When the Rain Never Stops

Chapter 7

Sarah

Please note that there are heavy mentions of suicide in this chapter*

My mother worked a twenty-four-hour shift and when she finally got home I was waiting for her on the couch. "Hey, where's your dad," she asked as she came through the door and set her stuff down.

"Out," I said.

"Out? What do you mean out," she asked curiously.

"When I got home yesterday, he was with another woman. I sent him off," my voice was calm and very flat but on the inside I was screaming.

My mom sat down on the couch next to me and sighed. She put her hand on my thigh and said "I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

"What do you mean find out this way?! Did you know?!" I asked as I whipped my head around to look at her.

"Sarah, honey, I found out a couple of weeks ago. Your father told me this would never happen again, and so I didn't think about mentioning it to you," she said with another big sigh.

"You weren't going to tell me?" I felt betrayed.

"I didn't want you to look at your father differently," she said.

"Didn't want me to look at him differently?! There's not much differently I can look at him. The man has never made any effort to care for me. I thought it was only work. He's always made it clear that he wanted a son and now this. And you weren't going to tell me? This whole time I thought he just didn't love me, but he actually doesn't love either of us," I said half laughing half crying. "Do you know who it is? The other woman?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Sarah, I will tell you, but you cannot send hate towards her or her family," my mom said. I nodded my head in response. "Okay it's Mackenzie Greene. I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but I need to shower and rest. " My mom got up and walked into the bathroom.

Fast-forward maybe four hours, and I'm laying in bed. It's dark out, and I'm thinking of Ms. Mackenzie Greene. I pull up Facebook on my phone and search her name. I went to her page to see photos of her and my Dad. Some of them went back months and some photos even had her kids in them. She has two boys and my Dad looks so happy with them. He's never looked so happy. The realization that my father doesn't love me sucker punched me in the face. Finally, I scrolled back to February second. My birthday. And I saw photos of my Dad with her. I thought he was absent on my birthday because of work, but he was actually out with his other family.

I couldn't believe it. I have always known my Father as a tough love kind of man. I have always strived to get him to love me, to say he's proud of me. But this whole time he's been with this other woman. He's been happy with this other family this entire time. I know the photos only go back to a year ago, but there could've been other women. My heart begins to fill with hatred. The man I've spent years trying to impress is busy giving all of his love to some other woman's kids. I hate him.

"I'm leaving!" my mother shouts up the stairs as she leaves for her twelve-hour shift. I ran down the stairs to see her off. We waved for a solid minute before she left.

As soon as she was gone, I went to her room and grabbed all of my father's clothes. I grabbed trash bags and shoved them all in there. I dragged all the trash bags out one by one onto the street. "Your things are outside, better come pick them up before the garbage truck does," I texted my dad.

Twenty minutes later I heard a knock at the door. It's my Dad. "Your stuff is by the trash, in the black trash bags. It's pretty hard to miss," I said when I saw him standing there.

"I know, I wanted to say I'm sorry. But I'd like for you to meet Mackenzie and the boys," he said apologetically.

"Wow how flattering, you want me to be a part of your family."

"Of course, you're my daughter."

"Did you think I didn't see those photos? Did you think I didn't see the photos of you and her boys from February second?! From my birthday? You told me you were at work, but you were really with them. I don't want to be a part of your family or meet the other woman or her boys. I don't ever want to speak to you again. I have been trying to impress you this whole year, and this whole time you've been with her. You don't love me. I don't ever want to see your face again. Just go," I said as I shooed him away.

He turned his back and went to the bags on the side of the road. He loaded them into the back of his car and then got into the passenger seat. It was then that I noticed it wasn't his car. It was probably Mackenzie's, and she was probably driving it. I screamed and slammed my fist against the door. My heart felt so heavy. And my brain felt as though it would burst. My ears rang as I climbed up the stairs to my room. I cried into my pillow for maybe two hours. The tears did not stop and neither did the ringing in my ears. My vision was blurry and I felt dizzy from the dehydration that comes with crying. Soon everything was spinning. I grabbed a pen and a notebook from my nightstand and began to write. My tears smudged the ink and I sobbed as I wrote. And after I finished writing the three paged long note, I got up and walked down to the kitchen. Tears still flowed down my face and onto my shirt as I opened the cabinet and grabbed the sleeping pills. I felt out of my mind. I felt like the silence that comes before something scary in a horror movie. I no longer felt real. I unscrewed the cap of the pills and set out a glass of water. I started with one pill then two and slowly added until I had downed a third of the bottle. I went back upstairs and laid my note out while I waited. Soon I felt it kicking in. But I heard my phone chime, it was Lee. She had forgotten something and was coming by to pick it up. I prayed, for the first time since third grade, that I would be dead before she got here. And after that things faded to black.