I was only nine or ten at the time and I watched the two of them fight.
I could have pretended to hide, slip around the corner and stay in the shadows… but they were being loud and they were not trying to keep anything from my eyes – so I stood right there, in the foyer, frozen gaze on my parents.
My father, normally a jovial man with dancing eyes and who loved to pick me up in his arms, hold me tight… loved to spin me around and call me his little 'supergirl'… loved to take me to the beach and build sand-castles for hours on end…
My father looked like a volcano I once saw in a science book at school.
He was on fire and ready to explode.
My mother, normally so quiet and always checking my room, to make sure it was tidy… pulling the wrinkles out of my skirts and blouses with long and delicate fingers… making sure I always got a chocolate cake for every birthday…
My mother looked like a glacier I once saw in some old film at my grandmother's house.
She was cold and just like stone.
And there, just past the edge of them… just past their yelling and their angry silence… I saw some other girl, standing and sobbing and small hand holding onto a suitcase.
And that's how I met Kyla, my sister.
I don't pay much mind to the 'half' title as much as my mother does.
A sister is a sister is a sister.
I was just glad to not go through this alone, because even though I was young, I knew that something important was going on and that nothing would ever be like it once was.
What was right just slipped away, like a summer breeze out the window, and what was wrong took root… and we were never the same.
I was never the same.
Oh sure, for a while we all did a bit of make-believing.
Barbeques and parties and such, school and games and talent shows… and my parents were there, but they weren't really there at all.
I knew it, whether they meant for me to know or not.
I knew it.
And my father didn't spin me around as much.
And my mother started to forget those birthdays.
"I miss Baltimore." Kyla cried one night in my bedroom, because her room wasn't furnished yet – it was my mother's gym still.
"It's fun here. We've got the beach and Disneyland. I was on a movie set once, so maybe I can take you to one… okay?"
"Really?"
A sniffle, an arm around my waist and Kyla fell asleep and I daydreamed about a life full of candy and laughter and a family that would be there always.
I held onto that dream for as long as I could.
Even when my father stopped coming home at night and didn't show up until the next day.
Even when my mother stopped caring if any of us were coming home at all.
I held on for as long as I could.
Until all I was holding was air – thin and useless air, the kind you find at the top of mountains… the kind that fucking kills you, makes you bleed…
And all that make-believing became real somehow, a twisted reality that we all played a part in.
My father, Raife Davies, lawyer and married man. My father, the adulterer.
My mother, Christine Davies, wife and mother. My mother, the controlling bitch.
And me, Ashley Davies, daughter and… and just fine, happy, well-adjusted, part of a good family, good student, straight as a line…
Ashley Davies, a girl in a million pieces, fragmented and fake.
My father asked for a divorce from my mother when I was fourteen and it wasn't a case of fireworks at all. No one gave a damn.
Which meant we all cared too much, but couldn't stand to show it anymore.
We all lied a little bit more… I mean, why not?
Kyla went to the mall with her newest best friend.
My mother asked for more money and the house and told my father that he'd better not try to screw her over. My father signed the papers and was already calling his mistress before his feet reached the door.
And I looked away. I just looked away like none of it matter at all.
I called this boy I was just starting to date and we had sex in his parent's bedroom.
It was my first time and I just didn't care.
And I lied a little more.
Why not?
It's what we were all doing.
It's all we ever did.
I let that dream go that day, watched it crash to the floor and shatter, and I realized that people don't really love – they just leave… even when they are in the same room as you, they are so far gone.
I gave up those tiny wishes, the notebook I kept at the bottom of my desk… the one filled with pointless lyrics and worried concerns over sexuality, over my future, over my parents… and I packed it away.
I stopped playing that second-hand guitar. Kyla and I stopped talking every morning before school.
My mother gave me money instead of cakes for my birthdays and I spent it all on getting wasted with my friends, always in bars that shouldn't have let us in at all.
I gave up.
Or so I thought.
