Matters of the Heart

Chapter 0.4

|| Madison ||

When Tuesday morning had come around I was feeling much better and up for coffee with my uncle.

My uncle, Rob, is my father's younger brother. Although I didn't know my father due to familial divisions, my uncle welcomed me wholeheartedly once he had gotten in touch with me when I was around fourteen or so.

"Madison, hi," He greeted me as I approached him at an up market cafe close to my university.

"Hey, uncle Rob," I greeted back as he stood to hug me.

"How've you been since we last spoke?" He asked as we sat down.

"Um yeah, I've been fine," I said, not wanting to divulge details about my panic attack even though he already knew about my issues with anxiety. "And you? How is aunt Celinė? And the twins?"

"Yeah, I'm okay thanks. Celinė is also doing well. She told me to tell you to give her a call. Something about make up from her new collection she wants to give you." My aunt Celinė is a big make up mogul. "The twins are also okay. They've just learned how to string together full cohesive conversations so there's not much silence in the house anymore." I laughed at that. Darcy and Chrissy's babble is actually the cutest thing.

"We're having a dinner on Friday, you know, with the whole family. I'd love for you to be there," Uncle Rob said to me nonchalantly as the waitress approached us with two menus.

"Can I take your drink orders so long?" She asked us, preventing me from looking at my uncle with a scowl. After he had ordered an Americano and I my latte, I turned back to him with a frown.

"No thank you."

"Madison," He sighed. "Its time for all of us to let go of the past and move on now."

"There would be no past to let go of if it weren't for Harry and Madeleine," I shrugged stubbornly, momentarily hating how the woman that was legally my paternal grandmother had a name so similar to my own.

"Oh, Mads," He sighed again but had a hint of a smile, "you're just as stubborn as your father was."

That was another characteristic of the father I never knew to add to the list of similarities kept updated by my uncle.

"Oh Really?" I laughed, having heard that many times from him and aunt Celiné. 

"Really," He laughed. "If there was one thing your father was known for, its his stubbornness. Very rarely could anyone change his mind about anything once it was made up. Same goes for Ashleigh." 

Ashleigh Wakens, my paternal aunt that I've also never met. Except like, she's still alive and all so that's not really my fault.

"Look, uncle Rob, I appreciate the invite but I really don't want to be in Madeleine and Harry's presence. I've still got a ton of underlying anger towards them that's not going to be helped by having dinner with them," I said honestly to him.

He nodded. "I understand. But the offer still stands if you change your mind."

"I won't."

Yes, it's very possible to harbour hate and resentment towards people you haven't met before. I've been doing it for five years now.

I never got to meet my father, Graham Wakens. He was forced to leave Cape Town and cut off all contact with my mother before I was even born. All by his own parents no less.

According to my uncle, it was love at first sight for my parents when my dad was visiting Cape Town in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2000. My mom, still in her grade eleven year of high school and on the brink of turning seventeen, had met my father, an older, American gentleman, in the city centre. Their romance was a whirlwind frowned upon by both sets of my grandparents and was deemed scandalous and inappropriate when my mother fell pregnant with me in November of 2000, just a week before her seventeenth birthday. I mean, I suppose it was pretty scandalous seeing as my mother was still a teenager and my father was a grown adult but they were young and in love, I guess.