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Despite all the uncertainties I had to face in my life, the past three years had taught me that I could always be sure of one thing: no matter what happened, my wife would be waiting for me at home with open arms. When I saw her warm eyes and the curve of her lips once I stepped through our front door, I knew that things would be okay.
When I came home from work that day, I immediately sensed that something was different. My wife stepped around the corner to greet me but instead of the warmth she usually radiated, the only thing I could read from her expression was concern.
“What’s wrong?”
Before she answered me, her eyes fell to the floor. I followed her sight, noticing a pair of small red converse shoes that definitely didn’t belong to any of us sitting right before me.
“Spencer, there is someone here who would like to talk to you,” she said, the tone in her voice impossible for me to interpret.
I raised my eyebrows at her, confused as to why she was being so secretive and careful with the words she chose. Before I could ask her who it was, she motioned for me to come to the living room with her.
A young woman was sitting on the couch, fidgeting nervously with the seam of her shirt. She got up when she saw me entering the room, lifting one hand to awkwardly wave at me. I was sure that I had never seen her before.
“Hi…Spencer,” she muttered.
In an instant, the alarms in my body went off. Considering the field of work I was in, my wife should have been smarter than to let a complete stranger into our house.
With more harshness than intended I snarled, “Who are you? What do you want?”
The girl seemed shocked at the tone in my voice, staring at me with widened eyes and parted lips, hesitant to say anything.
I felt my wife’s hand making contact with my arm, gently squeezing it until I looked at her.
“She’s your sister.”
Nothing about what I heard made any sense to me and I huffed in response, “I don’t have a sister.”
The young woman seemed to have found her voice again and explained, “You do. Well, half-sister actually. William Reid is my father… our father.”
I was skeptical. She seemed to notice that, turning to her purse to pull out a small folder. Stepping closer, she handed it over to me. I hesitated to take it, so my wife reached for it instead. She opened it and took out a document, handing it to me. It was a birth certificate.
“I assumed you would want to have proof that I really am who I claim to be,” the girl stated.
She was right to assume that. I looked over the document several times in an attempt to wrap my head around the information I gathered with the paper in my hands. Her name was Hannah Reid , she had turned eighteen a few weeks ago, making her almost half my age. She was born in Las Vegas, her mother was Samantha Reid and William Reid was her father. Our father.
A part of me had always wondered if he had started another family after leaving my mom and me.
My wife took the document from my hands, suggesting, “Why don’t we all sit down.”
I complied, moving with her until we were seated on the couch. She handed me the folder to look at the rest of what was in there. There were photographs showing the girl sitting in front of me at different ages together with my father and a woman I assumed to be her mother.
Placing the folder on the coffee table, I looked at the young woman once more. Her hair was darker than mine and fell over her shoulders in loose curls. The golden sprinkles in her eyes were similar to the ones I found when I looked into the mirror.
Despite my memory of him being slightly blurred, I could still see the resemblance of my father in her facial features. This girl - Hannah - was telling the truth. She was my half-sister.
“I still don’t understand why you’re here,” I mumbled.
Instead of answering me, she said, “He talks about you. A lot. I think he is very proud of you.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he thinks about me!”
Hearing her words made something inside of me snap, having me jump up from my place on the couch. Hannah stared up at me in shock, clearly overwhelmed with my reaction. My wife grabbed my wrist to pull me back down into a seating position, wrapping her hand around mine when I found my place beside her once more.
When my eyes found Hannah’s again, her shocked expression had morphed into something different. Her features had softened, as if she had seen something familiar in my reaction. I felt my insides twisting at the thought that we might have more in common than just shared DNA.
“I couldn’t stay there anymore, so I dropped out of highschool and left. You’re my only family, Spencer. I didn’t know where else to go,” she told me with a slight shaking in her voice, implicitly confirming my previous thought.
She ran away from home in hopes to find the family our father couldn’t be for her with me instead. I took a deep breath, attempting to contain the chaos breaking out inside me.
“What about your mother?” I heard my wife’s voice.
“I told her that I couldn’t stay under the same roof with him. She said that if that’s the case, my father is not the one who has to move out,” Hannah’s voice broke at the last word as her lip started trembling. She bit down on it before she completely lost her composure. I wished I was able to do the same, but I felt any rational thought quickly being drowned by my inner turmoil.
