Cutting Ties

Cutting Ties

By K. E. Dees

Judy had only been there a few hours when the knock came to the door. Her brown eyes glanced at the cabin’s front door while her hand slowly reached for the ax next to her. Anyone knocking on the door after dark never brought good news. Or good company. And this deep in the mountains, at her late grandfather’s cabin, and this late at night? The raven-haired woman’s instincts were on high alert. 

It was too late to pretend no one was home, or ignore the knocking entirely. Besides, with the ax in her hand, Judy was sure to leave a lasting impression. She ran her free hand through her long hair, attempting to conceal her weapon behind her. As she approached the door, though, she saw there was no need for it. Judy sighed, hefted up the ax - to the shock and horror of her guest - then unlocked and opened the oak door. All that stood between her and her unexpected guest was the rickety screen door. 

“If you’re here to get me to come back to apologize, not gonna happen,” Judy said with finality. She towered over her visitor both physically and emotionally. The shorter blonde bespectacled woman on the other side of the screen door merely glanced between the ax in Judy’s hand, and the taller woman’s glare, then let out a tired, long-suffering sigh. 

“For God’s sake, Jude, I’m not gonna drag you back there. Especially not after what you said to your parents.”

“Whole family still in an uproar?” Judy guessed.

“When you cuss out your parents, accuse them of decades of child abuse, then scream ‘j’accuse!’ to the rest of the family, how’d you put it? ‘Seeing it and doing nothing’? At our grandfather’s funeral?” the smaller woman heavily emphasized. “Yeah, you burned more than a few bridges there.”

“You’re assuming there were bridges to start with, or that I lit the match. How did you know where to find me?”

“No one could find the keys to Pop-Pop’s cabin, not even the spare ones. Didn’t take long for me to put two and two together. Now are you gonna let me in? This is bear country, and I’ve been on the road for four hours.”

Judy sighed defeatedly and finally stood aside to let her cousin into the cabin. The taller woman glanced out into the darkness for the aforementioned bears - or any Flying Monkeys that might have followed her cousin - then closed and bolted the door shut again. Her blonde cousin was already in the bathroom, so Judy resumed her seat and set the ax down next to her again. This red and black plaid easy chair had been Pop-Pop’s favorite, and no one else was allowed to sit in it. No one was allowed to drink his whiskey, either, but that didn’t stop Judy from helping herself to a tumbler of it, and raising it to the ceiling in his memory. 

Judy was still dressed in the same black clothes she wore to the funeral, not bothering to change into something else. It didn’t feel right. Her parents, aunts, and uncles, cried crocodile tears throughout, but Judy had managed to keep it together long enough to deliver her own remarks about what a good man he was. How he was the only one who believed her about the abuse. How he was the only one who believed in her. How he was the only example of unconditional love she’d ever known, and that if he were still alive, he’d be standing right there next to her and calling out her parents for their actions, finally ripping off the mask they so carefully maintained for more than two decades. 

So she did it for him. And went a step further and called out the rest of her family for seeing everything with their own eyes and never doing anything to stop it. Only Pop-Pop had ever done that, and now that he was gone, so was she. 

And okay sure, maybe flipping them all the bird at his funeral was in poor taste, but damn did it feel good! 

She took a sip of whiskey, grimacing at the burn in her throat when her cousin, Mary, finally came into the cabin’s main room and sat on the old plaid sofa adjacent to her. The blonde was also still dressed in the same dark clothes she wore at the service, but she looked far more exhausted, totally worn out, and eyed the tumbler as Judy set it down. 

“Want a drink?” Judy asked.

“God. Yes. Please and thank you.”

Judy got up for another glass to pour more whiskey, straight, for her cousin, then handed it over before resuming her seat. “I’m surprised you’re the one who came after me,” she remarked. “I thought for sure your mom or one of my mom’s other siblings would’ve hunted me down.” 

Mary snorted. “No, they’re still in an uproar. They were still calling you such awful names when I left.”

“Why’d you stay so long? Don’t tell me you tried to be the peacekeeper again?”

Mary guiltily accepted the whiskey. “Okay, then I won’t.” She took a swig, surprising her cousin, who had never known her practically perfect, straight-laced relative to tolerate the hard stuff. Hell, she’d never seen Mary drink anything stronger than Communion wine. 

“That bad, huh?”

Mary coughed hard and thumped her chest a few times as the whiskey burned its way down her throat. She coughed again and nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. But when your parents started blaming your mental illness--”

“Which they’re directly responsible for.”

