Time solves everything

As Sadie got out of her warm bed to make a visit to the little girls room on a mild night in June, she never imagined that her life was about to change forever. On her way back to her room, she passed her parents bedroom and her mother called her into it, she had obviously been crying.

‘Tell her! Go on, tell her what you told me!’ her mother instructed her father. Before he could get a word in, her mother, Susan, divulged that her father, Sam, was having an affair with a younger woman.

Well, to say Sadie ripped him a new one would be an understatement! She did it in a manner that her younger brother Steven didn’t hear, but got her point across with precision! It was the first time she swore in front of her parents in her seventeen years on earth. She called him every name under the sun and beyond!

As her mother was in denial over the whole thing, her father opted to stay in the house and work on the marriage…for the time being. He was ostracised into the spare bedroom in a time when mobile phones were relatively new. Poor Sadie spent most of her nights sitting on her bed watching DVD’s. She could tell whenever her father was texting his girlfriend as the screen of the tv went funny with every message. She had woken her mother up on numerous occasions to tell her.

Upon inspection, her father’s phone was pristine in the sense that, it looked harmless, but Sadie knew otherwise! She would return to her room and the same thing kept happening again, and again, and again! She called bullshit so many times that her father finally snapped and told herself, Susan and Steven that he was leaving.

The first time he left, the remaining family members were bereft. But being the chancer he was, her father returned a couple of days later, begging to be accepted back into his family. Sadie was the only one who seemed to have an issue with it, but he promised it would be a clean slate.

As the text messages started again, the picture on the TV doing its dance, she ignored it at first. Eventually her whole body exploded and instead of going through her sleeping mother, she went straight to the source…her father.

Of course he denied sending or receiving any form of communication with his bit on the side and swore he had turned over a new leaf and had broken it off with the air hostess no less!

Friday rolled around again, and again he packed a bag, leaving his family for the second time, returning on the Monday begging forgiveness. Sadie seemed to be the only one who found this to be odd! Her mother was just relieved that her husband was home, and God only knows what Steven thought as he was only ten years old!

The pattern of leaving on a Friday and returning on a Monday occurred four weeks in a row…Sam was taking Susan for a ride. Sadie couldn’t watch her mother get excited about him coming home and then be devastated when he left the next time.

Sadie sat her father down for a heart to heart on Thursday, the day before she presumed he would leave again.

‘Do you know why I asked you to sit with me?’ she asked.

Her father shook his head, ‘no!’

‘Well, over the past four weeks I have watched you eviscerate my family with your actions, and that is going to change!’ she said as clear and precise as she could muster.

‘I haven’t been……’

‘…no, no. I’m talking!’ she pulled her father up over the interruption. She saw his eyes roll as he rested one hand on his temple. She could see he had checked out. ‘You need to decide whether you want us as your family, or the little bitch you have been fleeing to every weekend!’

He promptly sat up and Sadie could tell he was suddenly interested in the conversation. ‘I haven’t been…’

‘…no, no…still talking!’ she smiled sadistically. ‘Every time you leave to spend time with that bitch, I have to pick up the pieces! I provide my mother with enough tissues for the day. I am the one who rocks Steven to sleep at night because our mother has taken to the bed. I am the one who predicts your return on the Monday and dreads it because I know you will be gone again on the following Friday. Once is an occurrence…twice a coincidence…three times, a pattern. You’ve been gone the past four weekends, I’d call that a trend.’

‘Yea, but…’                                                                                                                                                   

‘But nothing! You want the best of both worlds, a family and a mistress, and I refuse to stand by and let you use us like that!’

Sadie gesticulates that he now has the floor to say his piece with her hand.

‘I don’t…, I can’t…’

Sadie watches her father search for words, but none come! She decides to help him along the way.

‘Are you willing to give up that bitch?’ she asks.

‘Don’t call her that!’ her father defends the other woman in a manner which confirms that he probably will leave his family of four, decrease to a trio in the matter of hours.

