“So when are they going to announce your new position?” Harvey Gray asked Laura’s brother, Sean, on Sunday night during dinner.
Sean had just been promoted at work, and everyone was happy for him. The reason their mom had cooked a celebratory dinner and invited everyone over.
“That will be after the board meeting,” Sean smiled into their father’s eyes. “And it’s in two weeks.”
“That’s fine,” their mother beamed. “It doesn’t matter when they make the announcement. You’ve gotten your letter of confirmation already.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Olivia, Sean’s wife, remarked and sipped from her wine.
Their mother gave Laura a long glare, trying to urge her to join in the conversation, but Laura just looked away. Her eyes fixed on her plate as the clinking of silverware and the sound of her family’s voices vibrated around her as they tried to make light conversation with their estranged father.
“Princess,” Laura’s father, Harvey, called out to his daughter after they’d all finished dinner and we’re just lingering at the table.
“I was hoping to talk to you after dinner.”
“No,” she glared at her father across the table. “I have a tutorial to attend.”
“Aren’t you on summer break?” He cleaned his mouth with his napkin. “Do you still attend tutorials?”
“Yes, it’s online” she stood up and pushed back her chair. “I’m working on my thesis.”
“Oh,” Mr. Gray dropped the napkin on the dining table. “I promise, I won’t take much of your time, please princess. It’s important. I need to talk to you.”
“Stop calling me princess,” she scowled at him. “I am not a little girl anymore.”
Their father glared at her with guilt and pain written all over his face.
He had been trying to have a decent conversation with his daughter since he returned to his family over six years ago. But Laura wouldn’t bulge. She had been as stubborn as ever.
Sean and his wife, Olivia, exchanged knowing looks and they both got up and started packing up the dirty dishes.
“Okay,” he asked. “What do you want me to call you?”
“Call me Laura,” she chirped. “That’s my name.” With that, she left the others and walked into her bedroom.
“Laura…Laura,” Katherine, their mom, called after her, but Laura didn’t look back.
She plopped down on her bed and heard footsteps coming. Then there was a knock on her and her brother walked in. He sat on the foot of the bed and asked, “are you okay?”
“I guess so,” she gave him a weak smile. “I just don’t want him to talk to me.”
Her phone pinged for a message notification, she picked it up. It was Trevor’s message. They’ve been chatting all day. She smiled as she read his message and replied.
“You’ve been giggling and chatting all evening,” Sean smiled at her. “When are you going to tell me about him?”
“Him?” Laura stretched on the bed. “How do you know it’s a guy?”
“Well,” he stood up, shrugging. “I’m so sure you can’t be giggling and chatting with a lady like this.”
“That’s not true,” she smiled.
“You know at some point you’re going to have a proper conversation with Dad, right?” Sean said, shoving both hands in his pocket. “Even if it’s only for your closure.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” she shrieked. “I don’t have to talk to him.”
“But you have to,” he looked at her with concern. “Can’t you see how all of this is affecting you?”
Her phone pinged again. She dashed a look at the screen. Trevor’s picture blinked at her.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Sean,” she said, picking up her phone and smiling. “I don’t need him anymore. He was never there when we needed him.”
She wondered how he and their mom could easily forgive their dad’s betrayal and opened Trevor’s message.
“It’s half-past eight,” Sean said, walking to the door. “We have to leave now. We need to go shopping on our way home.”
Laura nodded, not looking away from the phone screen.
Sean walked out quietly.
She went to the door and locked it from behind. Not long, she heard Sean driving away.
Not long after that, there was a gentle knock at her door and her mother said, “Laura, please open up.”
Laura laid on the bed and refused to respond. After two more knocks, her mother went away.
She reached out and picked up a copy of Academic Finance from her nightstand. She needed something to distract her mind from the man sitting in the living room with her mom. But it didn’t work. She kept thinking about her pain…about her loss.
Laura and her late twin sister, Leelah, were just getting into senior high when her father left them.
Their older brother, Sean, was a college freshman then.
Laura couldn’t forget the feeling of dread that came over her the night their mom told them their father was not coming back to them. She and her sister were very close to their dad, they were typical daddy’s girls.
“Why?” Leelah, the elder of the twin girls, asked.
“Daddy and I have some adult problems,” their mother had explained. “He feels it’s better if we live separately now.”
“So we won’t see him again?” Laura had asked, with tears in her eyes.
“Why not,” Mrs. Gray had said with fake confidence, “when he’s settled in his new place, you can always visit him.”
But that never happened. A few weeks later, he got married to another lady.
What the kids didn’t know was that he had confessed to their mom that he’d been in a relationship with the said lady for over two years and he said he had fallen out of love with Katherine, their mother.
Unknown to the kids, things had not been going on smoothly between their parents for some time because their paternal grandmother had still refused to accept their mom because of her Southern heritage. She had convinced her son to get a woman befitting their prestigious family status.
The girls were the hardest hit, apart from their mother. He was their hero, their friend and confidant. They loved him even more than they loved her mother.
Leelah began to mix up with bad people in school and in the neighborhood. She got involved with the son of their mom’s mechanic who introduced her to drugs
One day in their final year of high school, a few weeks shy of their finals, both the boy and Leelah were found in his bedroom dead from drug overdose.