“--Yup, which made me so mad. Then they started gaslighting ‘The Kids’, even though we’re all grown-ass adults, that’s when I’d had it. I wish I was half as brave as you, because I wanted to say more than I did. I told them that you were right, that they were full of shit, and everyone knew it. The older folks stayed, but ‘The Kids’ all left after that. We all went to a bar and had a drink in Pop-Pop’s honor.”

“So why’d you come to find me? And what exactly did you say to my sperm and egg donor?”

“Nothing I’d repeat, at least not sober.” She took a sip of whiskey this time, then sighed heavily. “I came looking for you because I knew the others would descend upon you like…”

“Flying Monkeys?” Judy offered. “That’s what my therapist calls them. ‘Flying Monkeys’ are the people who try to guilt you into contacting your estranged parents. They usually don’t let up because the estranged parents keep egging them on, and won’t quit until the parents eventually turn on them.”

“Sounds about right. And I can totally see that happening here.” Mary looked around the cabin’s main room, including the wood-burning stove, the fire merrily crackling away and driving away the chilly mountain air. “I can see why you came here,” she admitted. “There’s a lot of good memories here.” 

“Yeah,” Judy understated. She picked up her tumbler and studied what was left of her whiskey. “Pop-Pop taught me how to fish, chop wood, build a good fire, how to fire a gun…never took me hunting though. That was always a ‘man’s thing’.”

“He was old-school like that,” Mary nodded. “I know you always asked to go, but if your dad was going, you always stayed here.”

“At least I had my cousins to hang out with,” Judy pointed out, smiling fondly as she stared into the wood-stove’s flames. “Remember how we’d run through the woods, pretending to be on some epic fantasy quest? And that time we went to a fishing competition up here, and I got so frustrated that I wasn’t catching anything…”

Mary nodded quickly and pointed at her, “So you waded out into the stream and just caught a fish with your bare hands! I remember that! I don’t think I ever saw Pop-Pop laugh so hard. But he was proud of you for that, you know.”

“Was he? I thought he considered that unsportsmanlike.”

“Nah, I heard him tell your mom that it just proved you don’t give up easily.” Mary paused, seemingly debating whether to say it, then decided to anyway: “He was proud of you, you know. Always was. I think you were his favorite.”

“He knew about the abuse,” Judy said ruefully, “But he and Grandma never did anything to get me outta there. No one did. They just saw my brother get the best treatment, and me get treated like shit, at every family get-together. No one stepped in, no one ever said a damn thing. If I was his favorite, why didn’t he do or say anything? That’s the part I still don’t get.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Judy continued, “I’ll still cherish the memories and the time I spent with him, all the things he taught me…”

Mary looked up at the faded photos on the walls, sighed, and took another swig of the whiskey. “I should warn you now: they’re going to sell the cabin, the whole property. Doesn’t matter if you have every key; they’ll just get a locksmith and change the locks since they have the deed to this place.”

“Damn shame, too,” Judy acknowledged. “It’s like no one else in the family ever liked this old place except the two of us.” She looked at a picture on the wall to her right: she was a little kid, maybe seven or eight years old, holding up a bigmouth bass almost as long as she was tall, and Pop-Pop kneeling next to her, grinning as proudly as she was. Judy pointed at that photo. “They can have the cabin and the land, but that picture’s mine.”

“I don’t think they’ll care. I think all they really want is to have you under their control again. I’m a therapist, remember? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a situation like this. And before you say anything: by the time I could say something, you were already an adult, already moved out, and out from under their boots. You were safe, as long as you stayed away from them.”

“So you don’t think I overreacted?”

“Oh, you definitely overreacted,” Mary said, sipping her whiskey again, “But I don’t blame you. That was two decades’ worth of pain and anger finally boiling over. Pro tip? Maybe talk to your therapist about working out your anger in a more constructive, healthy way. Cutting ties is probably a good first step.”

Then Judy got an idea. “Hey, Mar-Mar?” she asked, using her cousin’s old nickname. “You ever hear of this social media thing called a ‘cord cutting ritual’?”

Mary was still recovering from the whiskey, but she nodded. When she could finally speak again, she explained, “Some of my younger clients mentioned it. Why?”

“I wanna do it. Right now. One candle for me, one candle for my parents. I know everything we need’s gotta be in here somewhere.”

Mary nodded. “True… I have another idea. How about while I look for those things, you write a letter to your parents, write down everything, let it all out, and when you’re done…”

“Burn that motherfucker?”

“Not how I’d put it, but yes.”

“Deal.”

Writing the letter took much longer than it took Mary to find two white taper candles and candle holders, a ball of twine, matches, a fire-safe surface, and a pair of scissors. By the time Judy was done writing the six pages of hand-written grievances, anger, and pain holed up inside for nearly thirty years, she felt the weight of the day finally settle on her shoulders. It had been emotionally and mentally exhausting, and the four-hour drive from the city to this isolated cabin (plus the whiskey) made her body feel heavy, too. 

