Chapter One:
People never talk about how difficult it is to be sympathetic to your parents when you're an eldest daughter.
From my understanding of my parent's love story, I could tell you that my parents were both young when they met. My mother would never call it that much but when she had me—it had been a teenage pregnancy with her being only nineteen years old to my father's age of twenty. My father grew up on a reservation and since it was important to him, the two of them moved into a home on the sacred land, marrying soon after and for a while it was the three of us against the world. It wasn't until I was five years old that my mother gave birth to my younger brother, Ben, and soon after was when the problems began.
I remember the exact day that everything seemed to change for the worst. It was the day that I had woken up to the sounds of my brother crying in his nursery and this particular morning was different because when I waited in my bed for the crying to stop, it never did. Normally, I could hear my mother's feet padding toward the room next to me to soothe her baby but they never came, she never came into my room either to tell me that I could get out of bed and have breakfast like all of the other mornings at home.
Growing anxious, I had finally made the decision to get out of my bed and go to my fitful baby brother's room and thank goodness I had because, the chubby toddler was laying splayed out on the floor with a red face from crying so hard. I had seen him try and escape his crib a couple of times before but today he was successful and the house sounded empty—no one around to determine where he was hurt. I had decided then at the age of seven that I had to be brave and take care of my brother and so I ran into the kitchen to dial for help on the home phone.
I had spent the rest of the day in the hospital with my brother and my dad who had been away at work when he got the call and that day I learned what a greenstick fracture was. Even with all of the worry that came with what had happened to my brother, I was unable to stop wondering where my mom was and it wouldn't be for another day that she would be brought back to our house by some of the locals.
The night that they brought her back, I could hear my parents fighting for hours. Dad was demanding to know what she had been thinking and Mom was arguing that if he paid attention instead of spending most of his time with his friends he would know that she wasn't happy. While that had been the last time that my mother made a decision to leave her children like that ever again, the arguments never really faded out and my mother seemed to grow more and more unhappy with almost every aspect of our lives.
By the time that I was twelve my mother seemed to grow distrustful of everyone around us. I didn't understand it but arguing about it and seeing how erratic she became scared me. She didn't allow for me or my brother to play with any of the other children on the reservation and she didn't socialize with any of the adults either, she had been completely homeschooling me for a year by that point but the straw that seemed to break the camel's back was when my father brought me to a bonfire. My first and last time socializing with anyone on the reservation.
My things—and not even the most memorable of things that I would have liked to have taken at the time were packed away into a suitcase the next morning. I had never seen my mother so upset and so I didn't fight her when she told me that we were leaving like my father did. I simply swept all that was most important to me into the school bag that I hadn't used in a year and let her take us away hopelessly wishing that I could be happy from then on, even if it meant missing my father.
It was rocky in the beginning but we settled in Oregon and for the most part, life began to feel quiet. There was no more fighting in the walls of our home and no more feeling like we were trying to hide from something horrible lingering outside of home. We felt normal, or at least, as normal as you could in a single parent household knowing that your father was out there somewhere but that you hadn't seen him in a while.
At sixteen, my life flipped over again.
I couldn't quite put a finger on the reason why but there had been a brief period where my mother seemed to become a more pleasant person than she typically was. She seemed to be in higher spirits for a little while and I thought that it was good because what I didn't know was that she was hiding something from us. Months of this blissful peace went on before she finally told Ben and I that she was pregnant again and she was so excited—specifically, to have another girl. Ben, who was just happy that mom seemed to be happy seemed excited as well but I didn't understand it. It wasn't until her and I had a private conversation later that same day that she told me that the baby would have the same dad as Ben and I.
I think that's when my hatred for my mother began. She had given me a completely erratic life, she had abandoned my brother when he was a baby simply because she wasn't happy and then she left my father for reasons that I wasn't sure I even fully understood and there she was, happily announcing that she was brining another child onto this earth while simultaneously announcing that she had been in contact with our father in person and otherwise and my brother and I hadn't as much as heard from him in years.
