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…
“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.
* * *
Thank you
for reading another snippet this week, and please hop on over to read everyone's
offering for this week's Tuesday's Tales prompt.
