“Why did she have me?” Carmen wiped her cheeks, turning to face her dad. “If it was so hard for her to love me—if it was so hard for her to go on living while I also breathed—then why did she even choose to have me? She could have saved herself a lot of pain. She could’ve saved you a lot of pain. And she could’ve prevented me from being born into a world of misery.”
“She didn’t have it in her, love,” her father said softly, a single tear trickling down his face. “She couldn’t bear to go through with an abortion.”
Carmen scoffed, the bitterness and anger rolling off her in waves. “You know Cole’s mum once told me I should feel lucky that Mum didn’t get rid of me—that she chose to bring me into this world.” Carmen shook her head, running her palms over her cheeks again. “Is that what I’m supposed to do, Dad? Feel grateful? Because I don’t feel grateful. I don’t. Does that make me a bad person? I—I don’t know. I feel angry, though. Angry that she was a coward. She couldn’t live with the guilt of having an abortion so she brought me into this world. Angry that she couldn’t be a mother even after making that choice to have me. Angry she couldn’t love me the way a child is supposed to be loved.”
“Carmen—”
“No, Dad,” she cried. “She was a coward. She was! She couldn’t deal with the guilt of getting rid of me, and she couldn’t deal with me being alive, either so she took the easy way out! She didn’t once stop to think about what that would do to you, to Hunter, to the rest of the family. She didn’t care about the burden she was placing on me. She just didn’t care!”
Carmen thought she’d known pain and anguish. But this—this was a human fist shoved into her chest, nails digging into her skin, tearing through the flesh and the bones, piercing her veins and dragging her heart out.
Her whole body racked with the sobs, her wordless cries of “Please hold on please hold on please hold on” shaking her shoulders violently as if they were finally getting rid of the universe that sat perched upon those bones.
Was this what letting it all out felt like? Because it hurt too much. Too much. Letting go of pain wasn’t supposed to hurt you. The irony in it was twisted, another one of life’s sick jokes.
“And you know what the worst part is?” Carmen sniffed, running a hand under her nose. “I feel like shit because of my anger towards her. I feel like a horrible, horrible person because I hate her more than I miss her, Dad! And I don’t know how to live with that.”
“Shh, shh, come here.” Her father scooted closer, wrapping his arms around her. Carmen let herself melt into the embrace, tucking her head under his chin. “You’re not horrible, Carmen. You’re human. And Cole’s mum doesn’t get to tell you what you’re supposed to feel. You just feel what you feel. Emotions don’t come with instruction manuals, love.”
“I hate Mum.” She wept into her father’s chest. “I hate her. I hate her so much. I hate that she makes me feel so much anger towards someone I’m supposed to mourn, and what I hate even more is that at the end of the day, I don’t think I really hate her at all.”
“You have a heart that is far too beautiful to be consumed by hate, honey,” he murmured, rubbing a soothing hand down her back. “And I don’t know what to tell you to take away the pain your mother left behind, but I can tell you that I love you. I can assure you that you are loved. I loved you long before you came into this world. I loved you since the moment your mother conceived you—that’s nine months of loving you long before any other person in this world has. You are loved, baby girl, you are loved.” His arms tightened around her, and Carmen felt one of his tears fall against her cheek, colliding into one of her own.
“You are loved—” her father sighed into her hair, “—and don’t you ever forget that.”
54.
Because It Was Real
Carmen didn’t know how much time had passed with her lying there, wrapped and safe in her father’s embrace.
“I’m sorry,” her dad said after several minutes, breaking the silence that had fallen among them.
“For?” Carmen pulled her brows together, her eyes feeling heavy now.
“You never being able to open up before the way you did right now, for never giving you an opportunity where you could’ve learnt to vent or let people in.” He sighed a deep sigh like it came from somewhere rooted within his soul. “I shut myself off and you learnt to do the same and now…. Now you’re struggling and in pain. This is all my doing.”
“Dad?” Carmen pulled away and looked at him with a certain level of seriousness she knew she hadn’t displayed before. “What happened with Asa wasn’t your fault.”
Her father sighed and reached forward, picking up the photo album and flipping through the pages. “Maybe not entirely,” he muttered. “Not directly. But…I had a hand in it, didn’t I? The kind of environment you grew up in, that restriction on displaying your emotions. The Rutherfords did that ever since I can remember. And after your mum died, I did it too.”
Carmen shrugged. “I suppose it was easier… to block out the pain, the guilt.”
“I suppose it is,” he agreed, his eyes glazing over. “Maybe that’s why I threw myself into the shifts at the hospital so much, because there, I could keep saving lives. Every day, every hour. But it doesn’t work that way,
