This Story starts with a Family

In a city as far from her childhood home as she could get, Nina, a woman of her own making, sat in a big chair, in front of a big desk, in her very own office. She who often fought her own limitations with passion no lesser than a mad man and wrestled the voices around her just to create the version of herself that she cherished. Perhaps it wasn’t within her nature and she was merely pretending to be everything she wished she had grown up to be, but she’d never admit that to herself or to anyone else for that matter. Least of all to the client sitting in front of her right now. She flashed her biggest smile and he flashed his back. The files and papers of evidence lay strewn about on the desk between them. Her eyes darted quickly from his smile, to the papers, and then back again. His smile faltered. She knew in that moment. Well, she’d always known, but now she knew he knew she knew: he was guilty.

“I’ll take your case, Lionel” she smiled, already shaking his hand.

Just as far but in the opposite direction of their childhood home, Jacob typed feverishly, hands almost a blur, coding what seemed to be the next big game in his head. Technology, which seemed so unwaveringly misgiving, gave to him in a way that made him almost appear as a prodigy. His eyes flicked over at the time at the bottom right of the screen: “4:05pm” he registered. His hands halted; he was going to be late. He pressed the save button 3 times; a minutely ritual, grabbed his belongings; all neatly organized right beside the door, before making his way to his garage; which was packed with an assortment of cars, but with the way he was dressed, you’d never think so.

The two arrived at the same time, both exactly 20 minutes late. Nina made a mental note that this was the first time she was late in approximately ten years, which also happened to be the same number of years it had been since she’d seen her family. In fact, the last time she’d seen the three of them together like this was at her mother’s funeral. To her surprise, Nina found herself staring up at the big tree in the front lawn of her old white-picket-fenced childhood home, blinking away tears. Jacob found her like that, just staring into the pockets of light that bled through the leaves.

“Hey, you good?” he lay a hand on her shoulder.

Nina’s head spun around and the angry eyebrows and scowl that had, for so long, called her face home, softened immediately. A smile found its way to the surface and Nina took her not-so-little brother into her arms. And, as a grand finale to the events that seemed so unlike the Nina she had developed over the years, a laugh erupted from her as she felt her brother awkwardly pat her back. She pulled back, hands on his shoulders, to look at all 6 feet of the man he’d grown into and how only ten years could have changed him so much.

“Sorry”, she smiled up at him.

“I didn’t realise you’d turned into a hugger”

“I’m not, I just missed you”, she everything but mumbled, surprised by her own candor. But Jacob did not falter.

“I missed you too”.

An awkward pause, which to Nina’s relief but not to her surprise, Jacob was the one to break.

“Do you want to go inside?”

“Yeah, I think I was just stalling”

Jacob flashed her an understanding smile and led the way. Nina fell into stride beside him and when he looked at her with his big brown eyes at the door, she took a deep breath and rung the doorbell.

A lady opened the door, in her 30s-, around the same age as Nina. She smiled, which Nina and Jacob awkwardly and charmingly returned, respectively. Nina had been the one to hire her to look after her dad. Belle was aware during that interview that Nina couldn’t care less for her father and would hire the first person who signed up for the job. The air was heavy with judgement then, from both parties. Belle didn’t show any indication of resentment, Nina suspected it was just because she was being professional, but she’d take any reason to ignore a feeling at this point, especially when she stepped into the house.

Standing in the foyer, Nina seemed to be stuck in place. Despite trying so hard to live their best lives now and forget everything that happened here, the memories came flooding back, a few bad ones. Any indication of that outside their own heads though, seemed to be lacking. The room to her right, held a fireplace, with an assortment of old family photos mantled happily and therefore misleadingly.

Nina found her legs moving before she could think to stop them. It was the picture of her mother first. In it she sat on a wharf, looking over her shoulder at the camera, her curly brown hair pulled over the other side. She was a baronial woman; it was hard not to fall in love with her. When she was a teenager, people often thought the two of them were sisters, and to Nina, there was no bigger compliment than to be told that she looked like her mother.

The pictures sat on the mantle only to stir up the indignation Nina felt and had tried so hard to keep buried over the past few years. Each picture seemed to be inenubilable, tainted by memories. What should’ve been a recollection of a beautiful life, seemed to only anger her more. Each picture reminding her of how much she hated her dad.

“I’ll go get your father!” Belle called from the foyer. But Nina barely registered anything around her outside of these photos.

When she turned to talk to Jacob, she found he was gone, and where he stood, appeared her father. At first, she didn’t recognize him. The last time she’d seen him he was a big man, who stood up tall and looked like all the meals he’d had in his life went straight to his biceps. Now he appeared shriveled. A drip attached to a pole he dragged around, with a line straight into his arm. He looked weak as he slouched over, on his other arm, Belle holding him as she sat him down in the lazy boy.

