7 Aug 2025, 16:29
You Didn't Even See The Signs
The walls had a mind of their own. The way they could seem so welcoming all
those days ago, only to become another meaningless structure by the end of her stay. They no longer had a meaning. Just walls, stronger than she ever could have been.
The last time Sage had packed up her stuff to leave had been nowhere near as…empty. Christopher had shouted at her, she shouted back. And now there was nothing. Just Sage. Alone in a room that drained every real part of her.
In a desperate attempt for some sense of solace, Sage placed her palm against one of the walls. How foolish of her to believe it could speak to her, mend her broken wounds, except the invisible scars felt more like seams. Haunting, empty echoing fell throughout the room. She dropped her hand like the wall was white-hot. She breathlessly picked up her bag, drained by the very idea a simple wall could fix what never was.
“Goodbye,” she spoke, the fact that she might never return to that room rang clear in her mind.
“Come on, come on, no time for lollygagging!”
She closed her eyes. Was he eager to be rid of her? Despite everything, Sage knew she would never be as ready as he was to let go. Every sign pointed towards dropping the idea he’d be there, she blindfolded herself to walk right on past.
Grandpa Lyser had left on the sixth of August, muttering a halfhearted farewell to his granddaughter. The rest of that day had been quiet. Empty. How funny was it that someone she barely knew held them all together?
“Sage!” This time it was Kora calling.
“In here.”
Bless her, Kora kept her face of innocence and naivety despite the shouting she’d endured over the trip. Framed by the dark hair of hers that would most certainly need a trim before Hogwarts, Kora entered. Had her eyes always looked so gray?
“We’re leaving for the station soon.”
“Oh.” She paused to clear her throat. “Right, sorry. I’ve just been… sidetracked.”
Sidetracked. There really were no words for the feeling you had when you were beginning to understand how awful your relationship with your father was.
Kora, however, didn’t turn away and leave her to fight the dragons herself. “Because of…everything?”
“Well, that, and the underlying sense that something will go wrong.”
Sage was no seer, but even she had the sense that Armageddon would come through. Whether it would be with Christopher or the literal end of the world, it held Sage by the throat.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” She paused again, holding years worth of words inside of her. “He asked about you. Yesterday. He wanted to know if you would ever forgive him.”
Her sister merely shrugged. “He’s never really been my dad in the first place.”
Deep inside, Sage knew she was right. Christopher was her biological father. Not Kora’s. Not anyone else’s. Her’s.
“But… If the time ever came… Would you forgive him?”
Kora stared straight ahead. “I don’t need to. I’m not the one he’s waiting for.” She finally dropped her back and joined Sage where she sat on her bed. “I don’t remember my own dad. But I don’t want Christopher to be my idea of what a dad is. I have Mum, that’s enough for me. I don’t want to sit around waiting until I decide I might as well welcome him back. But he isn’t my dad. He’s your dad.”
“I just… God, I feel so unfair complaining about not wanting him around when….”
“It isn’t unfair of you to recognize what you need.”
Sage, while no tears dripped down her face, sniffed. “When’d you get to be so smart?”
Kora smiled halfheartedly. “Around the time it occurred to me how lucky I am. When you first left for Hogwarts. I’m sitting around every day with a mum who loves me. I don’t have to worry about whether another parent actually wants me in their life. I have Mum.”
“I think we’re both lucky. Despite each having a dead parent… We have Cassie.”
“Awww, when’d you get so cringey?” Kora joked.
Sage yanked her into a hug. “Oh, please, I’m still your favorite sister.”
“You’re my only sister!”
“Exactly, therefore I am the favorite.”
A sudden swing of the door, and Christopher stepped through. “Oh, come on, girls. We need to get going! I don’t have time for these silly girl chats.”
And to think he wondered why his daughter and step-daughter weren’t too fond of him!
Sage seemed to fall into a world of her own. Walls of a glass house holding strong, withstanding the tornado whipping around the exterior. And her, stranded safe inside, watching the trees bend every which way. Inside that little glass house, she was sheltered from the roaring of a stranger’s words. Reminders that he only pretended to care. It was all just a ruse.
“Losing you was the death of something else in me.”
“You know her, always hiding.”
“I’ve given you every grand opportunity.”
“The hell is wrong with you?”
She flinched at every set of words. Words that she herself had heard from Christopher. Words that no matter how much ice water she poured over the burned spots they left would never heal, never fade. And inside her mind’s secret glass house, the tornado continued to swirl. Her eyes in the present time seemed glazed over, empty, staring at the empty shell of a father she had.
Fingers snapped in her face. “We’re leaving. Wake up.” Nothing in Christopher’s face reflected a single sense that he would miss her.
Inhaling the most difficult breath she ever took, she stood from the bed. Hungering for some sense of parental empathy, she trailed after the ghost. Fighting against every recollection of what he’d done, she continued to let herself follow him. She continued to allow herself to fall apart for a taste of a family.
Inside the car, the walls seemed to be closing in. Closing, closing, swallowing her whole. Kora, bunkered down next to her, glanced over when Sage’s hands began to shake. An earthquake-like tremor, soothed by the way Kora gently took her hand.
“It’ll be okay.”
But could you ever be okay? Could you ever delete the parts of you that ached, burned? Could you ever mask the facade you’d been living? Most importantly, could you ever find something better in life?
She’d go back in time if she could, remove the parts that she knew would cause pain. But now it was too late. Now it was time for her to simply let go.
“We’re early,” Sage said once they pulled into the parking lot of the station.
