C H A P T E R

1

Look at me here again, in a place where I lost the string of promises that I will never return to this place. Home should be a place where you feel...home, not a place that makes you die now or never. And I realize that even now there is no one around to witness my dramatic moment. Maybe I'll kick myself out, if the ceiling or even the living room chandelier hasn't fallen on me yet, or some other sign that clearly forbids me from setting foot in this house.

The silence can scare some. I'm not talking about someone who is used to noise or thoughts keeping their mind busy. Not even about piano and soothing music that helps you meditate, let alone an electronic guitar that makes you sit still. But that kind of silence that doesn't tell you anything, rather it listens to you. I don't want to hear my thoughts, so I dig through my pockets for my headphones.

On the one hand, it was a wise decision not to give up my zords, which I hung from my pack. I didn't even have time to do it. The only thing I could think about was to throw my things in the car seat and drive from the airport straight to my childhood street. On the other hand, the sound that echoed the second the backpack slipped off my shoulder and made contact with the floor still gives me chills; I think that's where my headphones are. I think I've ended up in someone else's house, and I'll have a good excuse to get out of here if it turns out to be haunted. I don't need anyone around me, not even ghosts.

However, in this house everything is... the same; the abstract canvas paintings on the walls, the round black carpet in front of the stairs, the chandelier that looks more luxurious than the one in the guest room, not even the artificial flower has been moved an inch. Everything is the same. Less the peace that never existed in this house, I suspect until now.

I really thought that after a year things had settled down in my father's life as well. At least, that's what he assured us every time. Or he was lying to us – yes, I think that's the right way to say it. Maybe he didn't want to live with me or Britney, but he could have stayed in Arizona where it was much easier for us to keep an eye on him. Moving into her maternal grandparents' house, with the hope that it would be the first place her mother could return to, is an act of love, but it's also madness. We would have found a way if he had been honest with any of us. If not me, surely Britney would have; she is meddlesome from birth.

"Britney?"

The chains on my black jeans, torn at the knees, collide with each other, catching them between my fingers, tying them and untying them, and tying them again, and trying to untie them again.

I head towards the kitchen, where she told me it was when I last spoke to her on the phone. That was when I was on NY-28 E from Kingston to Bearsville, so about half an hour ago now.

I don't find her in the kitchen, but instead find the kitchen turned upside down. The dishes in the sink, the table full of files and papers, and one of the four chairs overturned. With one hand I lift him and put him under the table, until his back touches the round edge of the table; I also arrange the other chairs, meanwhile looking over the newspaper that amplifies the lump in my throat. A 52-year-old woman and charged with false statements, pleading guilty. I call Britney.

"Hello?"

She answers me after two beeps and I hear her sniffle, and I realize why she hesitated.

"I have arrived. Where you are?"

"Upstairs," she continued to answer me in a whisper. "Please try not to make too much noise. Dad is sleeping, I wrote you!"

"Shall I go up?"

"Not! I'm coming. Wait for me in the back yard."

I put my phone in my back pocket and then take off my red denim jacket. I remain in a t-shirt of a brighter red than the jacket; animal skull printed on the t-shirt, on the back, it's black though. Like the jeans and boots I've been wearing for too long, the laces have come undone and I'll probably only fix them after tripping over them and racking my brains. Britney always used to tell me if there was going to be anything that would end me, it would be my clumsiness. I could see the end; to break my head on piano sonata no. 14, op. 27 no. 2 in C sharp minor by Beethoven. She joked, but I took her seriously; I still do, because I bend over and tie my shoelaces.

I go out to the back yard through the kitchen door. The lawn is mowed. Compared to the disaster inside, the surface appearance is preserved. I think that helped keep dad out of the neighbors' mercy, although if it wasn't me and Britney, it would have been kind of nice, he'd have someone to talk to.

The swing is attached to the tree branch and I walk up to it just to see if the words are still there. Let your feet touch the sky. Motivational message carved by me and my sister in hardwood.

I sit down and touch my feet, bending and extending my knees, I begin to do back and forth motions that remind me of the days when I couldn't get on and off the swing without someone helping me. The birds in the tree seem to be fighting for their places on the branches, because 1. they are more screams than melodious chirps, and 2. they shake the branches and the cherry blossoms are carried by the wind. I grip the thick ropes of the swing in my hands and lean my head back slightly, looking at the leaves, the cherry blossoms, and the sunlight filtering through the branches.

