Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Arborview - October 4, 11:08 a.m.
Sunlight spilled onto me, I felt warmth against the curtains and the wooden floor of my room. I opened my eyes and realized that I had fallen asleep while waiting for the car to return.
My body ached, the wooden floor proved an uncomfortable place to fall asleep. I remembered the ribbons of light from the car and the hiss of my mother's voice at the figure, my heart leapt. I stood up.
I had questions to ask and I needed them answered. The constant silence of our household was put to a halt and I felt uneasy, uncomfortable. It had never been this way before.
Every day was routine and the routine felt lost with last night's arrival of the silver-haired woman in the car. She looked celestial in her white silk outfit and I couldn't come up with any reasons as to why my mother would shout at someone like her.
I opened my door and spotted my father in the living room, his blank gaze.
"Father?" I asked.
"Moss..." He stared at me. He looked like he had cried or hadn't slept. His eyes burned holes through me.
"Is there something the matter?"
"No, Moss, nothing is the matter," his voice drifted off, his response somehow incomplete. Like last night's dinner, he wanted to say something more but he couldn't.
"May I ask about last night? I heard voices - yelling. Mother was yelling at someone outside." I tried to ask vaguely so he would have more information to give me. Goosebumps appeared, I felt like a journalist calculating the best questions to ask.
He looked up at me, silently alarmed, his face flushed of its color. "Oh, that."
"Your mother...she and that woman have never liked each other. They fight a lot and sometimes she comes around in her fancy car, looking for trouble," he explained.
"Why don't they like each other?"
"Because of some dispute twenty years ago. That woman won't let go of it so every once in a while she comes back to yell at your mother." He wanted to tell me more. But again, he didn't. No, may be he couldn't. He looked like he bottled up everything he wanted to say inside.
"A dispute?" I naively asked.
"It's really nothing. That woman, Moss, she's crazy and she won't leave your mother alone. I'm sorry that you had to hear that argument last night," he tried to end the conversation. What about you guarding my door? I wanted to ask but decided perhaps the matter was nothing, after all. The woman was crazy and he wanted to protect me from her madness.
"I understand. Poor mother, having to go through that," I sympathized.
"Yes, poor her." Father didn't seem as sympathetic as expected. He fidgeted around in his chair uneasily and stood up. "Moss, I'm going to go take a nap. I'm exhausted."
All of the pieces of the nighttime puzzle fit together - mother had to deal with a crazy woman who father wanted to protect me from by blocking my bedroom door, and now he was tired from staying up all night because of the issue. I smiled and my mind felt at ease.
Even though my parents were lacking in social skills and affection toward me, they had good hearts, they meant well. I wandered to my room and turned on my laptop. Let the daily routine continue, I embraced it.
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Continue to Chapter Eight