She moved a little closer, looking directly at me as she whispered, “Our father… he is not a good man.”
“You think I don’t know that?!”
This time my wife couldn’t hinder me from getting up and walking away. I shut the bedroom door behind me, ignoring her calls for me to come back. I reached the bed right when the dizziness overcame me, the softness of the mattress cushioning the heavy fall of my body.
The metallic taste in my mouth right then was the same I tasted as a little boy at night, biting the insides of my cheeks too hard to distract me from the man who wasn’t supposed to hurt me. The thought that history had repeated itself when my sister was born was too much for me to handle.
Old habits die hard. Innocent souls die easily.
Deep down I knew that she deserved a different reaction from me. She was looking for someone to comfort her, only to find a man who was even more broken than she was.
My wife sounded further away than she actually was when I heard her calling out my name. It was only a matter of time for her to come after me, I knew that. But in that moment, I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.
“Leave me alone,” I breathed. “Please.”
She should have been smarter than to touch me then. When her palm made contact with my arm, my whole body flinched, having her retract right away.
With my face still buried in the pillow, I begged her, “Please, I need some space.”
“Okay,” she whispered, “but I will be back in a bit.”
There was no way for me to tell how much time had passed when I finally felt like the chaos inside me had simmered down a bit and the memories I still wished to be repressed were safely locked in the back of my mind for now.
My hands ran through what I assumed to be an already disheveled mess of hair as I sat up at the edge of the bed. I took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to ground myself when I heard footsteps coming closer. Looking up, I found my wife smiling softly at me.
“Hey,” she breathed as she sat down beside me. “Is it okay if I touch you now?”
I nodded, already yearning for her comforting touch. Her palm glided over my back and I leaned closer until my head rested on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s okay, Spencer. We both knew that setbacks were inevitable when you started working on this with a therapist.”
She was right, we had talked about it a while ago. I just hadn’t expected it to hit me so hard after feeling fine for months.
“Yeah I just didn’t think one of those setbacks would come in the form of my… my sister .”
It was the first time that I actually said that out loud. My sister . Hannah was my sister, a family member I didn’t know I had. I wondered if I could have prevented her from harm had I known about her existence earlier. That was when I realized something.
“She was looking for protection from her mother, the woman who was supposed to love her the most, only to be rejected by her. And now I’m doing the same.”
“You don’t have to. You have a choice,” my wife reminded me.
I sat back up straight to look at her. She was still smiling at me, patiently waiting for me to man-up enough to make the right decision. I just wasn’t sure that I could.
“I don’t think I can help her…,” I confessed.
Her fingertips met my cheeks, wiping away already dried tears. I leaned into her touch, listening to her when she said, “I hope you know that I will support you no matter how you decide to handle this. I just need you to keep in mind that however you react to her will have a huge impact on her life. I don’t want you to regret this later on.”
I got up from the bed, my wife moving with me, looking at me wide-eyed when I finally decided, “I need to talk to her.”
“She left thirty minutes ago. She told me she was staying at a motel and left the information on the kitchen counter. I think she was hoping you’d come find her. Do you want me to come with you?”
“Thank you, but I think I need to do this alone.”
My wife pulled me into a tight hug before her lips captured mine in a chaste kiss and reminded me, “I’m only a phone call away.”
The drive to Hannah’s motel wasn’t long enough to sort through all of my thoughts. I stood in front of her motel room door for minutes, contemplating whether I actually wanted to do this. I felt nervous about how she would react to me and maybe even more than that, I was uncertain how I would react to her .
Her presence was a reminder of the pain I once felt but that wasn’t her fault. She was the wrong person to blame.
Three firm knocks against the wooden door announced my visit. She swung the door open a moment later, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights.
Just like she did earlier, I lifted my hand to motion an odd wave, accompanied by a timid, “Hi.”
“Hi Spencer. Come in,” she said as she stepped aside to let me enter the room.
The place looked a little chaotic with clothes and cosmetics randomly placed on basically every surface. My eyes fell to the book on her nightstand.
“What are you reading?” I wanted to know.
“It’s just a collection of sappy love poems of writers long gone.”
Her statement made me smile. “You like reading poetry?”
“Yeah, I do. It reminds me that there is more to life than what I have seen. More for me to explore, something different for me to feel,” she explained while her eyes dropped to the floor.