"I brought you a glass of water. It's all I can give you. I couldn't find a piece of lemon to throw into your glass. Now that you're here too, we'll be able to fill the fridge with exactly what it needs. Jenny also stops by a store to get me the necessities, you know, bread, eggs, tomatoes, but that only happens when she's not on the night shift and usually."

I startle when I hear Britney's voice. She is in a hurry to get to me, as she spoke to me, as she is in a hurry. She hands me the glass, as if anticipating my desire to hug her, and even though I'm not thirsty, I take a sip. I try not to roll my eyes because it's tap water and it's warm. I take a mouthful to swallow the bitter taste her attitude gave me; that she didn't greet me and doesn't seem willing to, I don't know, hug or shake hands. Isn't that what brothers...sisters do? I don't care about her friendship with Jenny. Jenny is not her sister, I am.

"Is OK. Do you want to sit down?"

She shook her head negatively, her eyes watering. Her caramel blonde hair, which tends to be an unsuccessful combination of blonde and brown, looks uncombed for more than forty-eight hours, held in a bobby pin. The deep circles of tiredness and crying, and the sadness in her green eyes make me swallow my joke about her hair like a bird's nest, only to get a reaction from her like I've seen her panic too much. The difference between then and now is that now it's not just in her mind.

"How is he?"

I don't know if it was my question or the fact that she doesn't know what to do with her hands that made her put her hands in the back pockets of the jean shorts she's wearing. He has some stains, probably coffee, on his white shirt. He wears something on his feet that I will never wear; white low-soled sandals. I can't stand seeing my toes.

I'm the complete opposite of Britney, especially now that I've dyed my hair brunette at the base, leaving the ends natural... Finally; from which I would have inherited the shade of my hair. At the College of Arts we were often called twin sisters because of our striking resemblance and despite the age difference of a year and a few months between us. While Britney was complaining that she didn't know who to date with so many men to choose from, I was complaining that no one wanted me, and if someone asked me out, I said no.

When I walked into the Youth Conservatory at the University of Utah, it seemed to be just me, me and the other people, without my sister. I was glad for the breathing moment I was given; the plan was set, none of us could deviate from the path our parents sent us. So a year later, when she finished high school, Britney also went to the conservatory at the same university. My parents didn't discriminate between the two of us, but if they did, I didn't notice. After I finished my studies, I waited a whole for her to finish as well, where we both prepared for our successful future as a team. That year, she was graduating. Rehearsal, preparation for a future duet, helped her finish college with very good results, unlike me....

We ended up attending the show as a duo – she wore black and I wore white, non-colors I can't find, but that was the point. But while my piano was black, hers was white, a contrast on stage that doesn't delineate personality. However, behind the scenes, or in other words, in reality, things have always been the other way around. Until we decided to go our separate ways, about two years.

Her bottom lip quivered, as if she was oscillating between answering me verbally and not, because anyway the way she bit her bottom lip, the short shrug, the frown, and the wet eyes gave me the answer: Bad.

I get up from the cradle and pull her into my arms. She does not accept my embrace, either because I do not know how to embrace myself, or because she does not know how to be embraced; although we both know that both options are correct. I don't feel his hands around me, but she doesn't push me away either, as she walks softly and his forehead falls into the hollow of my neck. She found the father passed out, almost out of breath, in the bathroom after he didn't answer his phone at around six in the morning, as he had been doing regularly for some time. She set his alarm so that it would always call him at the same time. She drove four hours, while it would have taken me forever. Anyway, that's what happened; I'm two days late.

"Is that what the doctors said or you?" I ask her.

"I don't know either. Both variants...? He has already gone through a psychiatric consultation. It was determined that he needed medication and psychotherapy sessions."

I know I said something about crazy above, but I was just kidding. This place is to blame.

"What are we going to do? Are we going to force him back to Arizona?"

"From the very beginning we had to oppose his conspiracy theories. I understand, he loved her so much, he can't get used to the idea that she's not coming back, but God, it's been… nine months!"

I feel her hands on my waist, but she only uses them to push me away from hugging her.

"He's not going back there anytime soon!" Britney murmured, and through the crying, I think that's what she said.

But it is not for this reason that I am silent, but because I have no idea what I should say, if I should say anything at all.

