of the hospital cafeteria. And then there’s my auntie with a plate she hasn’t touched, and myself. I move the mac and cheese around with my fork, in the same situation as my auntie. Not wanting to eat, but not ready to leave just yet.
My mother seemed fine, apart from her arm wrapped in a cast.
She smiled, she gave me a kiss. She said it got stuck in the railing when she tripped. She was trying to hold on to it and instead she only made it worse.
If it wasn’t for the look on my father’s face, I’d believe her. He got her two vases of daisies, her favorite flower. The smell of them in the hospital room haunts that moment for me. Three vases total, one bouquet from me, lining the room and bearing witness to that conversation.
I can’t be in the room with them. I don’t know how my sister’s doing it. How she can sit there with speculation but not say anything.
“How’s the city life?” Auntie Susan asks me and I bring my amber gaze up to meet hers. It falls quickly to her gray sweatshirt with the block letters from my uncle’s alma mater. He passed a few years ago, a car accident caused by black ice.
“It’s not like New York City.”
There’s a hum of understanding as she stirs a pack of sugar into a steaming cup of tea. Her dark eyes watch the swizzle stick as she asks, “You like it better down there? I bet it’s warmer.”
“It is. It’s ten degrees colder here every time I come up.”
The small talk doesn’t do anything to help the hollow feeling in my chest. Or the numb prick along my arms. I want to talk to someone, but words fail me. That and shame. I don’t want it to be true, but my gut is hardly ever wrong.
“You know what I told your mama?” my auntie Susan speaks up, and the bluntness of it forces me to meet her gaze. “I told her when she went back to him, that I was always there for her. If she wanted to come stay, if she needed money. I told her if she wanted a family dinner, I’d sit next to him but not in his house. I would never step foot in that man’s house.”
Hate seeps into her words, her disgust showing through and the first crack in her armor showing. My auntie’s frame is larger, not at all delicate like my mother’s. She shifts her weight and corrects her expression before continuing, hardening her disposition.
“We make choices, and your mother made hers. Your father made his. I make my own too. I’m not leaving her, but you can’t make sense of it with your mother.”
I don’t speak. Not to her. Not to my sister. Not even to my mother.
I’m silent as I take it all in. Collecting the bits of evidence and forming my own conclusion. I feel dead inside. There’s this pit in my stomach that’s cold and unforgiving.
My mother says it was an accident and that’s all there is to it as far everyone else outside this room is concerned.
I leave before everyone else and without telling them. The last thing I want is to be alone with my father. I don’t want him to look me in the eyes and lie to me. Worse, I don’t want to believe him when I feel so certain that he assaulted my mother and should be behind bars right now.
Flowers are waiting for me at the hotel desk when I check in. I wish they made me smile, but they’re so much more beautiful than daisies. That’s all I can think.
They’re the first thing I see and that smell… the smell fills the entire room. Tossing the keys onto the dresser and letting my purse and the luggage bag sit at the front of the room, I make my way to them.
My fingertips trail down the deep red petals, the smell of the roses covering up the memory of the daisies. A dozen deep red roses.
After washing my face and changing into sweats, I text Cody: You didn’t have to send flowers. But they’re beautiful.
His first text hits me like an ice bath washing down my bare skin. I miss you and I’ve been thinking of you, but I didn’t get you flowers.
A follow-up text from him does nothing to help: Now I wish I had.
He’s the only one who knew I was staying in this hotel.