Haunted Heart

Angel

The past few days have been a whirlwind. I’ve been swamped with work, spending every moment outside of business hours with Damian, and sleeping. For weeks, I’ve been telling myself I need to speak to Dina and allow her to share her perspective surrounding our parents’ deaths. Namely, my role in their deaths. Making assumptions isn’t doing either of us any good. Every time I’ve seen her since early September, we’ve been in public or surrounded by other people, so the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.

I need to make the opportunity present itself.

While Genie is stopped, sniffing a skinny tree trunk placed in a small patch of dirt surrounded by brick pavers, I punch out a text to my sister.

Angel: Can I come over tomorrow? We need to have a chat.

Genie is on the move again, but my phone dings in response seconds later.

Dina: Everything okay? That sounds serious.

Angel: All fine. I just want to chat. Some sister time.

A few more messages to ease my sister’s mind and we arrange for Dina to come to my place tomorrow as long as I have ice cream. That I can handle. The necessary conversation is the hard part.

After Genie’s morning walk, I run to the store to grab some strawberry ice cream. It’s Nacho’s favourite, and anything I can do to get on his good side is a plus. On my way home, my phone chimes, so I assume it’s Dina informing me she’s arrived. But when I look down at my screen, I see a different face.

Damian: Good morning, beautiful girlfriend.

I take a photo of me posing with the litre of ice cream and send it to him, along with a message.

Angel: I’ve already got my dairy for the day. I don’t need your cheese. :p

My phone rings, and I don’t even look before answering. “Good morning.”

“You don’t like my cheesiness? I’m crushed.”

I scan my keyring to enter my condo building but stand in the lobby so Damian doesn’t get disconnected in the elevator. “I appreciate your cheese. Good morning, handsome boyfriend.”

“Why are you getting ice cream at 11:30 in the morning? Big plans for the day?”

“Dina and Nacho are coming over. We’re going to have a long, overdue chat.”

“Oh, wow. The chat?”

“Yep.” I exaggerate the ‘P’ as I rock on the heels of my leather boots. “I should get this ice cream in the freezer. Can you call me after work?”

“Of course. I might be late today.”

“Okay. No worries. I don’t know how late Dina will stay.” I press the button on the elevator, seeing that it is on the sixth floor.

“Hey, Angel? You’ll feel better after you talk to her.”

“I hope so. At least I’ll know.” The elevator doors ding open and a middle-aged couple steps out. “Talk to you tonight.”

Damian and I say a rushed goodbye as the elevator doors close.

No more than five minutes after I get the ice cream in the freezer, Dina knocks at the door. She has a key from when she lived here, but she stopped barging in after catching me in my underwear one too many times.

I shout at her to come in as I make my way to my small foyer. “Hi.” I attempt to hug Dina, but Nacho voices his displeasure and stops me in my tracks. “Hello to you too, Nacho. So nice to see you’re in a good mood today.”

Nacho doesn’t appreciate my sarcasm. Or anything about me, it seems.

Dina laughs and pats the purse containing her demon dog. “Hi. I’ll let him out first. Where’s Genie?”

There’s a stark contrast in Genie’s enthusiasm when Dina and Nacho enter versus when Damian does. Not that my sister isn’t loveable, but Genie just has a special place in her heart for the man who carries her when she gets tired and lets her cool off in his air-conditioned vehicle when she gets too hot. Dina’s been inside a full thirty seconds before Genie rounds the corner to see who’s here.

“Hi, guard dog. I brought Nacho!”

I’m not a dog whisperer, but I’m pretty sure Genie’s face says “Help me.” Dina releases Nacho from the confines of his ridiculous purse and he goes tearing after Genie. I used to think she went running around because she was excited, but now I know better.

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

“Come in and get comfortable. It’s nothing major. Well, I guess that depends how you look at it, but it’s just a conversation we should have had a long time ago.”

Dina takes tentative steps past my kitchen into the living room. She sits on the sofa and Nacho climbs up beside her, already done with tormenting Genie, who huffs and walks back to the bedroom after sending me a look.

“Okay, dish. I’m going crazy here.” Dina twists herself to face me, earning a grumble from Nacho, who has just settled in.

“To be honest, I’m hoping you’ll dish.”

My beautiful sister’s face scrunches. “Why me?”

