AUNT MARTHA KEPT SMILING AS SHE CALLED ME BY MY MOTHER’S NAME
I was carefully spooning the pureed peaches into Aunt Martha’s mouth when she suddenly gripped my wrist, hard.
Her eyes, usually so distant, snapped into focus, burning with a chilling clarity. “Oh, Elara,” she rasped, her voice thin but sharp, “You look so much like her when she was young. So much like the day it happened.” My blood ran cold, a jolt of pure ice through my veins.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat. Elara was my mother’s name, and Aunt Martha hadn’t strung together a coherent sentence in months. The sickly sweet smell of overripe peaches, normally comforting, now felt suffocating, pressing in. This couldn’t be real. It absolutely *couldn’t* be.
“Aunt Martha, it’s me, Sarah,” I whispered, my own voice shaky. She just shook her head, slowly, deliberately. Her grip tightened, surprisingly strong, digging into my skin. “He always said he’d tell you, when the time was right. About the fire, about *everything*.” Her gaze was unwavering.
The air in the room, usually warm, suddenly felt arctic. Every hair on my arms stood on end. What fire? My mother never mentioned a fire. Aunt Martha’s vacant smile returned, but it was worse now, a silent, knowing triumph that made my stomach clench with dread.
Just then, the chime of the front door echoed, and I heard my father’s familiar voice call out, “I’m home!”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…A wave of desperate relief washed over me, quickly followed by a surge of terror. My father. He’d know what to do. He’d calm Aunt Martha down. He’d… explain. But as the sound of his footsteps approached the room, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to step into a nightmare I never knew existed.
“Sarah?” My father’s voice, usually so comforting, sounded distant, almost… hesitant. He peered into the room, his face etched with a strange mix of surprise and… guilt? His eyes flickered between me and Aunt Martha.
“Hello, my dear,” he said, his gaze avoiding mine. “How are you both doing?”
“Dad,” I managed, my voice barely a breath. “Aunt Martha isn’t well. She…” I trailed off, unsure how to articulate the chaotic terror that had just unfolded.
He walked further into the room, his movements slow and deliberate, like a man entering a minefield. He approached Aunt Martha, who was still clutching my wrist, her eyes locked on my father.
“Martha,” he said softly, his voice strained. “You’re tired, dear. Time for a nap.” He reached for her hand, but she recoiled, her grip on my wrist tightening further.
“Tell her, John,” she croaked, her gaze fixed on my father. “Tell her about the fire.”
My father closed his eyes for a moment, a visible tremor running through his frame. When he opened them again, they were filled with a depth of sorrow and fear I’d never seen before. He looked at me, and the truth of Aunt Martha’s words crashed down upon me with the force of a tidal wave.
“Sarah, there’s something you need to know,” he began, his voice cracking. “Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
He took a deep breath, his eyes pleading with me for understanding. “The fire… it happened a long time ago. Before you were born. Your mother… Elara… she… she didn’t survive.”
The world tilted. The peaches, the room, the very air I breathed, all dissolved into a swirling vortex of disbelief and grief. My mother, dead? A lie, a carefully constructed lie that had sustained me my entire life.
“But… but Mom,” I stammered, the word a foreign echo in my throat.
“Your mother was never the same after the fire,” my father explained, his voice thick with emotion. “They tried to save her, but… the damage was too great. They told me she was lost, and I had to move on.”
He looked at Aunt Martha, tears streaming down his face. “Martha… she was the only one who knew the truth.”
He stepped towards Aunt Martha, gently prying her fingers from my wrist. She didn’t resist. He leaned down and whispered something in her ear, and her face relaxed, the vacant smile returning, but now it was a genuine relief.
“It’s alright now, Elara,” she said, finally addressing me with the proper name. “John told me.”
With a final glance at my father, I finally understood. It wasn’t a lie, not entirely. Elara was gone, in a way. And in her place, I found my mother, who was never the same. I was raised by a person who was her sister, Martha, who kept the memory alive by taking care of her sister’s memory and my father who, out of grief, did the only thing he could do, which was move forward with his life. It was a heartbreaking truth, and it finally made sense, the reason I never met any other relatives or saw photos of my mother as a child.
The weight of the lie lifted, replaced by a raw, aching grief. I took a deep breath, looked at my father, and reached out to him. For the first time, I truly saw him, not just as my father, but as a man who had endured unimaginable loss, and I knew that the rest of my life would be dedicated to finding the pieces and putting them back together.