CONFLICTED

Chapter 17| Relay race

Chapter 17: Relay race

I barely knew anything about my mother and now the little pieces of information that could spell out something to me about her existence were going too?

"Why?" I asked hoarsely.

It appeared they came from the rusty metal briefcase I had never seen before and since the briefcase was coated entirely in dust, I presumed it also got to see sunlight just today.

Instead of answering me, my father helped himself up and went over to his desk, tapped a few keys on his computer before trotting over to his wardrobe.

I moved closer to the mess and sat on the edge of his bed, looking down at the papers and books coated in specks of dust. A particular book caught my eyes as it was bigger than others in the pile and it looked like... a diary??

A diary!

I quickly reached down and grabbed it, shoving it into my backpack without sparing it much of a glance. Father came back around and crouched back to the mess with a brown sack in hand.

"Father..." I urged.

"Your stepmom and I had a fight earlier and-"

"Stepmom to be." I debunked and practically felt him roll his eyes. I liked Aunt Lydia but I still found it hard acknowledging her as my stepmom. Or anything close to mom.

"-and she was upset I still have these junks in my possession so I've decided to discard them. She's here now and I should respect that instead of gawking at your mom's photos."

I was both shocked and outraged at the testament, and that was putting it lightly.

"Wait, so you're just gonna throw them all away?" I questioned, color draining from my face as I got up on my feet and stumbled the next words out with my voice rising up a notch. "All her photos, everything!?"

We had frames of her pictures in the living room, his room and an artistic drawing of her in the mini-lounge.

"Yes Chris. All of it."

"Why?" I whined again.

"Chris." came the grim voice, a firm warning I totally disregarded.

"Why would you just wake up one morning and decide to destroy the memories of my own fucking mom. At least let me have them."

"Not a chance." was his curt reply despite my tantrum.

"Dad!"

"Chris, it's father and all the pictures are going!" he equally raised his voice in a firm tone.

A dark variety of emotion; anger, sadness, regret and pain enveloped me at that moment and I stormed out of his room, slamming the door hard after me.

On getting to my room, the door banged shut behind me again and I fought back the tears that struggled to surface. I dumped my black rucksack on the floor and entered the bathroom.

My face was mildly pink in the mirror, staring back at me in fury and horror before I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my face.

Thinking back to my father's words, my knuckles turned white from clutching them into tight fists. The urge to punch the mirror hard and fast seized me but I pushed my hands into my thick hair instead, keeping the little fringes away from my face.

To a handful of people, I was probably overreacting. But I wasn't. I did not think I was. I could not think to think that I was.

I never, ever got to know my mom. For fuck's sake, she was my fucking mom. I hear she was white, friendly, caring and once a famous actress but that's it? That's all I'd get to know of her twenty four years in existence?