“I know exactly what you mean. And you’re right, there always is more for us to explore.” I paused as I tried to find the right words to continue.
She found the words before I could, snickering, “You mean like, how to be a brother?”
I joined her in her laughter, “Yeah you must know I’m really new to this brother-thing, but I am willing to learn.”
“That’s okay. I haven’t been anyone’s sister before either.”
Her reaction sparked a warmth in my chest, a feeling I could only describe as hope spreading within me.
“Hannah, I need you to know, my reaction earlier… was not about you-”
“It was about him. I figured, ”she interrupted me before I had to say anything neither of us wanted to hear.
There was no need for us to speak the words to tell each other our stories. It was a silent understanding I hadn’t experienced with anyone before. Not even with Morgan.
I decided to address the inevitable, “So, what was your plan when you came here?”
“I don’t really know. I hoped that you could help me get on my feet.”
I wanted to make sure that I got what she was saying. “So, it’s money you need?”
She looked offended when she heard my words. “What? No! That’s not what I meant. It’s not a lot but I have a bit saved up and I’m planning on getting a job as soon as possible. It’s just really hard being all by myself. I don’t think I can do this alone.”
I stepped a little closer to her, just close enough so I could see those eyes that resembled mine almost perfectly. “It’s a good thing that you’re not alone anymore.”
“Yeah?” She giggled, “You think you could get me a job at the FBI then?”
“You would have to finish school first.”
She nodded and smiled as she said, “It’s on my bucket list. Right next to getting to know my big bro.”
Her choice of words made me laugh, having her chime in with me instantly.
After a few moments I offered, “You know, we have a guest bedroom that’s actually much nicer than this room. You could stay there for a little while until we have figured this out.”
“I would really like that. Thank you.”
There was a comfortable silence between the two of us on the car ride to my house. It was odd to me how someone I had just met suddenly felt so familiar to me.
When we got back my wife had already prepared the guest bedroom to welcome Hannah into our house – and into our lives.
I was sure I would be able to find rest inside my wife’s embrace that night. She held me tight against her chest and the sound of her heartbeat became a pacemaker for my own, finally slowing down at last. But just when I drifted off to sleep, I was reminded that those brief moments of relief never lasted long enough for me.
Demons were most powerful at night after all. Carefully they put leeches on my chest to suck my corrupted soul right out of me.
It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.
My own voice echoed inside my head until it morphed into the sound of my father’s whispers.
It’s just a dream. Go back to sleep, Spencer.
***********
“It’s just a dream. Wake up, Spencer,” I cooed when I noticed my husband’s sleeping body starting to shake.
My fingertips met his cheeks, wiping away saline droplets falling from closed lashes.
“It’s me. I’m here.”
His eyes shot open and before I could react to his panicked state, he pushed me away and jumped up from bed, running to the bathroom and shutting the door. I was right behind him, my hand meeting the wood right when I heard him lock it from the other side.
“Please, don’t shut me out,” I mumbled against the door.
I pressed the side of my face against the wood, hoping I could somehow share my warmth with him through the barrier. The dulled sounds of broken sobs went directly into my body, letting me flinch, feeling as if his pain would somehow etch into my bones. My heart shattered at the thought of him sitting alone on the cold tiles.
Rattling on the doorknob, I pleaded, “Spencer, please…”
To my surprise, he opened the door. Despite his height he seemed so small with his shoulders hanging low and his whole body shaking.
“Make it stop,” he whimpered and my heart broke some more.
Tears were streaming down his face and my hands instinctively reached for his cheeks to catch them. Before I made contact, I hesitated.
“Is it okay to touch you?”
He nodded, letting my palms rub over his face until I was only spreading the wetness instead of getting rid of it. I wrapped my arms around his neck instead, feeling him leaning his weight against me. His body felt heavy against my own but I knew it was nothing compared to the crushing weight he felt on his shoulders that moment.
Burying his face into the crook of my neck, his sobs became erratic and uncontrolled and his hands gripped the fabric of my shirt in an attempt to find support. It wasn’t enough, though, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t keep him upright.
I gently guided him to the floor instead.
With my arms wrapped securely around his body, he leaned against me as we sat on the ground together. Without a second thought I started to softly cradle him, swaying from side to side ever so slightly. His fingers were still gripping my shirt hard while my fingertips gently danced over his back. He was used to the harshness of life but I was here to show him something else.