Mary had set up everything on the coffee table between the sofa, plaid chair, and the woodstove. She placed the candles in the holders on top of a thick baking sheet, and tied a string of twine around the two candles, midway-down. Fire extinguisher at the ready, just in case, the blonde adjusted her glasses and handed her dark-haired cousin the box of matches. 

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Judy stared at the letter she’d just written and folded it up into quarters before placing it aside. She struck a match and lit the first candle. “This candle represents me,” she said. Using the same match, she lit the second candle. “This candle represents my abusers. I hereby cut ties to them, forever.” Judy flicked her wrist to extinguish the match, as she and Mary sat back and watched the candles burn.

At first it was a slow burn, but then Judy noticed something interesting. The candle representing her parents suddenly flared up and started burning faster, the flame leaping high as the wax melted, closer and closer to the cord. Mary seemed as transfixed as her cousin, but kept her eye on the other candle, still steadily burning, as if watching the other candle’s explosion with a vague interest…just as Judy was doing. 

Finally, the second candle’s flame reached the twine and it ignited, flaring up a second time as the hemp cord flashed and curled in on itself before finally burning through and falling in a smoldering heap on the baking sheet. Curiously, however, part of it still stuck to the wax on the first candle. Both women waited, silently, and saw with surprise that the first candle, representing Judy, seemed to burn faster now, while the one representing her parents continued to rage, then as it reached the bottom, started to burn slower…

Then the first candle flared to life, burning even brighter, and more steadily, than the other. The flame didn’t flicker or smoke like the other one had, and when the flame met the twine stuck to the wax, it ignited and completely burned the rest of the hemp cord, reducing it to ash on the metal below it. Judy’s candle finally settled into a slower, even steadier burn just as her parents’ candle flared up one more time and extinguished itself. Both women maintained their silence until, finally, Judy’s candle burned itself out. Then, wordlessly, Judy picked up the letter, stepped over to the woodstove, opened the door, and tossed the paper into the fire. She watched as it flared up and the paper curled in on itself until it was nothing more than ash and smoke, escaping up the chimney only to be scattered by the winds. Gone for good. 

“That felt good,” Judy finally said. 

“I bet it did,” Mary said.

“Wonder if the way those candles burned meant anything?”

“Whatever it means to you.”

“You say that a lot to your patients?”

“Clients,” her cousin corrected. “And not a lot, but sometimes. A little self-reflection is good, but it’s important not to be consumed by it.”

Judy stared at the flames in the woodstove, then returned to the chair. She sat back and stared at the burned out candles, musing out loud, “Seems like my parents - my abusers - are still angry, probably would’ve cut me off if I hadn’t done it first. They’re probably spreading lies about me right now. The other candle, maybe that slow burn was a sign that I’m just doing what I’m doing now: watching them and the ‘reality’ they created come down in flames, then I guess I’ll get angry again at some point, make sure those ties are gone for good, then move on with my life.”

Mary silently nodded, looking between her cousin and the remains of their work. “That’s one way of looking at it. My advice? Don’t be surprised if you go through a period of guilt or mourning. I’ve had a few clients who’re estranged from their families for similar reasons. Going through a mourning period is normal. Feel free to call me if you ever want to talk.”

“You won’t narc on me, will you?”

“If I was, I would’ve done it by now.”

“Fair.”

The women sat in silence, just listening to the crackling and popping in the woodstove. After a while, Judy checked her phone. She ignored the dozens of likely abusive and incendiary messages on her lockscreen, only checking the time. “You wanna stay the night, Mary? It’s late, and I was thinking of going home in the morning.”

“I’d like that. Thanks, Judy. I’ll make breakfast.”

“There’s not a lot of food here, just some stuff I picked up at a convenience store on the way up.”

“That’s fine, I can make it work.” Mary looked around the room again, glancing at aged photos, the old furniture, and finally smiling as she ran her hand over the upholstery. “I’m going to miss this place, too, you know.”

Judy nodded with a sad smile. “I know. We all will.” She paused. “Y’know, it might sound funny, but I could swear Pop-Pop is here with us right now, in this room.”

“Then maybe you should get out of his chair,” Mary chuckled.

Judy smirked and got up, poured some of Pop-Pop’s whiskey into a clean tumbler, and left it on the table next to his chair, just as he would have liked it. “There,” Judy said, “That’s better.”

“Yup,” Mary agreed. “Just the way he’d like it.” 

After another moment of contemplative silence, the women silently left the room to get ready for bed, turning off the light as they left. In the dark room they left behind, all was still, all was well. Just as it should be.