Break Me Where the Heart Is: Short Story ✔️

Secrets Tear

He came home early that afternoon.

Without word to any of us; without acknowledgment that we were there with him; without any motion to greet us.

He was like a stone.

We were like a family.

Mother, Sister, and I would try to kiss him softly on the cheek, but he would turn away. Sister and I would try to hug him, but he would tense up. I would try to talk to him, but he would not listen.

His eyes and ears were clouded over and all he could see was the area in which he stayed planted in the house.

Mother had pulled us aside. Her eyes were filled with tears and had the cold look of giving up on trying to fix him. She told Sister and I that she was sorry for what she had done, yet I didn't know what that meant at the time.

I would watch as she went to her room, and began packing her bags. Sister would cry softly in her room beside her window. Only Sister had knowledge of what Mother meant by her words.

Mother finished packing and walked out of her room quietly with her suitcase in hand. She hugged Sister first, then gently took me and squeezed me. I cried in her shirt, and when she stepped back there was a big water stain. I asked why she had to leave, and she simply replied that there was no where around what she had done to him, so the only way to fix this was to run away from him.

I would ask repeatedly what she meant by what she had done as she walked down the hall toward the front door, but she would only reply back each time with I would understand when I'm older. It all didn't make much sense to me at the time.

I began to get mad at her for abandoning us when Father was so oblivious, but she would only cry and apologize again and again.

How could this be? Why would Mother leave us? How could she?

Sister told me after we saw the last of Mother, that I would understand someday like she had said.

I then began to resent Sister as well. How could she take on Mother's role so easily?

Several days began to go by, and Father would gradually get better each day.

He began to talk to me again; He began to hug Sister and I once more; and he began to kiss us softly on the cheeks, except now without Mother to witness.

As years went by with no contact with Mother, I began to grow into a shallow understanding of why Mother had left. She didn't leave because of money or because she had felt neglected by him. She had left because of something much stronger that can't be taken away once done....

She had cheated on Father.

Because of that, I still don't talk to Mother today.