It Took a While – Chapter 1

Torn apart, five sisters come back home to face a painful past that still haunts them.

This is their story.

Rain

Rain poured for hours, a reminder of tough days past. Outside, the chairs seemed to have been left behind hastily, one of them thrown to the floor, forgotten in a puddle of falling drops. A few hours earlier, the family had been sitting at that table, sharing, desperately trying to overcome differences. These differences were deep wounds that had bled for years, wounds he was never able to prevent or help heal. He tried, but he bled too. How could he do anything if he was part of the pain shared? In his passivity, he saw the children fight through the storm, growing bitter and far apart. Years past, his wife, their mother, died. An over-controlling woman with a mean streak, she took pleasure in seeing pain in his eyes first, then in the children’s. He would never forget that final walk when he let go of his pain and, he believed, his wife’s too… When he saw the girls come back, he dreamt that the page would be turned. They would finally become a real family filled with laughter and those girlish giggles he yearned to hear when they were so small. Then the rain came… He fell and was rushed to the hospital. He never woke up again, but never before had he felt so alive, the family gathered, one last time, unknowingly just for him.

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 The image that inspired this story has been resized to fit the slideshow’s photo dimensions of this blog. I strongly recommend viewing its original size!