The Truth Behind It All

Chapter 12

July 28, 2012

                Ana Marie cried on her way home. It didn’t even cross her mind to drive back to her father’s. She will make something up if he asks. The sun is rising and it’s hurting her eyes. She tried to keep her composure as she drove but her heart was about to explode. Adam is alive! Always has been! She tries to remember him but the truth is, she saw the Adam from five years ago, the slight egocentric man whose eyes used to melt her to the ground. She wipes the tears from her eyes, but what’s the use? She wasn’t going to see him again.

            She then laughs between her cries, she had seen him and even held him one last time, and she should be grateful for that. But she wasn’t. Deep inside she had the hope that he would lift her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her. But they didn’t talk about their feelings, like they wanted to save themselves from the detachment they suffered after the five long years.     

            She arrived home. She felt lonesome, so she went to her mother’s room and curled up next to her.

            “Ana? I thought you were going out of town,” said her mother sleepily.

            “I feel sick,” she sniveled.

            “Oh my! You are stone cold!” She exclaimed as she felt her cold hands, “What have you been doing?”

            Ana Marie didn’t answer, she just wanted to pretend she was ten, where her big worry at the time was to know if the boy she liked knew that she liked him. No mysteries or secrets. No deaths. She covers her face with the blanket and closes her eyes tightly, wishing that the past years didn’t happen at all.

            It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and Ana Marie lays on the couch feeling tired and weak. Her mother was going to be away for the weekend with her new boyfriend. She has the house to herself, which made her feel lazier. She doesn’t know what she is feeling. She was no longer sad, nor angry, and not happy either. She just felt like a solid big rock. She is numb to the world around her, the sun setting, the wind blowing, the clouds rolling in, the kids playing just outside on the streets. Adam invades her thoughts, his sorrowful face, the way he held her, his warmth radiating on her. His hair was shorter which made him look older, which he was. He was thirty or thirty one. She wonders when he decided to change his long shaggy look into that mature one.

            She stands angry at herself. She couldn’t just dwell on him, on them, on what they could have been if nothing of this crap happened in the first place. She walks into the kitchen and decides to make herself some coffee. She fills a cup with water and walks towards the stove. On the way, the cup slips from her hand spilling it on the floor.

            Ana Marie laughs at her clumsiness as she grabs a towel from a drawer. But she hears a knock on the door, so she rushes and finishes with the floor.

            Her father is on the doorway, strangely enough.

            “Hi, dad,” she says uncertain.

            Her father smiles. “Can we talk?”

            She nods and lets him in. He walks in slowly, taking everything in. She stares at him; her father will kill her if he knows about Adam. She should be scared, but she is furious.

            “I became worried when I saw that you weren’t in your room when I got back.” Ana Marie tenses, does he know about her going through the rooms? “I hope the break in didn’t scare you off.”