Chapter 26

He laid down next to me gasping. I stared at the ceiling lost in my thoughts, he had done things to me that no man had done to me before. Even though I didn't have many references, what had just happened here was just divine. I figured he on the other hand had a lot of experience to compare to. My eyes fell on a chewing gum on the ceiling. Flo had put it there when we were only 13 years old so a thought crossed my mind. I had just made love in my childhood bedroom.

"If someone had told me that one day I would do this on the bed I've slept on since I was twelve and that I would love it, I would never have believed it." I said laughing and he laughed too.

"Does that means that you loved it?" I felt his gaze on me and I continued to stare at the ceiling without answering him. "In any case, I'm flattered to have been the one who inaugurated this little bed to the good life." He put his arm around me and pulled me against him, I put my head on his chest and closed my eyes. I felt so happy right now that I wanted it to last forever, I had managed to forget all the stress I had about my dad for a while. We sat like that for a while without saying anything and I found myself dozing into sleep.

When I woke up, I moved slowly to take my phone to see what it was. I sat up very quickly when I realized it was 5:45. I was supposed to sort through my dad's stuff, because as soon as he's acquitted at the hospital, we'll be leaving right away. Greg was still sleeping. I put on his T-shirt and tiptoed out of the room. I walked into my dad's room and pulled out some suitcases, I forgot to ask him what stuff he wanted to pack, so for now I was just going to sort out the things I thought he wouldn't need.

I was there for fifteen minutes, when I saw Greg's head in the half opened door.

"Do you need some help ?"

"Sure." He came in.

He had his pants on and was shirtless.

"What can I do ?!"

"You can get all those boxes up there." I pointed to the top of the cabinet.

"What's inside?" he rushed to catch them.

"I don't know, probably old stuff from my dad. I want to get rid of all that stuff. I figured since we were going to be gone for I don't know how long we should rent the house."

"It's a good idea, but will your father agree?"

"I don't know, I'd have to talk to him about it first." he walked around my father's bed and put the boxes on the floor. He took the photo that was on the bedside table. It was a picture of me on my graduation day.

"Your father is so very proud of you."

"Yes, and sometimes I think he overdoes it."

I was folding all of my dad's clothes and putting them in the suitcases.

"That's not true. Me, if one day I have a daughter like you, I'll brag from morning to night." I laughed and continued what I was doing

"What did you do in college." he asked always looking at the photos.

"Marketing, I graduated a year and a half ago. but it didn't help me much." He looked at me then put the photo down then he opened the boxes and started rummaging through them.

"Tell me, what did you wish you had done after college."

"All except being a waitress, but now I think I have come to like it. Anyway, I have no other choice."

"Your dad told me you're the one paying for his insulin. That's why you put yourself through all this work."

"Yeah, that's the only way there was. I had to tell him stories about how I had a good job that paid well or he would never have accepted."

"So he doesn't know about your two jobs." I shook my head no.

I was surprised at the ease with which I spoke to him, we continued to discuss while I finished folding the clothes. I closed the suitcases then put them in a corner of the room and I approached the boxes. I took one and opened it. He asked me every time if something was important or not. We really looked like a normal couple.

A few minutes later while telling me an anecdote about Max his best friend, he picked up a small box that was at the bottom of a cardboard box. He opened it and took a picture. I knew that box, I thought my dad got rid of it a long time ago.

"Is it your mother ?" he was asking me the question while raising his eyes to look at me, he noticed that my face was tense.

"I don't have a mother." I snapped and he was confused. "What I mean is that she was just the woman who gave me life, nothing more." I tried to explain to him but he still looked confused.

In the photo I must have been almost three years old, I was with my father and her and we looked like a beautiful family. But three years is not an age to have beautiful memories. The only memories I had of her were anything but beautiful. That is the only photo I had with her.

Greg reached out to brush my cheek.

"Nothing forces you to tell me, you know." I think he sensed that I was uncomfortable with the subject. Our eyes met. I don't know what came over me but I took the box from his hands, sat on the bed and looked at the photo, it had been a long time that I had not seen it, it was as if I was trying to revive my memories. I had told my father that I never wanted to see anything related to her again, I don't know why he had kept that.

"When I was four years old, my..." I had stopped thinking of her as my mother a long time ago. "This woman got pregnant, from what my father told me it was a little boy. He told me that she was so happy, because she really wanted to have a boy. " he had sat opposite me and was listening to me attentively.

"I don't know what happened but she had a miscarriage I don't remember that, it was my father who told me that, probably trying to find excuses for her behavior that followed after that. She started getting drunk, she lost her job and she started to become really mean to me, I don't remember exactly what she said to me, I just have glimpses of memories. One day, "I paused, my voice was emotionless and I stared into space.

"It was a Sunday, my dad often worked late, now that I think about it maybe it was to escape the atmosphere that was at home. While I was alone with her, I don't know what time it was but it was very late, she put me in front of the TV and told me not to move. Except that I had school in the morning and I really wanted to sleep." it was as if I saw myself again that day in the living room and that I revisited that day. Greg didn't speak, he just looked at me tenderly.

"She went out leaving me alone at home, I had fallen asleep watching TV when she came back. She was very drunk, she didn't even calculate me, and she went up to their room. I could hear her moving upstairs from the living room, she was making a lot of noise. Then at some point it stopped. I was sleepy and I didn't understand why she wasn't putting me to bed. So I went up to see her. I opened the bedroom door but she wasn't in. I called her she didn't answer, so I opened the bathroom door and there... That's the clearest memory that I have of her." it was the first time that I managed to tell that to someone. Even Flo, it was my father who had told him everything. I haven't been able to talk about the details until today

"She was sitting on the ground, a cigarette in her hand, she shouted to me in disappointment 'What are you doing here, I told you not to move, little barren.' she asked me to go back to the living room, but I told her that I wanted to go to sleep, what I hadn't seen was that she had a razor in her hand, she must have got tired of repeating to me to go to the saloon so she said 'this is what you want to see? Fine ' then she cut her wrists in front of me."