"Do you see him yet?" Noah asked as he sat perching beside me in the booth with both hands on the large glass window of the diner in Port Angeles. As he searched left and right for any sight of our father he seemed to grow frustrated with the fog that clouded his view.
"I'm sure that he will call when he gets here, bud." I said with a small smile although dread seemed to rack through every part of my body. I wasn't nearly as excited to see our father as my five-year-old brother was but when he looked over at me with those large brown eyes, it was hard to not want for the man to hurry over here if it meant that I would get to see a smile on Noah's face. It was a strange thing how he felt like the center of my world when he wasn't even my own child, I guess that sort of thing just happens when you have to do most of your sibling's caretaking. "He'll be here soon, I'm sure of it. Now eat." I said, gesturing to his grilled cheese. He nodded in response and picked it up, taking a quick bite.
"I kind of can't wait for him get here either. He's been telling me all about what it's like on the reservation and it sounds pretty cool. He said that he wants to take me fishing sometime too." Ben said before taking a sip of his soda and pushing his now empty plate away from himself. I could tell by the look in his hazel eyes and his softer tone of voice that he was trying to tread carefully with the subject of our father. I've never openly made any negative statements about our father to either of the boys but while my youngest brother may be completely oblivious, Ben was aware of the fact that I seemed to dodge phone calls suddenly had less to say about the man.
My interest in moving to La Push was minimal even from the day that it became an option although, it didn't feel like an option.
The day that I stepped into my mother's bathroom and found her on the floor with a bottle of pills tucked into her palm, my unlimited options in life faded away one by one. Before that day, I was a student at the local community college that had gotten a little bit of a later start because I felt that I needed to be home with my toddler brother because my mom—who had shown signs before following her second pregnancy, couldn't quite bounce back from postpartum depression. It also didn't help that her and my father never quite rekindled things although he made odd appearances throughout the years and kept up with my brother's through video calls, phone calls, and texts. Somehow they were satisfied with that relationship and always excited to speak to him.
I on the other hand grew frustrated with both parents and mourned the life that other women in their early twenties should get to have. I spent my twenty-first birthday sleeping in bed with my two disturbed younger brothers that had just buried their mother two weeks before.
The decision to come to La Push came with reluctance on my part because I preferred staying in Oregon. Plenty of people balanced kids, school, and a full time job and I could figure it out after I figured out how to get custody of my two younger siblings. On a random day, to my surprise, Dad reached out to me by text stating that he wanted custody of them—that he would fight me for it even and when Ben expressed his interest in moving in with him, I knew that I would be in a losing fight. My fierce urge to protect my brothers was what brought me here. I refused to leave them with a stranger that they knew through a phone and so this was my new life.
The sensation of buzzing in my pocket drew my attention and when I pulled out my phone, I raised a brow as I looked down at the incoming call from the contact listed as 'Tobias Lark' instantly, my eyes darted out the window beside us and I met the gaze of man standing beside an older model bronco. Dad.
"He's here. Let's go." I said, taking a deep breath as I fished a fifty out of my pocket and left it on the table. I stood and grabbed mine and Noah's suitcases as Noah excitedly leaped out of the booth and led me and Ben, who was also pulling his own suitcase out of the entrance of the dinner.
"Daddy!" Noah shouted gleefully as he ran to our father who picked him up with ease and grinned at the boy, clearly admiring the replica of himself that he had made with their mother.
"Look at you!" Dad said with a chuckle, "You're a big boy now." He said because saying 'I miss you' is reserved for people that had been around in the first place. "And Ben, my God, I'm sure that the guys will be ready to play some football with you on the beach. I'm sure the school team would be excited to have you too." He said, taking Ben in for a side hug considering that his other arm was taken up by Noah.