Spencer deserved softness.
“I’m here, I got you,” I whispered as I placed a kiss into his unruly curls.
He cowered inside my embrace, his long arms and legs bent and folded to the point where it was impossible to recognize the grown man he was. Right then I wasn’t comforting my husband, no. I was holding the scared little boy he once was in my arms, longing for someone to protect him from the chaos of the world.
“You’re safe with me. It’s okay.”
Like a mantra I kept repeating it, hoping that it somehow would imprint into his mind to form a new truth. It was understandable that he was skeptical, scared of getting hurt again. But I wouldn’t let that happen. No matter how long it would take, I would sit with him like this until my love would finally spill over into his heart to heal his wounds.
The trembling of his body got worse, his chest was heaving as he was struggling to get enough oxygen into his lungs. When I wanted to lean back slightly to let him get more air, he held onto me, making it impossible for me to move away.
“Don’t leave me,” he breathed.
“I won’t, I promise. I’m here.”
Slowly but surely my husband’s breathing slowed down and there were only a few broken sobs left to wreck through his body. He was still pressed against my chest and I didn’t dare to loosen my arms wrapped around him. I wanted to keep him in place, close to my heart where nothing could harm him.
“My love,” I purred, “I hope you know if I could take your pain away, I would.”
A quiet hum was all the response I got but it was enough. He heard what I was saying and maybe he would even believe it someday. As he started to stir inside my embrace, I noticed how he let go of the fabric of my shirt, wiping over his eyes instead. He sat up and leaned against the wall behind us, not yet daring to look at me.
With a raspy and trembling voice he sounded a lot like what I imagined him as a little boy when he asked, “Do you still love me?”
Shifting my position, I turned to face him, my palm meeting his cheeks to encourage him to look at me. Even with the dim lighting of the lamp on my nightstand I could clearly make out the dark circles under his eyes and the red rims where his tears had spilled over his lashes.
“Yes of course,” I cooed, “I love you more than anything.”
His sight fell from mine once more as he removed my hand from his face with his own. He let my fingertips linger in his palm, though, allowing me to stay physically connected with him anyway.
“Even though you didn’t know how broken I was when we got together?”
What I would have given in that moment to be able to show him what I saw in him. I took both of his hands in mine, giving them a gentle squeeze as I told him, “You are so much more than what happened to you. This doesn’t define you. Spencer, you are not damaged goods.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
It was not the first time he said something like that but that didn’t change the fact that it still stung every time I heard those words.
“Yes, you do. What you don’t deserve are all the atrocities you had to endure.”
His eyes found mine again and I couldn’t hold back the gasp as I saw a dark glimmer in them. It wasn’t my intention but my words had caused his pain to shift into something else. He got up from the place on the floor in one swift motion, starting to walk up and down our bedroom. That was when I saw it.
Anger.
He ran his hands through his hair, pacing up and down, clearly unable to control his emotions. I got up from the floor, watching his every move.
Without looking at me, he starting yelling, “I just don’t understand why I can’t pull myself together and just fucking get over it!”
Rage.
“Healing isn’t linear, Spencer.”
Before I could grasp what was happening, Spencer groaned, took the three books from his nightstand and threw them across the room until they smashed into the wall opposite from where I stood and tumbled to the floor.
Fury.
I slowly walked over to him, reaching out my hand in an attempt to make contact. When he realized what I was doing, he flinched away from me, hissing, “Don’t!”
The tone in his voice made me wince and I took one step back to give him more space. With parted lips and a heaving chest he tried to get back his composure. When he sat down on the edge of the bed, I stepped closer once more.
With his face buried into his hands, I heard him muttering, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Shame.
Crouching down before him, I reached out my fingers. He welcomed my touch this time. I found his hands and pulled them from his face until he would look at me, unable to conceal the guilt visible in his expression.
“I’m not scared of you because I know you would never hurt me. I would be angry too if all of this had happened to me. It’s okay to feel this way.”
“I just want it to stop hurting so much,” He whimpered as saline droplets started to stream down his face again.
Without letting go of his hands, I sat on the bed beside him, promising, “And I will be by your side, no matter how long it will take for you to get there.”
For the first time in what felt forever, a timid smile appeared on Spencer’s face. He brought my hands to his lips, leaving feather-light kisses on each of my fingertips, only to be interrupted by a quiet knock against our bedroom door.