“Hi sweetie”, he smiled, weakly.

Suddenly, Nina was angry. This man spent years torturing her and Jacob, in every way, shape, and form. Every day, Nina dreaded having to come back home from school, but she did because she knew it was her job to protect Jacob from this psychopath. And now, he had the audacity to stand in front of her, dying, and call her “sweetie”. As much as Nina wanted to scream in his face, she swallowed her anger for the sake of everyone else in this house and sat down on the couch, at the opposite side of the room.

“You look awful” she replied.

“Cancer does that to you” he chided.

“How’s chemo”

“Not working”

“So?”

“I’m probably gonna stop, doing chemo kills me, not doing chemo kills me, I’d rather not be puking up blood when the time comes”.

Then there was silence as the two stared at each other. The air felt heavy and Nina felt nauseous. Belle hurried off into the kitchen and Nina figured from the hushed voices that that was where Jacob was.

“How’s the hot-shot lawyer stuff going? I see you on TV a lot” he continued.

“Good, yeah.”

“Well, I’ve been meaning to ask, why are you always protecting the bad guys?”

“Everyone deserves a second chance. Mom didn’t get that, did she?”

She heard him swallow and for a split second she thought she saw his eyes turn glassy.

Jacob emerged from around the corner, even he could tell the room felt heavy. He didn’t hesitate to slice through it as he bent over to give his father a hug.

“Hi dad” he smiled.

“Hey champ”

“You’re looking better!”

“I think the cancer really brings out my eyes”

“And your cheekbones, a good colour on you”

“Ah, you know how to flatter a man, kiddo”

Nina stared in a mixture of awe and disgust at how well the two got along, especially after he was the reason for her mothers’ death.

Now she really felt nauseous. Abruptly, she got up and headed upstairs, trying everything to not cry. The minute she stepped into her old room though, there was nothing she could do. One step in, and her knees buckled, she shut the door behind her as she sat on her bedroom floor blubbering like she was 15 again and her father had just slapped her across the face. Which he did often back then.

After about 10 minutes, Nina found her composure. Wiping the tears away, she stood up again and took in the room. Everything looked the same. Untouched, untainted, every trinket attached to an inoubliable moment. Caressing every corner of the room save the spot with the brown stain in the corner, she found her way over to her old bed. The stickers she’d put up on the headboard from when she was 10 were still there. Laying down she closed her eyes and dreamed of a long-forgotten memory.

Her mother sat beside her on the bed, the same warm aura she always exuded. Nina, only 8 then, watched her hands, which were cutting up old family pictures. She’d examine them for a second, then in one swift motion, she’d cut out Jacob and her dad and toss them aside, saving the part of the photo that only showed Nina and her mother. Then the sound of someone running up the stairs. The bedroom door swung open in a rage and in the doorway stood her father. Nina’s mother stopped cutting and held up the scissors, pointing them against her own wrists.

“Jess, come on, put it down” her father begged, his eyes flicking over at Nina in worry.

“Get out, Ryan. I told you what I’d do”, she hissed back.

“Nina, come here, sweetie” her father pleaded, using a voice so sweet, she almost didn’t recognise it as his.

“Fuck off, Ryan. She’s not going anywhere”.

Nina gasped at her mother's language.

“Jess, look, we can talk. I’m here now, right? Just, let’s talk, just us”.

“You’re going to leave”

“No, I’m not. See?” he responded, as he sat on the floor of the bedroom.

Her mother put the scissors down and, on all fours, crawled across the carpet and curled up in his big arms.

Nina sat on the bed, confused, staring at the scissors. Picking them up, she pointed them at her own wrists, the same way her mother had. But the tiniest hand wrapped around her wrist gently, and she saw Jacob, 4 years old, and crying. She set down the scissors and whisked him away into the bathroom.

Nina shot awake and looked over at the wall clock above her door, already forgetting the dream. She’d been asleep for a few hours; it was probably time for dinner.

In the kitchen, she saw her father sat at the island in the kitchen while Belle and Jacob cooked dinner. They looked like a family. Belle taking her own place as the daughter. The three of them laughed and smiled and cracked jokes and the entire scene made her sick. Regardless, she sat at the island, leaving a seat open beside her father, who looked like he noticed.

‘One night, then I’ll be back home’ she reminded herself.

“Hey, have a good sleep?” her father chided.

“Yeah”

A moment of silence.

“You okay?”

“What?”

