Coming Home

“What happened to him?” she asked, ru

Da

That was incredibly vague, but Leah knew enough not to push the issue. Instead, she kept ru

“That’s why I got so freaked over the flowers,” he said, and her thumbs stopped abruptly as she looked up.

“Why did that make you so mad?”

He shook his head with a sigh. “I wasn’t mad. It’s just…she keeps those things all over the house because when we were little, Bryan used to pick them from other people’s gardens and bring them home to her.” He laughed lightly. “She kept telling him that it was stealing and that it wasn’t a nice thing to do, but he could never understand how bringing his grandmother flowers was a bad thing. And she always put them in water. Always. Even after lecturing him about stealing, she’d put them up in a vase. Every fucking time.”

He looked down, a smile on his face as he shook his head at the memory. “When you sent them, it just freaked me out. I didn’t know how you knew to get those for her. I didn’t even think about the possibility that you’d seen them in her house.” He lifted his eyes to her face. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. That was so shitty of me.”

She shook her head. “It’s fine.”

It was quiet as they sat there, his hand in both of hers.

“Losing Bryan,” she finally said, and he looked up at her. “That’s not the reason you keep pulling away from me.”

He pulled his hand from hers and Leah straightened, instantly lamenting the loss. Da

“Just say it. Whatever it is, just say it.”

He sat completely still for a moment before he pushed off the table with a huff, walking around to the other side. He stood there, blinking up at the ceiling with his hands clasped on top of his head. “Fuck…I just…” He let his hands fall, shaking his head before he looked back at her.

It hurt to watch the struggle on his face. She could see that he wanted to tell her, but fear, or embarrassment, or both, were stopping the words in his throat, and she had no idea how to make it easier for him.

Tell him something. Something about you. Something you’re not proud of.

“You want to hear something awful?” Leah said gently, and Da

She twirled the loose thread around the tip of her finger until she felt it ache with the cut-off circulation.

Tell him. Tell him something you’re ashamed of, so he knows it’s okay.

Leah exhaled. “Before that night I hadn’t spoken to him for a year.”

She stared at the throw pillow on her lap until it was a mass of jumbled colors before her eyes, and she felt the couch dip under his weight as he sat beside her.

“Why?” he asked softly, reaching over and pulling the thread until it unraveled from her finger.

She curled and uncurled her aching finger as she shook her head sadly. “You have to understand something, Da

She turned her head to see that he was watching her intently. “Nobody asked me to do it. I wanted to. I wanted our family to be normal again, and a normal family needs a mother.”

Leah looked back down, playing with the same thread on the pillow. “Everyone relied on me, you know? My dad was so frazzled for a while after, and he couldn’t do it all on his own. So I stepped up. I was basically a really young mother. Or a really old teenager, however you want to look at it,” she said with a tiny laugh, and then she lifted her head, looking at him. “But I never felt like I was losing anything, you know? I had good friends. I played sports. I never felt like I’d given anything up. I loved my family. I wanted to take care of them.”

Da

“Everything was fine until I went away to college. I mean, you would think I would have been good at being independent, right? But I was miserable. I felt so guilty being away from them that I couldn’t enjoy any of it.

“So after the first semester, I came home and enrolled in a local college. My father didn’t ask any questions; he just welcomed me back with open arms, and everything went back to the way it was before.”

Da

Here we go.

Leah inhaled deeply. “The year after I graduated, I met Scott. He was fu

She stopped as her chin began trembling, and she pressed her lips together.

“Hey,” Da

Leah turned so that she was fully facing him on the couch. “I want to,” she said.

He looked down before he nodded, and then he took one of her hands, interlocking their fingers before resting it on the pillow between them.

She gave it a gentle squeeze before she said, “About six months after Scott and I began dating, he started getting upset over the amount of time I spent with my family. In a twisted way, part of me thought it was really sweet that he wanted that much of my time, that he didn’t want to share me with anyone,” she said, shaking her head. “God, I sound so stupid when I say that out loud.”

“You don’t,” Da

She smiled sadly. “It went far beyond a mistake. Because the more time I spent with him, the more I started looking at things differently. He would plant these little seeds in my mind—it was so gradual, so smooth, I didn’t see it. He would talk about how much it upset him that I lost my childhood—how it wasn’t my fault my mother died, and that I shouldn’t have had to pay for it. How it wasn’t the job of a teenager to take care of a family.”

Leah could feel her embarrassment growing, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on him as she said, “He told me that my father shouldn’t have let it happen, that he watched me grow up too fast and didn’t do anything to stop it. He said he shouldn’t have allowed me to come home from college either—that if he truly wanted what was best for me, he would have done everything in his power to make sure I got to experience life. He said my family took advantage of my kindness. And after a while, I believed him.” She shook her head. “And I was so thankful that I found someone who cared about me that much. Someone who was looking out for me, and not the other way around.”

Da

“My family didn’t like him. They said he wasn’t good for me, and of course Scott said that was because he was revealing truths they didn’t want to acknowledge. He said they were mad because he opened my eyes to what was really going on. Everything he said made sense, you know?”

Da

Leah bit her lip as she looked down at their hands clasped on the pillow. “So, I distanced myself from them. I would argue with them over stupid things. I’d get mad when my father called to check in with me. I refused to call and check in with him. It was disgusting. Most people go through their rebellious stage when they’re fifteen or sixteen, and there I was, a grown woman, acting like a child.”