Or so I wanted to think, was desperate to believe.
Because to care means to hurt and to hurt means to feel and to feel means that something fucking matters at all… and we don't do that.
I don't do that.
Ashley Davies, partner at a law-firm and strong and attractive and capable and… and…
…broken, wires cut where they should connect, a misfiring piston in a busted engine.
And I wasn't looking to be fixed. I wasn't looking to be healed.
I gave that up, along with every other dream.
I gave that up when I saw my mother burn all the pictures of us as a family, still wickedly bitter.
I gave that up when my father hired me and didn't even talk to me for three weeks.
I gave up and I gave in and… I didn't want to be saved.
And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin.
Because you brought something back to my mind, a Technicolor memory that I thought I had smothered and buried, a remembrance of something that was once so damn good…
And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin.
Because you have reminded me of oceans and sticky sweet hands and how it feels to run with abandon, you have reminded me of the innocence of kisses and the joy of tears…
And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin.
Because you didn't just let me see how beautiful you are, with your hair of gold and your eyes of blue… but because you allowed me to see how beautiful everything could be, from late nights to breathtaking mornings… from old films and starry skies… from soft skin and smiling lips and…
…and that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin.
Because I wasn't looking to be rescued and, yet, you pulled me up when I was falling.
And you've kept me walking when, normally, I'd be crawling.
And you've forced me to laugh when, normally, I'd be screaming.
And you've changed my whole fucking world as easily as a kid dismantles a stack of blocks… and I don't know how to build it back up again…
And I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin.
But I can't hate you…
You won't hear me saying why, though.
Not on this day, watching your face disappear as I shut the door and turn my back on you and tell myself that none of this matters – I can go back to how it used to be, sure I can, and you'll just be a mistake and you'll just be a misstep and you'll fade from my life like everything else…
And I lie a little more.
Just a little more.
/// /// ///
Raife Davies catches the moment that Ashley's spine stiffens, rigidly trying to hold back the tide… to buffer the blows of the sea…
And not for the first time, he wishes that it was his love that could shield her. He wishes it was his love that could calm her.
But it is his love – and the absence of his love - that has brought Ashley to this moment.
And he knows it.
That is the bitter pill he has spent the past ten years or so attempting to swallow, each edge just a little sharper than before and cutting him to the quick and reminding him of his very first mistake – walking out that door, with barely a glance back at the children I was leaving behind… all too eager to cut Christine out of my life, to kiss my new lover on her adoring lips without feeling like a cheater, to paint over the painful end of something that was once everything… and I ran… I just ran and ran and ran…
But now that medicine is sliding on down, lying heavy in his stomach, and Raife doesn't know how to turn back time.
He doesn't know how to beg for forgiveness. He doesn't know how to get the young girl Ashley once was to see him and recognize the regret in his eyes.
Because his face is still tattooed with his failings.
And Ashley's gaze is no longer that of a child, all goofy smiles and boisterous laughter…
…Ashley's gaze is a lot like his the day he left her – hollow and removed, only seeing the way out and never the way back in.
"Ashley—"
"I'll empty out the desk and you can start looking for someone else today."
"You don't have to quit, Ashley. Stop being irrational—"
"Fuck you. Do you hear me? Fuck. You."
And now there is emotion in those eyes, but it is rage.
Raife stands by, chastised, as Ashley begins flinging open drawers and tossing items around and he can see that she is literally shaking, body set to an angry vibrate.
Her trembling is so bad that she drops a fountain pen and the ink goes everywhere all at once, random designs on papers and wood… just like a Rorschach test gone horribly wrong.
"I'll clean this up before I leave."
"Ashley, god, just stop for one second—"
"We have nothing to say to each other, okay? Nothing at all. The time for you and me talking and pretending to care for one another… its long gone. I don't want to be here and you never wanted me here—"
"No, you are wrong, Ashley. You are an asset here, to me and to the firm—"
"'An asset'? How sweet."
