XXXII. Explanations-1

"Every long separation is a test: A test to see how powerful or how weak the will of reuniting is!" Mehmet Murat ildan ---- Chapter XXXII - Explanations In one moment, Dad had gone from sitting beside me on the couch, to cradling Mom in his arms, catching her before she had hit the floor. In that action, in the way that he held her, I could see just how much he still loved her. It was while holding my mom that I noticed his left hand. Just like Mom did, he still wore his wedding ring. Dad stood up, adjusting Mom in his arms and he brought her into the living room, sitting her down on the opposite end of our couch very gently. I helped by grabbing a cushion and using it to support her head. "Do you have any smelling salts, Saraphine?" Dad asked. I wasn't even sure what those were, but I knew we had some essential oils from when Mom went through a meditation phase for a week. But I couldn't pinpoint where they were. Probably in a box in our garage with the other junk that we had carted down from New York. Instead, I shook her, grabbing hold of her upper arms. "Mom!" I shouted. "Mom, wake up!" I didn't know if this was bad or not, but the only doctor in the room was unconscious. Dad joined in, clicking his fingers at Mom's ear. "Amanda, can you hear me?" Mom came to a few seconds later. Her green eyes shot open, and darted between the two of us, before fixating on Dad. She completely stiffened as she stared at him in utter disbelief and shock. Dad was still kneeling down beside her. "Deep breaths, Amanda," he instructed calmly. "I …" Mom stammered. "I … I don't understand … how?" "I was just explaining what had happened all those years ago to Saraphine," he replied. Mom's eyes flicked to me. "Sara …? You knew about this?" she asked, still evidently in complete shock. "Not until recently, Mom," I assured her, though I knew that was still bad. "Well, what happened?" Mom demanded to know, gaining a little more gumption. "I don't understand. How are you alive?" Dad stood up and walked the few feet over to the mantle to look at the pictures there more closely. "When you left me, Amanda, and took my baby away from me, I just about wanted to die." His words sent an undeniable chill down my spine. I stole a glance at Mom and saw that she, too, was frozen still. "That sort of rejection for my kind … well, I've learned to endure the pain." I felt like he was substituting pain for another word. Probably something like agony, or total anguish. "The next month or two are honestly a blur. I think I repressed them, blocked them out. It was the darkest time in my life." His voice was strained, but calm. We were listening to every word. "I remember the tensions with Kurt's pack coming to a head, and there was a fight, just him and me. I had nothing to lose." He exhaled, stealing a glance at Mom. "Not anymore. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a pool of blood. A lot of my own, a lot belonging to Kurt. My body was torn to shreds, but I had landed a fatal blow on Kurt." I could see how haunted he was by this memory. I wasn't fully sure I understood properly, to know what it was to duel, to fight, and to kill in their world. "I was bleeding out, and I remember hearing scavenging animals surrounding us. Somehow I managed to shift and run. Trudging and stumbling until I came to a hospital miles and miles from Providence. The doctors wrote it off as an animal attack. I nearly died from the blood loss. An infection nearly caused blood poisoning shortly after. But the good docs managed to save my life. What was left of it, anyway. "I had no ID. No next of kin. They didn't know I had a wife, a daughter, a family. I was a John Doe. When I was finally released, I went back, though I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to lead. And when I got back, I saw my funeral. They thought I had died in that field alongside Kurt." "And … and you decided to let them think that?" Mom whispered. Dad nodded, looking at her with a sort of fearful tenderness. "And … and you decided to let methink that?" she asked, her voice becoming frankly extremely pissed. Dad sensed her shift in tone. He stiffened defensively. But Mom continued. Knotting her fingers in her hair, she seethed, "You fucking asshole, Ronan!" I flinched. I don't think I'd ever heard Mom curse like that before. Standing up from the couch, she yelled, "How could you do that to me?" "You left me!" Dad hissed, anger filling his eyes. "Quote I don't want you anywhere near Saraphine orme unquote!" "I didn't mean that!" Mom shouted, tears filling her eyes. "Well it sure as hell looked like you did when you packed up your stuff and took my baby out of the state!" Dad retorted. They were both breathing heavily, their shoulders rising and falling rapidly as they stared at each other. Mom looked so angry and so confused. Dad looked to be a mixture of fury and hurt. And there I was, trying not to draw attention to myself so that they could get out what they needed to say. "I grieved you!" Mom exclaimed after a moment, "I don't think I ever stopped grieving you. My husband, the father of my daughter, died.But you weren't really dead … Ronan, how could you do this? How could you let me, let us, believe that you were dead?" Dad faced Mom properly, squaring his shoulders and opening his arms, as if to show honest body language. "You broke me, Amanda," he said quietly, "you fucking destroyed me. I was a twenty-something year old kid whose world imploded on top of him, and at my lowest point, I didn't have my wife, and I didn't have my baby. The two most important people in my life were gone, and you said the words, Amanda, you said that you didn't want me to be anywhere near you or Saraphine. For a human, that would be catastrophic, but for someone like me?" He shook his head.