Holding tight to her seat belt, like it would do anything to protect her, she forced herself to unbuckle it. It wouldn’t be a trap to walk inside, she’d be returning home. Away from London, away from the part of life she regretted. It would be okay.
Inside the comfortable air condition of the station, goosebumps prickled up and down Sage’s pale skin. The chill throughout the air was nothing compared to the man next to her that radiated coldness from his heart.
“Your platform should be…” He paused, studying the screen, “right over here.”
Christopher led Sage and Kora the five minutes to their platform, holding Kora’s bag to lighten the load. The walk was just as uncomfortable as the drive, silent. Empty. Painful.
“About ten minutes, it looks like.”
“Mhm. Uh, I hope… I hope this trip wasn’t as bad as you might have built it up to be. I know there was some… family drama, but that’s just a sign of a loving family, right?”
Sage exchanged a glance with Kora. “Uh, yeah, sure.”
Forming a picture of the classic father-daughter group, one member short of a nuclear family, they stood with their bags and tight expressions. A woman, young with thin blonde hair, strolled by, pushing a stroller holding a young child who couldn’t have been more than two.
“Aw,” she exclaimed, pausing by the group. “Wish I could be going off on holiday with my son like you and your daughters!” The look on her face was genuine, like she was looking at a perfect, loving image.
“Oh, no. I’m afraid I’m just sending this one,” He paused to place his hand on Kora’s shoulder, “back to her mum in Kent.” He turned to Sage, somehow suddenly appearing sorry. “My other daughter’s going back with her.”
The woman somehow seemed to understand, nodding gently and smiling. “Hey, I get it. I’m a divorce kid, too.”
Sage noticeably flinched, she wasn’t a child of divorce, just one of a difficult situation. “They aren’t divorced,” she whispered under her breath, despite the fact the woman had already walked away.
Kora shifted herself from Christopher’s touch, eyebrows raised in a way that broke Sage’s heart. She wished she could invite Kora into her mind’s house, the place where neither would have had to face what they had just heard.
But one thing suddenly hit Sage. He hadn’t denied it.
And just like it was a normal, perfect day, he spoke. “You two know which stop you are?”
“Yeah… It’s… We’re off at the…” Barely managing to get through a sentence without stuttering, she gaped at her father. She tightened her expression, closing off the naive confusion she allowed to cross her face. “You didn’t deny it.”
Christopher laughed, no emotion tainting over the empty chuckle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”He turned his head, staring off towards the hundreds of other people. The other people that likely assumed this father hadn’t ostracized himself from his daughter. His second wife. His step-daughter.
“Don’t just turn around and act all innocent; that woman made a comment about divorce, a comment you didn’t deny.”
“Don’t cause a scene,” he reprimanded.
“I’ve allowed you and practically the entirety of this family to push me around and joke about my situation. That gives me plenty of rights to cause as many scenes as I wish.”
His expression darkened, like he was physically turning into the tornado that haunted Sage’s safe haven in her mind. When his lips parted, only the image that his face was cracking apart like an earthquake came to her mind. An earthquake designed to shake up her world, set her home on the other side of the world, to tear her apart. And when he spoke, it was like gravel hitting her skin.
“Sage Lyla Willows,” he articulated, “if you call this family a group of people meant only to harm you one more time, I will turn right around.”
Only three words came to her mind: maybe you should. Leave her yet again to allow her to face this emptiness alone, to survive in a glass house never meant for living. And then again… Turning him away like a wounded soldier who arrived at her door, sending him off to fight alone, didn’t that make her into a horrible person? A twisted, bitter, demon? But she couldn’t ask him to stay. Not when she’d been wounded before, left down on her knees howling into a storm that would never hear her.
“Well.” Every part of her that the earthquake had shaken up seemed to calm. “Maybe you should.”
Her voice, even and stoic, did not allow him the satisfaction of seeming like a scared little girl. Instead, she lifted her chin, stared him straight in the eyes, and waited. Those cold eyes reminded her of the wake after a storm, still. The sky tainted with gray, only minimal beams of light shining through.
“Sage,” Kora whispered, taking her sister’s arm. “The train.”
Sage gave her father one final second of a glance, giving him the time to take back what he’d said. Anything he’d said. But he didn’t. She lifted her bag and turned away from him, following her little sister onto the train home.
“Wait!” he insisted, taking Sage’s arm in a rather gentle manner. “Please. Before you go… There’s just one thing.”
Sage paused, but turned back and nodded to Kora, signaling her to board the train. “What could you possibly want now? Me to forgive you? To stay here with you? Do you want me to put up with your stupid arguments once again? I don’t think so. Spit it out, and it better be good, or I’m getting right back on that train without facing you one more time.”
Between the crease on his forehead and the way his lips turned down in a somber frown, Sage could have sworn he almost looked sorry. He took a long, shaking breath before saying the words that nearly killed her.
“I am divorcing Cassie.”
He dropped her arm. Sage nearly fell out of that glass house. She opened her mouth as if to say words that seemed quite impossible, but turned around with eyes wet with tears. She hadn’t even seen it coming. All those signs, the moments when she’d been told it may happen, and now it was like she’d never heard the word ‘divorce’ before.
On board the train, she sunk into her seat next to Kora. Unblinking, staring straight ahead, she kept the tears from falling. She refused to let Kora see the part of her that had been worn out and broken.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Sage took a breath as silent tears began to stain her face’s pale skin. “It’s happening. The earthquake.”@Brookline Quinn as she asked to be pinged