"Look, that's not what I mean… please, just sit down and we can talk this out…"
Ashley's hands are moving fast, slamming down onto the desktop and her fingers get covered in black ink – creating a new design, telling a new story and Raife is finally ready to hear it… if she'll let me, if she'll actually say what needs to be said to me, if she'll trust me again…
Because he has been prepping himself for this moment since Spencer Carlin dropped that bombshell on Christmas morning.
He has had to sit with the knowledge that, where it not for the workings of fate, Ashley wouldn't be here at all.
And there wouldn't have ever been an opportunity for Raife to ask for another chance with his daughter, to try and mend the wounds he inflicted, to be the father he used to be.
He'd be crying his laments to a tombstone and there would be no reply from the little girl that was once his very world.
But where he expects shouting or tears or both, it is just Ashley's voice – empty and almost void of feeling, like the pressure of her palms pushing down on the surface of the desk took all her fight out of her.
And Raife realizes just how far he truly has to go in order to get back what he threw away, a road stretched out… a million miles and counting…
"Just let me go. It's what you are good at, right? So… just let me go."
It isn't like pleading, for it is too weak and too passionless.
It is a lot like giving up. Ashley, belly bared and on her back, ready for the kick that's been coming for all this time – not at all like the girl Raife once knew, who climbed too high at the jungle-gym… even when I told her, sternly, to get back down.
But there she was, on top of metal bars and giggling, because she believed she could fly and for all of Raife's worry… he was proud of his child, who showed no fear and who found all of life a joy.
That girl is gone and I helped her disappear… how can I expect her to forgive me when I can't see forgiving myself any time soon? How can I fix something that has been broken for so long?
How can I stop her from slipping further away?
How can I prevent… what she was going to do… when I am the one who pushed her to that place?
Raife doesn't have a single answer, not within his lawyer mind or in all the books he had to study in school or within his own not-so-bulletproof life.
It is daunting and it is a high-dive into a glass of water and God knows… Raife can't imagine anyone more inept at making amends then he is…
But…
But… this is my daughter, this is my child – bright and beautiful and left alone for too damn long…
…and if it is the last thing he ever accomplishes, Raife Davies intends to get her back.
"I've let you go too many times already, Ashley. I won't do it again. I won't ever do it again."
Her face is not a mask, it is a reality. She doesn't believe a word coming out of his mouth and he expects no less than that.
It just doesn't stop him this time.
He forges ahead, taking that first step on that road… hoping and praying that, one day, Ashley might meet him half-way.
One day… one day… one day…
"All I ask is that you stay, just stay and don't leave… and let's, I don't know, get dinner or something…"
"I won't kill myself over you, alright? No need to put on this act. I promise not to ruin your good name in the papers or anything."
"I don't give a damn about the papers or anything else. I just… I just want to talk to you, to talk with you."
"Don't do this."
"Ashley—"
Her eyes light up and those stained fingers fist the ruined papers beneath them and Raife settles himself for the endless walk before him.
"No! You don't get to do this, you don't get to play the 'Dad' with me. Got it?"
"I want to be your father again!"
His own voice is so loud and Ashley's face is frozen – contorted somewhere between wistful love and burning hate, trapped between a time where his comment would have meant everything and where it means absolutely nothing.
"…You should have always wanted it."
And she breaks, she crumbles, she shakes down the sadness like the boughs of a tree in a gale.
And Raife reaches out, slowly, placing his hand upon one of her own.
And she doesn't grab onto him, but she doesn't pull away either.
"I know… and I am so sorry… I am so sorry, so sorry…"
He just keep repeating it, over and over, as tears quietly fall from his eyes… as Ashley cries as well, make-up taken away and leaving pale trails along her lovely face…
And Raife keeps on holding her hand.
And Ashley doesn't return the hold, but she still doesn't pull away.
Raife knows it isn't much, but he'll take it – he'll take it and run with it for as long as she'll let him.
/// /// ///
TBC