Captive - FourTris

Twenty-Seven

FEB 13
5 MONTHS, 14 DAYS

Today is the anniversary of my dad's death.

For the last eight years, I have baked a cake.

I'm sure to someone on the outside, it seems stupid. Like I'm baking a cake to celebrate it or something. But it's not like that.

When I was little, my dad loved cakes. Absolutely loved them. He would eat one for dinner every night if my mom let him.

I was nine the day he died. It had been coming for so long. It was like watching a freight train barrel down at you, getting closer with every second, totally unstoppable. And while my mom broke down that day and sobbed, I went a little numb. I was in denial. And so in my nine-year-old brain, I came up with the idea to just make him a cake. It made no sense then and it still doesn't now, but I like the idea of making a cake anyway.

So now it's a tradition. Each year it's gotten a little better, starting with the crappy concave disaster when I was nine to the multi-layered German chocolate I'm assembling now. I know if my dad were here, he'd cut out the biggest piece imaginable and sit down with a glass of milk and devour the whole thing.

Somehow, for this one moment, it's like he's here, and the cake is just waiting for him to walk down the stairs.

I'm not sure if I should be doing this. My mum and I don't really get along anymore, and she used to eat it with me. We never said much while we ate, but somehow there was a moment when we were both thinking about him, and it was almost as good as talking about him.

But today, it feels... like a cop-out, doing this. Like I'm going to hand her this cake and she's going to smile and we're going to have some Leave It to Beaver moment, and I can pretend when I leave for Tobias's house that everything is perfect.

But I know it's never going to be that, because even if things go great with Tobias and she miraculously starts accepting him, I remember the things she's said. They're like a wedge between us, and the words can't be taken back.

But I'm making this cake anyway, because if I don't, it's like ignoring my dad. It's like pretending he never existed. And my mum does that enough for both of us.

My mum gets home from work at six, and she walks past the kitchen and then does a double take when she sees me sitting on a stool, the cake towering in front of me.

"Hi," I say. "It's German chocolate this year."

She just stares at it for a long, silent moment, and I'm not sure what she's thinking, if she's happy or touched or just angry that I would even try to do something like this after the fights we've been having.

Sometimes I think I might just march right up to her and say 'I love you', right to her face, just to see if she says it back.

A month ago, I stood in the hall outside her room. And I really wanted to do it. I really thought about it. But no matter how many times I reached out to her door, I couldn't get my fingers to grip that brass doorknob.

There were too many other arguments, too many hurtful words between us to say it now.

And so that six-paneled slab stayed between us. "Thank you," she says, her voice quiet. "That was very nice of you."

And then she shocks me, because she crosses the room and she hugs me, at this awkward angle because I'm sitting on a stool.

But she doesn't let me go, she just keeps hugging me. And so I stand and hug her back, and she just hugs tighter and tighter, and neither of us speak for such a long, silent moment it seems to stretch on forever.

It's too hard to break. The silence is too heavy, too firm to break with those three words, even though now seems like the time to do it. The words are lodged in my mouth, though. They won't come out.

And then she sniffles and pulls away. "Can you put that in the fridge? I think I'll take a hot bath."

Her voice comes out choked and gargled and I don't have time to say anything before she's walking up the steps.

What just happened?