“It’s been 10 years, I thought you’d have something to say to me. Sorta feels like you’re waiting for me to drop dead.”

“I am”.

This time the silence was different: it felt directed at Nina. She looked around the room, everyone was staring at her.

“What?”

“Nina, that’s awful.” Jacob replied, having found a way to pick his jaw up from the floor.

“No, it’s fucking not. I’m awful for wanting the man who killed my mother, dead?”

“Nina!” Jacob screamed.

Nina looked on in surprise. He’d never yelled at her before. She didn’t think he’d yelled at anyone before. The surprise was replaced with anger. Even on his deathbed he was tearing apart the family.

“You think after 10 years I’d have something to say to you? I have a lot of things to say to you” she screamed at her father.

“Nina, please- “, Jacob began, but their father cut them off.

“No, let her say her piece. It’s the least I owe”

“Dad, you don’t owe us anything”

“Jacob, let her have her say”

“Oh! Amazing. I’m so glad you’ll let me speak. Glad you don’t just wrestle me to the ground for trying to talk to you, or maybe you’re not trying because for once in your life, you can’t.” Nina continued, the tears welling up in her eyes now.

“Mom didn’t get to have her say, because of you! You shut her up, dad, you shut her up for good. You couldn’t stand having a woman speak up around you because you’re a misogynistic prick! You didn’t slit her wrists, dad, sure. But you might as well have”. Nina sobbed now, unable to get the words out.  

“Is that how you feel?” he said, looking away from her, but his voice cracked.

“Yeah, it’s how I fucking feel.”

“Ok, I’m glad you got that off your chest,” he turned to Belle, “could you please take me up to bed, I’m feeling a bit worse for wear.”

And with that Belle whisked him away as fast as he could possibly go.

Jacob made his way around the island and took a place next to her. He lay a hand on her back and stared straight ahead.

“You really don’t know what happened that night, do you?” he asked, quietly.

“Of course I know, it was right beside my bed, of course I know. She came into my room, waking me up so we could leave together, she was trying to leave him, finally, after years of him treating her like shit and he wrestled her down locked her in my room and didn’t let her escape. And it broke her, he broke her. She knew there was no escape and she killed herself in my bedroom.”

“She was trying to kill you that night”. Nina stopped sobbing, immediately.

“What?”

“She was trying to kill both of us, Nina.”

He was looking at her now, a mixture of pity and pain.

“That night, she came into your room to try and kill you. She brought the knife into my room first. She took a swipe at me, but I hadn’t fallen asleep yet so when she tried, I moved.” Jacob pulled up his shirt to show a light scar across his stomach, then continued.

“I screamed, yelled for dad, he came running in and tried to wrestle the knife out of her hands, but she slipped out and ran to your room, and went to take a lunge at you. Dad followed her in, and he pushed her away, took you and locked her in your room. When he came back in though, she had slit her own wrists.”

“Why?” she asked, feeling like a child.

“She was a sick woman. She had this weird obsession with you. And with dad.” Jacob knew there was a tinge of jealousy that leaked out in his tone but then realised how absurd that feeling was, especially considering what had happened.

“When we were born, she convinced herself that dad didn’t love her anymore because he loved us more. So, she was training you to be the new her, to take her place. It doesn’t help that you look exactly like her. She wanted you to be his new wife or something and she drove herself crazy doing it. She’d spout all this bullshit about how you were her reincarnate. But then she got jealous. The older you got, the more like her you looked, and the crazier she got. No one understood what she was thinking, not even her”.

“But then why was dad always so mean to us?”

“In a way, I think he was especially hard on you to show mom that he loved her more, so she wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

“That’s really gross and incestuous”

“I’m not saying he was a good dad, Nina. They were both awful.  But you gotta understand that dad’s dying, and our family is fucked up on a whole different level. Yeah, he hit us, yeah, he was abusive but never to her. No, he loved her way too much.”

“You’re saying I have two fucked up parents instead of one.”

“Yeah, pretty much. But I’m also saying that dad tried his best. To balance kids and a crazy wife. I didn’t say this story has a happy ending.”

“But it’s not our ending”

“No, it’s not. But it is his, or it will be soon anyway.”

Nina excused herself, feeling incredibly tired now. She set up her bed on the living room couch this time. When she woke up the next morning, she found her dad sat in the lazy boy with a coffee.

“Good morning” he said, holding up his coffee at her.

She stared at him for a while, the events of the previous night rushing back to her.

“You should’ve told me”

He looked at her with sad, tired eyes, “I just wanted someone to remember her the way that I had married her; beautiful, smart, and kind.”

“She was sick.”

“She was sick.” He affirmed.

“Good morning, dad.”