But this wasn’t her first, was it? The first train wreck had been her mother’s suicide, and Carmen had never allowed herself to heal from it. And as much as she wanted to patch herself together after she’d lost what she thought would be a forever kind of love, there were still older wounds that needed tending to.
Maybe that had always been Carmen’s problem. She kept gluing back the pieces despite the knowledge that it was just a matter of time ’till she fell apart and broke again.
It wasn’t because she was weak. It was because she kept building back herself on a shaky foundation, a foundation that had split wide open when her mother died. And if Carmen wanted to pull herself out of the burning car, if she wanted to raise herself back up, she needed to make sure her feet had solid ground to stand on.
Carmen had hit rock bottom, and she could either see it as the death of who she was or the awakening of who she could become.
Did she want to grab onto that potential to be someone whole? Yes. She wanted to know what it’d be like to stand on a steady foundation. She wanted to know how it would feel to be able to let in love, and joy, and peace. She wanted to stop being so alone.
Carmen wanted to know who she could be once she’d broken free of the chains she let her past bind her with.
“What are you doing?”
Carmen didn’t respond right away and kept looking down at the photo album she’d dug up from the storage room that had been locked for a good many years now.
“I look a lot like her,” she whispered, as if too scared to disrupt the silence, as if the moment was too sacred for there to be any interruptions.
“You do,” her father said, his voice shaking the slightest bit.
Carmen felt the words rise to the tip of her tongue, felt them dance along the curve of her lips. But she held them back. Pushed them down her throat, pressed down on them ’till—
No.
No, wait.
Did she really want to bury the question? Or would she rather have it answered regardless of the response?
Would it be safe for her to open up? She needed to if she wanted her question answered. Right?
But letting herself ask that question might put her in a vulnerable spot. And that vulnerability might bring in a lot of pain—too much pain.
But, a voice in her head said, a voice that sounded like a boy with coffee eyes and cinnamon hair, But wouldn’t that vulnerability also give you closure?
It might bring Carmen pain, but it also might bring her peace. And Carmen was growing tired of the chaos in her bones and the storm in her soul. She wanted peace.
So, swallowing audibly and keeping her eyes fixed on the photographs, she let the words crawl back up her throat again. “Is... Is that why you can’t—why you can’t... ” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to steady her breathing. “I look a lot like her. Is that the problem why you can’t love me?”
She felt her father sit down on the floor next to her, their backs pressed against the couch while the album lay opened at their feet.
“Honey, what sort of question is that?” He sounded horrified. “Of course I love you.”
Carmen didn’t remember crying in her life, not in the last twelve years. But something in her had broken during Thanksgiving night. And it was getting easier to let her pain spill down her cheeks.
Maybe it was because of all the pain that sat there, gathering and piling atop one another. It had become a volcano, and the thing about volcanoes was that they had an ending point. And after that, came the eruption, the spewing out of all that which was buried too deep.
“You never say it.” She looked up at him through a watery vision. “Not after she died. In fact, I can’t remember you saying it before also. Back when she was still with us.”
So many emotions flitted across his face, all battling against each other for dominance. But his eyes. His eyes looked haunted and so full of pain. And Carmen wondered if there was a volcano in his heart too.
“It’s not—it’s not easy. I know that is no justification of me making you feel unloved…” her father trailed off, looking down at the photo, “I know you said apologies don’t matter after the crash has occurred, but I am sorry, Carmen. I am so goddamn sorry. I let you down, I let you lose your dad the same day you lost your mum, and I could never stop saying sorry for that. Making you feel like you weren’t loved—like you didn’t have a home—that’s not—that.” His voice cracked, unable to remain steady as the tremble in it grew worse.
“She never said it either.” The words were flowing freely from Carmen’s mouth now, all of them coming out in breaths, in a rush, as if there was not enough time to say all she wanted to say. “Mum, I mean. I don’t remember every single moment from my childhood but I can recall her not saying those three words to me. Then again, I can’t blame her, can I? I was her nightmare in the flesh.”
“Honey, she loved you—”
“No, she didn’t!” Carmen sobbed, her voice breaking at every syllable. “She didn’t, Dad! You don’t kill yourself because you love someone!”
Her father blinked back tears of his own, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that. She had