"The search has not yet ended, but we should not encourage him to hope. You know she won't be found, Robyn. If she wanted to be found, she wouldn't have taken all the papers with her. If you ask me, I don't even think she's in the country."

"And you think those meetings will convince him to stop waiting for the miracle to happen? She has no choice, but what if she's not dead?"

Britney looks down, and I cup her right shoulder in my palm, caressing her.

She moves her shoulder, signaling me not to touch her again, so, frowning at the gesture and what she said, I become both confused and…disturbed by her attitude.

"Nobody says she's dead. Only she lives her life! And we... God! Look at us... them! You defend her!"

I swallow in sec.

"Am I defending her? I just said I don't think she's dead, because otherwise dad wouldn't give up."

"Ah, so that was it!" She snorts. "It was her premeditated decision, she disappeared from our lives, so we should consider her dead. He can't decide to go back exactly the way he left. Is that what you always told dad? That he will return? Accept that you no longer have a mother, because the mother that not only I, but also you know, would not have done this."

It's not wrong to be angry, to vent, but now she's acting like I'm to blame for whatever shit happened and is happening. But I just told my dad what he wanted to hear... Because then he would smile or laugh, like a kid who's lost his balloon and been promised another one—the kind of hope that makes you still optimistic.

"Wait! No way! He asked me if I thought she would be found. What ever..."

"You shouldn't have done it!" Britney interjects me, wiping the tears from her eyes and cheeks with her palm. "How many more times do I have to tell you? You see your life anyway, you travel through Spain as if nothing matters to you anymore. If you could see dad talking nonsense to him, you would stop, because you would see the effect it has on him! You'll see him anyway when he wakes up, if you're still around by then."

Oh. She's upset that I didn't take the first flight, but it was a layover, which would have taken just as long anyway.

"I managed to come now!" I murmur, and she snorts, a gesture that suddenly makes me snort too. "Know something? We'll talk when you calm down!"

She smiles, and if she hadn't done it in a sarcastic way, I'd have thought she'd lost her mind too, or... and she is, which seems almost true to me.

"Yes, you would have come in time for his funeral. We only have him, I want you to keep that in mind if you're thinking of going out tonight."

"Why would I leave tonight?"

"You bought a return ticket and if not tonight, tomorrow for sure. Isn't that what you do every time? Why look for a reason to stay when you have every reason to leave, right?"

"No..." My voice leaves me and the knot in my throat strangles me inside. "You're pathetic! PATHETIC!"

I push her in front of me, and the fact that she didn't fall on her bottom, it's clear that she anticipated my reaction. I take hasty steps, and if she took them towards me, I take them as far away from her as possible.

"I can't compare you to her, Robyn, because, unlike her, you always come home. If you ignore the problems, changing your visions along with the shades in your hair, this does not mean that they no longer exist. If you would stay…" She adds and swallows, giving her a pause that makes me fumble with my hands. "You'd be easier on me too, and Dad would agree. Don't put all the burden on my shoulders, you are also his daughter..."

I get to the front porch where I turn to face my little sister and yell as loud as I can so the neighbors know I'm here.

"Well, yes. That's why I'm here, right?"

"This time I'm telling you as nicely as possible, if you don't understand even that way, then you could forget about us altogether. I won't ask you to bother coming because you only come when I ask and maybe now is the time to change that."

She said it in such a warm tone, from below, though I was fifteen paces away—not that I counted—I heard it as if she were shouting in my ears.

I wish I could contradict her in everything she said, contradict that she's wrong, but I can't, because... Damn it! She's right. Less about my hair and what I do with it.

It was much easier for me to do things than to not face them head on, but even if I did, it wouldn't explain or solve much. Mom waited for the moment to care, and when the moment came, she took full advantage of it – as soon as I left for Spain with Britney, she left too, making it look like I'd left Dad behind. three, destroying him mentally and emotionally, and now he is physically damaged as well.

Britney walks past me as she spins into the house, leaving me to stare at the gray fence so high you can barely see the roof of the house beyond.

I'm afraid to get close to dad, after so long I kept him thousands of miles away from my thoughts and plans. For, once freed from his authority, it seemed to me a liberty stolen before the word reached my ears, much less its meaning; its meaning in the life of a child, a teenager and finally an adult who knew only to sing his freedom and feel it, without experiencing it, through the long keys of the piano.

I have every reason to leave and only one to stay. For an old man who made it with his own hands.