‘Well what do you want me to call her?’ Sadie asks. ‘She is the one who is breaking up a family after all! She’s the one taking a father away from his children! Would you prefer I refer to her as my stepmother?’

‘Don’t be silly!’ he goes to touch Sadie’s hand. She pulls it away, recoiling from him.

‘If you decide you’re leaving, you need to be gone, equally, if you’re staying, you need to earn back our trust!’

‘Of course I’m staying!’ he says with certainty. You three are my life and I won’t be able to live without you!’

‘So when I tell you that I’m taking your phone now, and going to keep it hostage for as long as it takes to put my mind at rest! You good with that?’

Sadie watches as her father’s mouth opens and closes, reminding her of a fish, no words escaping his lips!

‘So you’re choosing her then!’ she deduces from his reaction.

Sadie watches as his fathers eyes fill with tears, but she has no sympathy for him as he brought it on himself. He blinks hard and tears fall down his cheeks.

‘I do love ye!’ he says, his voice breaking as he says it.

‘Theres a difference between loving us and torturing us!’ Sadie reminds him, her own eyes getting teary. ‘I’ll ask you one last time!’ she says as the tears roll down her cheeks, ‘us or her?’

The second her father says the word, ‘her’, Sadie chokes up and begins to sob. She crosses the couch and throws herself into her fathers arms. He pulls her in tightly, holding her head against his shoulder and she feels his head rest on hers. There they stay until there are no tears left!

When she finally pulls away, she says, ‘you need to tell mom!’ as she uses the sleeve of her top to wipe away her tears. She notices he is doing the same thing.

‘I’ll tell her tonight!’ he offers.

‘No!’ Sadie says with gusto. ‘You stay here and I’ll go and get her! You aren’t going to make a fool of her one second longer than you have already!’

Sadie leaves the room and see’s that her mother is preparing the dinner. ‘Let me do that mom,’ she says, ‘dad wants to talk to you in the playroom!’

Susan puts down the knife, leaving a single potato half peeled. Sadie, being only seventeen, doesn’t really know what she is doing. She picks up the knife, her hand trembling, and reaches for the single potato. She starts off trying to finish peeling it, but in the end she has it on the chopping board, continuously stabbing it over and over, wondering what she had              just done.

When she’s finished with the potato, she feels light headed and pulls out a kitchen chair. She puts her head between her legs. When she realises the knife is still in her hand, she drops it onto the tiled kitchen floor. Everything becomes white and she hears ringing in her ears. When she opens her eyes again, she is on the kitchen floor along with the knife. She had fainted. It was no other than Steven who found her. He was in the boy scouts and helped his big sister back up onto the chair and gave her a glass of water.

She listens as Steven goes to inform his parents that she had fainted. Her ears were still ringing, but the cry from her younger brother is unmistakeable…they had told him. Sadie feels a pang of guilt that she brought this upon her family and attempts to retreat to her sanctuary which is her bedroom.

She stands up, the room still spinning and attempts to climb the stairs. Once she’s halfway up, she stops and sits on the step and cries. Eventually, she makes it to her bedroom. She lays on her stomach and sobs into her pillow. She considers mutilating herself, but realises that that’s going backwards and she has enough scars, both emotional and physical, to last a lifetime!

She hears a gentle knock on the door, it’s her father. He has a satchel in his hand and is there to say goodbye. Sadie jumps off the bed and runs into his arms, unsteadying his stance. When she’s ready, she pulls herself away from him and goes to the middle drawer of her bedside locker…she had made him a scrapbook. It was full of all the happy memories they had together.

‘Just so you don’t forget about me!’ she says.

‘How could I ever forget you?’ he asks, ‘you are my daughter, and no matter what happens between me and your mother, you will always be my daughter!’ his nostrils flair as he tries to keep the tears at bay. He blows her a kiss and goes. She follows him out to the landing, hearing the door slam shut behind him.

Sadie looks out her bedroom window and watches him drive off. She feels confident that the family will survive the catastrophic loss with time, because time solves everything!