It seemed like only then he remembered that we had a guest sleeping in the room just a few feet away from ours. I got up to open the door, finding Hannah staring at me with concern clearly visible in her expression.
“Is everything okay? I heard yelling and-,” her eyes fell to the scattered books on the floor just mere inches away from my feet, “-well, that apparently.”
“We’re fine. Go back to sleep, Hannah,” I told her.
She didn’t buy it, instead tilting her head until she could spot her brother sitting on the bed.
“Spencer…,” she whispered, having him look up at her.
There was no way I could have stopped her from entering the bedroom to walk over to him. Spencer didn’t seem to mind. She stopped in her tracks when he got up from the bed, faking his best smile to try not to upset her.
She saw right through him.
“I don’t want to be the reason you feel this way,” she mumbled.
Spencer’s smile dropped and I stepped closer to the both of them.
“You’re not the reason-”
“-but I’m the reminder ,” she interrupted her brother. When he didn’t find the right words to respond to that, she added, “I think I should go back to the motel.”
“Don’t leave,” Spencer breathed, “please.”
Hannah couldn’t conceal the trembling in her voice when she asked, “Why not? I have brought you nothing but pain.”
“That’s not true,” he countered. “When I came to see you in your motel room, I realized something. Yes, you’re a reminder of a time I would rather forget. But much more than that, you remind me of something else.”
He paused, looked out of the window and I followed his sight, finding the darkness of the night slowly vanishing as dawn crept closer.
“Hope.”
He turned his head and looked at her once more, explaining, “You didn’t bring me pain, Hannah. No, this pain was already here. You brought me hope. Hope that there is more for me to explore, to feel.”
The girl was clearly overwhelmed with the situation, unable to find a response to what my husband just told her. I knew her expression very well, having seen it in Spencer countless times before.
“Would you like a hug, Hannah?” I offered.
She nodded and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer to provide a little bit of the comfort she so clearly yearned for but Spencer couldn’t fully give her. Yet.
When she was ready to let go of me I suggested, “Why don’t we all go back to bed and try to get some more sleep?”
“Okay,” she mumbled as she left our bedroom, “Good night.”
Spencer followed my advice as well, crawling into our bed and pulling the comforter over his body. I joined him just seconds later, pressing my chest into his back and placing a soft kiss right below his ear. He turned around to face me, wrapping me into his arms, pulling me closer until I nestled my face into the crook of his neck.
His lips met the top of my head while he let his fingertips dance over my back. One of my hands slipped under the hem of his shirt to make contact with his skin, my palm gliding over his back without a barrier until I slowly started drifting off to sleep.
“You are amazing and I love you,” Spencer whispered but I was already too far gone to answer him.
The morning sun woke me before my alarm could and I stretched my arms out, searching for the warmth of my husband. His side of the bed was empty. My eyes shot open, remembering last night’s events. I got up from bed and called out his name, realizing he wasn’t in the bathroom either.
Barefoot and only in my pajamas, I stormed out of the bedroom until I heard his familiar voice from the kitchen. When I walked in I found him preparing coffee and Hannah leaning against the counter with an empty mug in her hand.
My husband turned to me, seemingly unfazed from last night’s events. Not only that, he looked happy . He walked over to me to place a soft kiss on my lips, whispering against them, “Good morning, my love.”
“Ew, get a room!” Hannah giggled.
Spencer glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and she added, “Just kidding. You guys are cute.”
She poured herself some coffee and added even more sugar than Spencer usually did.
“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking coffee?” I snickered.
“Hey! I’m eighteen, I’m a grown-up,” she countered.
“Actually, the brain isn’t fully developed until age 25,” Spencer said matter-of-factly but added in a much sweeter tone, “so it would be totally okay if you didn’t feel like being an adult all the time.”
“That does sound nice, actually. I’m still gonna drink this coffee, though.”
When Spencer started rambling about the developmental stages of the brain, I went back to the bedroom to get dressed for the day. Once I came back to the kitchen, their conversation had shifted.
I heard Hannah hinting at something they must have talked about when Spencer came to her motel room.
“Remember when you said that you were willing to learn how to be a big brother?”
Spencer nodded, “Of course.”
She turned and pointed at the chessboard we had left on the dining table after our last game. “How about you start by teaching me that?”
“Chess? Yeah, I would really like that.”