“When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down”
 
 
 
 
 
. . .
 
 
 
 
 
When Winters woke up to a lingering kiss on her forehead, she immediately opened her eyes… and she feels more than sees her mother seated next to her on the bed first thing in the morning.
 
“Mom…?” she calls out, her voice unsure and still thick with sleep while mother leans a bit closer to reach out and brush some of the bangs out of her eyes, making Winters blink in confusion. Winters wonders then, for a very brief moment, if mother is going to bring her to the salon today or trim the bangs herself, since they are supposed to be saving money.
 
Mother doesn’t do any of that today though.
 
“…Thank you, Winters.”
 
Winters blinks again at that, rubbing at her eyes now, confused as she just woke up and unsure of what to do now that her mother’s attention is so directly on her.
 
Mother usually talks at her, for her, but usually not to her. Because mother was often busy, and there is nothing they really need to talk about. Because Winters isn’t a helpless, little baby like William. Winters can’t be cute or be sweet and make her mother smile like her brother. She doesn’t even have the same smile or eyes like her dad’s.
 
She can’t do anything.
 
“I didn’t do anything,” Winters mumbles out as she fight back a still-sleepy yawn (because it would be rude to yawn while talking), fidgeting with her comforter, half-wondering if she’s in trouble.
 
She had slept past her bedtime last night, after all.
 
Her mother’s hand gently rests on the crown of her head, the touch warm and firm, “I saw you watching over William last night. It’s… I’m just… well, I’m glad that you cared too, Winters. At least either of you won’t be alone as long as you have each other to look after no matter what. It’s reassuring.”
 
Winters wants to sink and soak herself in at her mother’s words, at the rare, heartfelt praise, to press herself at the gentle hand on her hair, because maybe she had done something right for once.
 
Instead, she couldn’t help but feel anxious, and guilty, like she had done something she shouldn’t have. Because there was… something… awfully wrong, different. Winters doesn’t like the way her mother says the words, the way it sounds. It makes her feel like she’s about to lose something so terribly precious.
 
So, she inches a bit closer, trying to get a better look at her mother’s face because for some awful reason, her mother sounds like she’s trying to say goodbye.
 
“But we’re never gonna be alone. We have daddy,” Winters reminds mother even as that warm hand cups her face, her mother’s eyes tired and a little sad (has her mother always looked this sad?), “…and we have you, mom.” We’ll always, always have you.
 
…right?
 
The sun was rising when mother stares back at Winters for what seemed to be a long moment, as if mother was memorizing every single detail there is in her face, the corners of her mother’s mouth soon curling into a small, gentle smile. And for some reason, against the light, Winters could have sworn there were tears in mother’s eyes, too.
 
(And Winters couldn’t help but wonder what her mother sees whenever she looks at Winters like that… because mother always looks so sad.)
 
“Of course, sweetheart,” mother finally tells her so softly as she holds her close, as if telling a secret, just between them two. “…you do. You do have me. You’ll always have me.”
 
Winters heart sinks.
 
…Why is her mother lying?
 
 
 
 
 
. . .
 
 
 
 
 
“Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.”
 
 
 
 
 
. . .
 
 
 
 
 
Lying.
 
Her mother is lying.
 
Winters desperately wants to say that.
 
She wants to be contrary and say otherwise because those words were nothing but a placation that even she can sense that mother was only saying the words Winters desperately wanted and needed to hear… even if Winters couldn’t tell how or why but she knows for sure in her heart that her mother’s words were a lie.
 
But mother was acting a bit off… and even feels a little off these days and Winters can’t quite bring herself to say something that could potentially put her at odds with her mother even more. She doesn’t want to start a fight and quite frankly, Winters wasn’t a bad child.
 
So, she just nods in answer.
 
Mother doesn’t look away from her though, and, if anything, she looks even more sadder―as if she was aware that Winters already knows that her words were a lie―as she leans even more closer, arms draping around her shoulders and neck, warm breath tickling against the side of her face.
 
A soft brush, a kiss on her cheek.
 
(And the truth of the lie hurts more than the lie itself.)
 
Winters inhales quietly, trying to will away the sudden onslaught of tears in her eyes as she finally allows herself to hug her mother back, but not before sparing a glance at the crib where William still lies sleeping; innocent, peaceful… then back at the ghost of a smile on mother’s face, it’s twin was the smile William has given her from last night.
 
She swears she will treasure it both.
 
“Winters?” her mother suddenly calls, her voice quiet and a bit shaky, just as Winters feels something wet dripping on the side of her neck, “You know you can always… talk to me… right?”
 
Winters nods, not quite trusting herself to speak just yet as she stares just somewhere past ahead. Because she knows.
 
She knows that.
 
…even if Mother seems to always, always hesitate with what she really wanted to say to Winters, like she’s carefully picking the words and it hurts all the more because she doesn’t really do that around dad or William. Or anyone.
 
Mother never has to filter what she wanted to say to anyone that isn’t Winters, “If you don’t… can’t talk to me, then… then you know you can always talk to daddy, right?”
 
Another nod.
 
A hand brushes through her hair, tender and fleeting as the passing seasons and Winters screws her eyes shut as she buries her face in her mother’s shoulder even more, holding on to her tightly, the smell of clean blankets and freshly made cookies doing little to soothe her.
 
“I know something’s been bothering you these days,” Mother was saying, “That there’s something you wanted to say. And Winters, I… I know you… I’m your mother, after all.”
 
Winters bites back the sudden urge to sob.
 
Why…?
 
Why does even that sounded like a lie when it shouldn’t be?
 
But Winters was a child.
 
She was only five years old. She wants to believe in her mother’s words. She didn’t know. She didn’t know any better.
 
And she wants to believe that her mother loves her too. So, she keeps her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay, to keep them from falling, allowing herself to sink and relish in her mother’s warm embrace, and decides to say nothing at all to that.
 
She feels warm.
 
She feels comfortable here, nestled within her mother’s arms, in this rare embrace where all seems to feel right in the world for a very little while. She feels safe here, so safe… but there was still that little voice in the back of her mind that says, this isn’t going to last.
 
That voice was and has never been wrong.
 
…and she doesn’t even know it in that moment, not yet, but hours later, Winters would wish with everything that she had and more that she should have listened to that voice. That she should have said something to the woman she had thought and believed to be her mother for most of her life back then.
 
‘Why? Why did you lie to me?’
 
 ‘Did you ever care?’
 
‘I resented you. I hated you.’
 
‘You’re my mother, the only one I have and would ever know. I love you. I love you…’ Winters should have told Summer for the first and what had been the last time―
 
In fact, Winters will wish with everything that she has and will ever had that she should have said at least any of those things over and over again for the rest of her life… but she’ll never wish for it as badly as she did the moment she’d stood almost numbly in the middle of the doorway not too long after that one last hug, her arms now wrapped tightly around William’s smaller frame to keep him from seeing their mother dangling by the neck.
 
Her eyes blurred with tears that never fell as she stared and couldn’t bring herself to look away from their mother’s lifeless eyes.
 
(‘…I miss you...’)
 
 
 
 
 
. . .
 
 
 
 
 
“Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.”
―John O’Donohue