Fiction Sad

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

At the intersection, I could go right and head home, but turning left would take me to my newly inherited house. Darkness seeped into the intersection from the looming street on the left.


I hadn’t spoken to my father since my wedding thirty years ago, even with him only an hour away down that dark road, I had never found the courage to forgive him, to face reality. To listen to his ‘told you so’.


The traffic light seeped through the windshield, casting red across my face. With the news of his death, of how he died, it felt as if he had stolen my opportunity to forgive him. It was a jab in the chest for my stubbornness.


When the light turned green, I sat for a moment longer. I considered leaving the old, grimy house to rot. How could I still hate him in death? I wasn’t sure.


He lived in the northernmost part of town in the same house I grew up in. The house where my brother Seth, and now my father, left this world. Nothing good had ever come from that putrid house looming over the neighborhood, casting fear into those who passed. Casting fear into me, because of what might be waiting for me.


A honk shook me from my decision, and I pulled out, turning right, towards home and away from forgiveness again.


The lights of the main street passed with the same rhythm as my beating heart. Beating faster as I recalled what waited for me at home, my drunk husband, my daughter, Alyna, my entire world, broken from my own failures. I hated that my father was right about John, my husband.


Suddenly, I did a U-turn. Passed through the brightness of the intersection and into the darkness of Sherman Street.


My headlights cast beams into the thick woods as I drove, morphing the trees into thin creatures of the night.


Now standing before my father’s Victorian house, the cross on the coned-roofed turret reaching for the crescent moon above, I wondered why I had come alone, at night.


It was an ancient giant behind elegant iron gates and down a long twisting driveway in a town of suburban copycat houses. Even in the night, with its tilted lean, black windows, and its grand oak door that seemed to whisper, Where have you been? There was something alluring about it.



I shivered and fumbled inside my jeans pocket for the key. The house gobbled me up as I stepped onto the porch.


********

A week had passed since my visit to my father’s house. Since I had turned the lights on, to reveal utter disarray, items cast upon the floor, a foul smell from expired food filled the air, but more than that, the stench of my past.


I had only turned, locked the ancient oak door, and shut the iron gates for the last time. I would let it rot, I had decided, unable to forgive him and confront my past.


I heard it as soon as I pulled into the driveway of my small two-bedroom home. Alynas' shrieking shook me to my core, throwing me into a panicked sprint inside. When I burst through the door, Alyna was standing there in a T-shirt and underwear, begging John to stop, to cease his brutal beating of Damien, her boyfriend.


Without much thought, I threw myself onto his back, attempting to pull him off Damien. He wiped his back with enough force to throw me on the ground. My head began to pound from the impact.


I felt Alyna at my side, her tears fell onto my cheek as she cried for me to leave John. To take her anywhere else. In that moment, I knew I had to leave. John wasn't going to change, just like my father never did.


So, despite my hatred for my father, despite my fear of John, despite my stubbornness, I decided.


In my time on the ground, Damien had slipped free and crashed out the front door. John yelled after him.


With my head throbbing, I rounded the kitchen island and grabbed a steak knife. I curled Alyna into my side and backed away, towards the back door in the kitchen.


“Meryem, don’t you do this!” John’s brown eyes were manic, jumping from mine to the knife, to Alyna. Panic, dread, and regret seeped into his eyes. Then the back door slammed closed, and I pulled Alyna along as I sprinted for the car.


One year later

I smiled at Alyna in her dress flowing through the ancient Victorian house like a spring flower in the wind, twirling to the soft jazz record that belonged to my father.


The day I had opened the iron gates, after John's eyes had pierced my soul with dread and panic. I had found a letter left in the center of the kitchen counter. Inside was my father's suicide note.


I had gone to throw it away, unwilling to face his last words, afraid. But Alyna had grabbed my wrist and looked at me with tearful eyes. Read it. She had said. He deserves you to at least read it.


And so, with the fireplace lit, Alyna and I cuddled together on that sunken couch, surrounded by clutter and the stink of old wood. I unraveled the letter and read.


Alyna,

My last living child, my heart and joy,


I want you to know that I never lived one day in these last thirty years without regret for what I did to you after Seth died.

I never could forgive myself, I know neither could you. Please, in my death, forgive me, for what I have done.

I saw a part of myself in John. That is why I argued with you about your marriage, I wanted the best for you, I know I couldn’t be a good father.

I prayed every day that John is the husband you deserve, that you got everything you need, all the love I never gave you.

I waited and waited for you to forgive me. I reconnected with God, I am twenty-one years sober, but in my sobriety, I can’t bear the reality of what I have done, of my sins, of losing you forever. may God forgive me.

- Many Hugs, Dad,


That night, when I had set down the letter with unsteady hands. I chose to stay, to work with God, with Alyna, my gorgeous daughter, to forgive my father, and my now ex-husband, for their faults, for their pain. I worked to build the ancient giant of a house into a home for me and Alyna, so that she could have everything I didn’t.


We worked together for eleven months, painting, sanding, cleaning, laughing, and rebuilding our lives as we rebuilt the house. And now as she danced, I had never seen such a glow in her, as she twirled through the house with Grayson, our newly adopted mastiff puppy at her tail.


I stood up and surveyed our work. Our home was a skeleton of the house I had walked into that night, after I had turned left at the intersection. Now, it was full of warmth, love, and forgiveness.


That morning, something strange happened. I was standing in the same room where I read his letter, enjoying the warmer weather. As if carried along with the spring breeze, I felt my father's spirit wrap around me like a warm hug.







Posted Jun 01, 2025
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9 likes 3 comments

H.e. Ross
08:03 Jun 12, 2025

I enjoyed the read. Your style is enveloping and easy to keep on page. To me, the story ended around sprinting for the car. The letter was expected after it was found... maybe it was the title? You are a simple to read writer and that is a skill.

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Antonina Musenko
17:14 Jun 08, 2025

wow. Very interesting story. right to the point.

Reply

Kevin Kellogg
05:25 Jun 04, 2025

Well written,and emotionally engaging.

Reply

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