When his eyes finally landed on me, I averted my gaze down to our suitcases and slowly trailed them up again. "Can you pop the trunk? It's kind of cold out today so I'm just ready to get in the car." I said, doing my best to elude to the fact that I wasn't ready for hugs yet.
"Let me get it for you. Benji, can you get your brother in the car?" He asked, setting Noah down and using a nickname for Ben that I had come to despise, a nickname that mom always used with him that felt just as shocking as a curse word leaving my father's lips.
"Yeah, come on Noah." Ben said, opening the back door and hoisting Noah in to a seat. Considering that we had travelled light, Noah would need a booster seat before they took any other car rides after today. After he had gotten Noah settled in, Ben rounded the car to let his own self in, shutting the heat out immediately after.
"I can't believe how much you look like your mother." Dad said as he moved toward the back of the car. "Just…Beautiful." He insisted and for a moment, I wondered if he really thought that was true. I did look just like my mother. Unlike my siblings, I had brown hair instead of black like my father's. My eyes were hazel like my mothers and though my skin was darker than my mother's, it was lighter than my brother's and father's. As I stood before him now, looking so much more like my mother, I wondered if he looked at me and saw the erratic woman looking back at him.
"I don't really want to talk about her right now." I said softy as he opened the trunk, relieving me from mine and Noah's suitcases and finally lifting Ben's into it and closing the door.
"I get that. We don't have to talk about her right now. I'm just… I'm glad that you're here too Aria." He said, looking at me with those same deep brown eyes that I've come to associate with Noah, eyes that pulled at my heartstrings.
I wasn't sure why but I suddenly had the urge to cry. I wanted to cry a loud and horrible cry and just sob but I swallowed that sensation down and nodded once. "I'm glad that you let me stay near them." I said, mustering up the best half smile that I could before rounding the car and getting into the passenger seat. I had enough time to let out a deep sigh before he too got into the drivers seat and met the warm heat coming from the vents of the car, pulling out of the driveway to lead us to our new home.
We had been driving for almost two hours before the highway gave way to roads lined with trees letting us know that we had reached the reservation and I was more than relieved by the idea that I would get to put a tiny bit of distance away from our father once we were out of the car. The only reason that I seemed to be able to avoid having to converse with the man beside me was because Ben was taking care of that. Every so often I would peek over my shoulder at Noah who was sound asleep after our day of travel and remind myself that I could do this.
"I know that it's cold out but, do you think that we could go to the beach?" I heard Ben ask and almost immediately I wanted to insert myself. Based on what I heard about my father through my mothers interpretation, he was unable to be tied down. He liked running around late at night with friends to what I assumed were the bars and he was so caught up in that, that he wasn't even willing to leave the reservation to go after his family and fight for them, even after his last child was born. I could only imagine my father as being childish, reckless, even and I just knew that his answer to the question would reflect that but when I opened my mouth the interject, who was already speaking.
"I think it's too late to go tonight. It's pretty cold too, it wouldn't be that enjoyable without a fire and I'm sure that you're all tired. We can go tomorrow." Dad said to my surprise. "Besides, In just a few weeks, you'll be far less impressed by the beach, I'm sure of it. There are bonfires all of the time and there's gonna be one in a couple of days to celebrate your arrival."
The idea of a celebration in place for us surprised me just as much, it also worried me considering the last time that I had been to a bonfire here. I couldn't remember anyone in particular from the occasion but I suddenly worried that they would remember me. I was old enough to remember my time here on the reservation and it was all suddenly dawning on my that to other people here, I wasn't stranger.
"You mean people here are throwing us a party or something? Even though they don't know us?" Ben asked, a hint of excitement in his tone. I supposed that even if this wasn't something that I was looking forward to, at the very least it would make the boys feel welcome.
"Something that you will come to realize very soon is that here, everyone is like family. I'm really excited that you will finally get to see that, both of you." Dad said, turning those brown eyes toward me for a glance as he pulled into the driveway of our new home.