The Lost That Can't Be Found

Note: This story is about the impact the death of a parent can have

Heather had always known there was going to be a moment where she wanted to know her mother's story. Dad had given as much as he could, and she could see that it had cost him emotionally to tell her the bits he had. She had seen his grief painted on his face with every word he said. She had wanted to stretch out her hand and touch him, but she knew Dad had an equal chance of balking as he did sinking into her touch.

She hated that their grief was forcing them apart, but Dad had always been like this. There was never a way she could be sure of what his reaction would be at any one time. It had been years since her mother's death. Heather hardly remembered her, but the look on Dad's face was what had driven her older sister Amanda out of the house. She hadn't been able to deal with the look on Dad's face anymore.

Heather understood it though. The look on Dad's face told her that the grief had hardly gotten better. That were still moments where it seemed like her mother had died yesterday. She hated to see Dad suffer like that, but she knew it wasn't her fault. She hardly remembered her.

Mostly Heather knew her mother from photographs. Like the one of her parents in Florence before she and Amanda were born. They looked happy, but she had always been able to see the shadows behind the photos and she always had a feeling like the people in the photo knew their time was limited.

But there had been no way to know Mom would die. It was a freak accident. In the car. On the way home from work.

It was probably her imagination and she knew it, but sometimes when she looked at photos of her parents she could see sadness, like they knew what would happen, like they knew their time together was limited.

Heather knew she was going to have to break Dad's heart one more time. She hated it, but she hated the idea of not knowing who Mom was more. She had lived with it. Amanda had lived with it. They both hated it.

They'd had long conversations on the phone, her in the attic, Amanda in a quiet place in her college dorm. Amanda didn't know what to tell her and she knew she was going to have to be sneaky and break hearts.

The idea made Heather want to cry, but no one had told her anything. They had been silent about who Mom was. She wanted to know everything about her, but somewhere there was also a terrifying idea that Mom wasn't the person she always knew.

Every family had secrets, but she had never felt like that was her family. She felt like Mom was going to be the secret if there was one. The idea was terrified her more than she would like to admit.

***

Heather had grown up with a few stories of her mother, mostly they were the same ones repeated over and over at family gatherings. She had loved hearing those stories as a child, but now she felt like there was something else. An undercurrent that everyone but her knew about. She hated being kept in the dark about anything.

She's always been a perceptive child, had been the words repeated over and over by her aunt, but the way her aunt had always said it made it sound like a bad thing. There had been tears every Thanksgiving and Easter. Nights where her sister had curled around her, comforting her, whispering words into her ear that what others said didn't matter.

Heather had grown up. Now she knew that the aunt was bitter and jealous that she was going to have opportunities her aunt had never had. She still had to hold back glares at the aunt because she knew they were bound to have a spat at some point during the evening, but now she understood that the aunt had gown up differently, with conservative parents who disagreed with the liberal stance on many issues. Her aunt had had a difficult home life and there were things that were not spoken of. She could keep her tongue now, but there were still moments where her aunt made everything worse.

She spent more hours on the phone with Amanda. Most of the time they were silent or ranted. There was no in between with them. Heather knew Amanda was struggling as well. She knew there was nothing Amanda could do three states away, but having her on the phone was a comfort. She knew she was going to have to face her father, his grief on her own. There was no getting around that, but if she could think about it as if she was going it for Amanda as well, she was going to be able to get through.

She was.

She was going to get through it. She was going to fight through Dad and made him see that her and Amanda deserved the truth. She could tell it was more than her mother's death weighing on him. She could see it in his face when he didn't think she was looking. She had never liked the tone of her aunt's words, but she knew they were right. It was why the words had hurt so much, had felt like a knife cutting through her skin as a child.

She hoped she could get Dad to release the burden he'd been carrying all these years.

***

Heather lurked at the edge of the living room, watching her father drinking scotch. She walked into the room and took a sip of red wine from the glass she carried. She steeled herself. She could do this. She could face the mons of her family. She could see the grief in her father's face.

She reached out and touched her father's arm and asked the question that had been lurking in this house since her mother's death.