Time to let it all out. I take a deep breath, steady myself and ramble out the beginning of a conversation we’ve neglected for too long. “Since Mom and Dad died, I’ve assumed you blamed me. And it’s fine if you do because I blame myself, but I realize I’ve never given you the opportunity to really talk about it. I’m hoping you’ll get everything off of your chest so we can move forward. Together.”

Silence.

It would almost be better if there were crickets in the background, because Nacho’s snoring is even more ominous. I’m regretting this conversation already.

While staring down at her fur baby, stroking his sleeping head, Dina finally responds after several seconds. “I didn’t blame you… but I resented you.”

Somehow, that feels worse. I chew my bottom lip, trying to determine how to respond.

Dina doesn’t give me a chance. “I resented you because you got more time with them. Because you weren’t there in those first few hours after they died and I thought I had lost you, too. Mostly, I resented you for withdrawing from me. We were best friends, then all of a sudden there was this chasm between us that I couldn’t traverse.”

We’re nearing the nine-year anniversary of our parents’ deaths and this is all news to me.

“Is there really much difference between blame and resentment?”

“There’s a big difference. Mom and Dad died in an accident. That wasn’t your fault, and I never thought it was. But after they died, from minutes after it happened, when you weren’t there, to four years down the line when we moved in here, that entire time, it felt like my sister was in front of me, but nowhere to be found. It felt like I lost everyone.”

This is where assumptions and failing to have honest conversations get you. Years lost to being a sister in action, but not in heart. All because I was too scared to hear her truth. “I’m sorry, Dina. That’s stupid to even say because it doesn’t fix anything, but I’m sorry for not hearing you out sooner.”

Nacho grumbles something in his sleep and I laugh at the fact he’s even a miserable creature in dreamland. It helps to shed some of the sombre energy surrounding us.

“If you’re looking for my forgiveness to absolve you of the guilt and blame you’ve been carrying around, I can’t give you that.” Dina stares at me with a new resolve. A confidence she normally wears, but has been missing since she sat down.

“You don’t forgive me?” This is the truth I was afraid to hear. Now the weight feels even heavier.

She leans forward, placing her hand on the calf of my bent leg partially tucked beneath my opposite thigh. “I have nothing to forgive you for. Yeah, I held onto some resentment because I felt like you abandoned me, but as we got older, I realized you were struggling and trying your best with the crappy hand we were dealt. I got over it.” She squeezes my leg and pins me with her intense dark eyes that look just like our mother’s. “The only forgiveness you need is your own. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have blamed you for any of it. You think they didn’t know where you were really going? They were letting you be a teenager, Angel.”

“What?” I pause a moment to process this new information. “They knew?” All this time, that possibility never occurred to me.

“Of course they did. You were sixteen. Stop blaming yourself for acting like it. Okay, you lied and went over to a guy’s house. So what? It had nothing to do with what killed them.”

I’m in shock. Memories flash through my mind of all the times I told white lies and assumed I was getting away with it. How much did they know? Why didn’t they confront me?

Then an idea strikes me, so I hop up from the couch and go into my office, rummaging through decorative boxes on my bookshelf. I grab the one I want and return to Dina. I place the box between us, careful not to disturb Nacho, and remove the lid.

Dina’s eyes tear up when she sees the contents. It’s my memory box full of small souvenirs from special moments of our childhood. Ticket stubs, roller coaster photos, pamphlets from provincial parks we went camping at, and as many photos as I could fit.

Forgiveness is a fickle beast. More so than the temperamental chihuahua sleeping between Dina and me. But spending several hours going through the happy memories we had with our parents, crying, laughing, and sharing those special moments goes a long way to helping me forgive myself.

I stare at our last family photo, taken at Niagara Falls in the middle of summer. Dad’s Scottish ancestry and the intense sun left him with a sunburn so bad he’s glowing. Dina and I were both ignorant about things like skin cancer and were embracing our natural tans. Our mom’s smile was bright and reached her deep brown eyes as she looked down at us instead of at the camera. Life got really complicated shortly after this moment frozen in time. It got dark. Depressing. Hard. But it made us strong. And I think Dina and I both have become women our parents would be proud of.

All I ever wanted was to make them proud. Now, all I want is to be happy.