain? The whole situation got away from me. And now here we are.”
Anger rises through my system. “Where are we Mom?” I ask, hoping she has something better to say than what she’s already said.
Mom looks me in the eyes and the sadness in her gaze settles into my gut. She sucks in her lips, puts her hand on mine, and then lets out a long breath. “We’re on the way to righting what’s gone wrong between us.”
* * *
Two days after that, I find myself alone with my father in his hospital room while he sleeps. He and I haven’t been able to talk much since I’ve been in Ohio. As much as Dad and I have to say to each other, he needs his rest now more than ever. It’s funny. I know I’m supposed to consider Ohio home, but I really don’t. After just two short months, home is the feeling I get when I’m wrapped in Frank’s arms.
From time to time, Dad jolts awake, calling out my name. His eyes wide and wild, like he’s still afraid he’s dreaming. When his gaze finds mine, he relaxes into his pillows, relief softening his features. Once he murmured something that sounded like please don’t leave, but he fell back to sleep without saying much else.
I study the man in the bed. So old. So weak. My memories have twisted and churned until my father became a monster in my head. An angry man. Huge and strong and capable of breaking me with little more than a harsh glance or a scathing word.
For the last several years, my father has been the source of all my outrage, the scapegoat for all my problems. Every mistake I made could be traced back to the rift between us. And now that I’m here beside him and I see that he’s just a person, an old man struggling to hold on, all the things I thought I knew seem wrong. Built on broken foundations and faulty suppositions.
While he sleeps, I replay our conversations. Listen to all the things he said that have been stuck in my head for years, poisoning me from the inside out. I’m ready to heal, but in order to do that, he and I need to talk, and that’s hardly possible in his current state. How do I start my own healing process when his is so much more pressing?
Is it enough that I’m here?
What can he ever say that will erase the pain of his rejection?
Can we really move beyond our past?
“He loves you. I hope you know that.” The voice surprises me and I turn to find my mother in the doorway.
“You really like sneaking up on me, don’t you?” I drop my gaze to my lap and twist my hands together. “Honestly? No. I don’t know that he loves me.”
Mom bobs her head and stares at the ground. “He thought he was doing what was best for you. In his mind, you were destined for so much more than life on a farm. You had this spark. This fire in your soul. He always said he knew you were destined for something more.”
“He sure has a funny way of showing it.”
“Well, that’s your dad.” Mom attempts a smile but I’m not ready to joke about this topic.
I look away.
“The thing is, when you have children, your life stops belonging to you. It belongs to them from that point forward and there’s beauty in that, there really is. But your dad didn’t want you to lose that—” Mom holds out her hands as if she’s cupping something precious “—that special thing he always saw in you.”
“Why didn’t he say that?”
“He tried. You didn’t hear. Teenaged you was…”
“Difficult,” I finish for her.
Mom shakes her head. “Determined. Strong. Eager to earn her spot in the world. You were too busy proving that to hear anything he was saying.”
And so…
…still…
…after all these years, the fault lies with me.
My mother sighs. “And honestly, he was too busy being stubborn to make you hear him. He wasn’t listening and I know I wasn’t listening either, but I’m listening now.”