Tuessday's Tale - Funny

Welcome back to another Tuesday's Tales  This week I'm sharing from a brand new story in one of my WsIP and I appreciate both your visit and your feedback.

Funny – pt 1 of One for Sorrow…

 “You gonna tell me what’s crawling up your arse?” Jake kept his attention on the road ahead and the rising annoyance out of his voice.

“There’s nothing wrong, and you don’t have to be so crude.” Mandy shifted away from him knowing he’d hear the lie. She wanted to tell him and fumed when the words choked in her throat. The fact that other families broke apart didn’t lessen the shock. Her parents had always seemed so close and loving. So much so that other kids in school envied her.

Now… now she’d simply become another statistic. Just another kid, from another broken family. She wanted to laugh it off, to deny it. Funny, she thought, her mind going off at a tangent, she’d never expected to become a statistic.

How had she missed the signs?  Yeah, her parents argued, sometimes a lot, and, she thought back now, to the increasing number of times her father ‘worked late and travelled more often.’ But still it hadn’t registered on her radar.  She’d been so caught up in her growing friendship with Jake, she’d missed it all. In her misery she wanted to blame Jake, but knew that was taking pettiness to a new low.

Her mother’s words just before she left the house still clamoured in her head.

“Don’t be late back tonight, Mandy, we’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

“Start?” she’d asked trying to remember when they’d arranged to go out for the day and failed.

That’s when she noticed the red rims round her mother’s eyes, the more deeply furrowed lines on her forehead and the downward cast of her mouth.

“What start?” she asked. “Where to?”

“Your father and I have agreed to a divorce. He has found someone else he prefers to be with, and although he’s agreed to leave us this house, I find I can’t stay nearby and watch him staring a new life with another woman.”

Her mother’s throat bobbled, and Mandy had watched her struggle to hold back the tears.

“There’s more.” Her mother caught hold of her hand and squeezed.  “They have a five year old daughter.”

Daughter? Her father had a daughter? Well of course he did, she was his daughter, wasn’t she? And then the details hit. Like a rocket exploding in her head the words ricocheted inside her skull. Five years old, her father had a five year old daughter? She had a sister she knew nothing about? Anger, no fury, harnessed her emotions and threatened to break free, to lash out at the nearest person, and yet, how could she do that to the other person who must be hurting as bad as herself?

Rejection came hard on the heels of her fury. Her father loved his second daughter more than her. He must do, otherwise why would he leave her? Why walk away?

She’d always found it hard to make friends but Jake was different.

She looked round now as the steady sound of the car engine infiltrated her dismal thoughts. Jake was different and didn’t deserve her surliness just because her world had fallen apart in a matter of seconds.

Reaching out to lay her hand on his arm, Mandy inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry.” The thought of never seeing Jake again clamped her throat closed again and the tears she’d held back fell in torrents now.

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