54. Brielle
Chapter fifty-four
Brielle
Steam fogged the kitchen windows, blurring the snow outside. My hands moved on autopilot. Chopping, stirring, wiping, anything to keep them from shaking again.
Benjamin pretended not to notice. Reginald kept humming some Christmas carol under his breath, soothing but useless. Everything inside me still felt like it was breaking open once again, that same feeling of loss and abandonment forcing its way back into my mind.
Gentle footsteps entered the kitchen. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“Can I… help?” my mother’s voice came, soft and gentle.
I nodded without looking at her. That alone felt like a betrayal of how I’d felt fifteen minutes ago.
She stepped in carefully, reaching for a bowl of garlic beside Reginald, who was already peeling away. And we stood there working silently, the tension in the room palpable.
I wasn’t angry with her. Not the way Eugene was.
I was just… stunned that the truth she’d kept hidden had been that big. Reid Kaufman… my father had existed just outside the edges of my life.
I still didn’t know what that meant for me. For Eugene or for all the broken pieces we’d been holding onto for years. I finally exhaled, a breath I didn’t realize I’d been clutching tight.
My mother looked over to me, her eyes filled with guilt and regret. “Brielle… I’m sorry. I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”
“…I know,” I murmured. My voice came out thinner than I meant. “I know you are.”
“I wasn’t allowed to tell you… but even if I was? I wouldn’t even know how to,” she added gently.
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing about this conversation that wasn’t going to hurt.
She tried again, barely above a whisper.
“If you want us to leave… Reid and I will go. I don’t want to make this harder for you. Or for Eugene.”
Her words made me freeze. The idea of her leaving so soon after coming back felt like another kind of abandonment. And yet the idea of her staying… tangled just as painfully with what Eugene was feeling.
“Mom, I—” I sighed. “I don’t want you both to leave.”
I set the spoon down, wiped my palms on a towel, finally turning to face her.
“Brielle…”
“I’ve spent my whole life wanting a mother who would stay.” My voice cracked, and I hated how broken it sounded. “I don’t want to lose you again before I even get used to having you.” Her eyes filled instantly, like she’d been waiting to hear those words for years.
A tear rolled down her cheek, and against my better judgement, I pulled her into my arms, hiding my face in her neck as she wrapped her arms around me. Feeling her close to me, hearing her voice, it made the racing thoughts, the memories of abandonment, all fade just for a minute.
Maybe this was what Eugene meant. I trusted too easily, wanted love, family too much.
And that was the difference between the two of us and the way we handled the abandonment.
Where he shut the world out, afraid of being hurt again, I opened my heart, knowing the risks, knowing I could be hurt again but loving the pain just as much as I loved the affection.
I always tried pulling him out of the darkness, always encouraged him to open his heart just a bit. Each time I did, I felt him get closer and closer to closing me out for good.
In the background, Benjamin cleared his throat loudly, shooing us out of his kitchen. Reginald joined in, ushering us toward the living room with a mutter about unfinished garlic.
The twins were playing with one another as my baby Elodie woke from her little nap, deciding she wanted to lay in her grandmother’s arms. I watched my mother hold her, eyes filled with love, and my heart swelled.
“How’s Eugene?” she asked after a moment, her voice filled with heavy sadness.
I put up a forced smile. “He’s doing good. Little Melanie is giving him a run for his money… Juliet is keeping him together.”
She nodded, wanting to say more I could tell, but she stayed silent, afraid, probably, of saying the wrong thing.
“I don’t know how he’s going to react… He’s still… not okay. And he always tries, but this—” My voice caught. “It could break him.”
My mother closed her eyes, pained. “If us being here hurts him, we’ll go.”
“Soon enough he needs to face you,” I replied.
She shook her head. “We talked about this, honey… It has to be when he’s ready.”
“But I know Eugene, Mom… He will never be ready. If it’s not me coaxing him or forcing him to let people in, he’ll shut the world out.”
“Even if he does… I can’t be the one to force the door open.”
My mouth thinned into a line, forcing myself not to speak again. I didn’t tell her he’d be coming tonight… that I’d convinced him using the one phrase he couldn’t refuse.
It’s just Christmas. I told him just like I did every year, every holiday, every celebration, wanting more than just the occasional pop-ins from my sister-in-law and niece. It’ll be just family… Come please, for me?
I didn’t tell him our mother would be coming either. If she knew… if he knew… everything would crack before it even had a chance to mend.
A thin thread of dread wound tight through my chest and around my throat.
Not only did I have to process the fact that my father was still alive, I was going to spend the rest of the evening mentally preparing for whatever version of Eugene would walk through the door.
The guarded soldier. The wounded child. The man who wanted to disappear.
The brother who always argued but stayed anyway.
Tonight could change everything… and I had no idea if it would heal us or break us for good.