Page 5 of Fever: Love In Scrubs

SIX MONTHS LATER

I stood in the fully renovated living room of my childhood home.

I hadn’t seen these floors in so long that it felt foreign to me.

For a month after my father’s death, I’d put off cleaning out this house because of the anxiety it brought me.

I told my aunt I just wanted to have it demolished, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it.

After a long, hard conversation with myself, I decided to clean it out and renovate it.

Much to my surprise, my father had a living will.

In it, left me the house, his pension, and his insurance money. The total came to about $800,000… a shock to me. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes mixed in with my mother’s then spread out on the lake. His had been sitting in a box in my closet since after the funeral.

I wanted to wait until the renovations were complete before I did anything with them.

Even though neither of them were physically here anymore, I wanted to show them their restored home.

Almost every dime my father left me went into paying off his debt, the house, and the renovation.

I had about fifty thousand dollars left of it and that went into my rainy day fund.

The cleaning company had worked tirelessly from the front to the back of the house, then the top to the bottom.

There were so many things and when they asked me if I wanted to go through and keep anything, I told them to trash it all.

The only things I kept were my mother’s ashes, her old recipe box, and his old photo album.

Today was the first day I’d been inside since the renovation was completed.

“How are you feeling?” Aunt Kira asked, as we looked around.

“Like we’ve come a long way.”

She nodded. “We did. I’m proud of you, Wynter. I know how hard coming back here was for you.”

She had no idea how hard it really was. When I came here for the funeral planning, I had a panic attack almost every day until I left.

It took so much out of me to be back in this place.

Thank God for Aunt Kira. She never left my side and neither had my cousin Tinka.

They’d offered me comfort and wiped away so many of my tears during that time.

“I can’t believe I’m moving back here,” I said. “I said I’d never live in this house again and now look at me. Moving in next week.”

Aunt Kira touched my shoulder. “You’ll be fine. This place is nothing like you left it. You have the chance to make a beautiful home for yourself. Everything will be great.”

“I hope so.”

“You have to throw a housewarming party,” Tinka said.

I shook my head. My cousin looked for any reason to party.

“And invite who?” I asked. “I don’t know anybody here anymore and even if I did, I wouldn’t have those bastards in my house. Did you forget how bad I used to get bullied?”

“I mean, we can always lure them with an invite and once they get there, bam! Beat their ass one by one.”

My aunt rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Tikayla,” she said, calling her by her real name.

“I’m just saying, it’s an option. For real though, you need to celebrate. You have a beautiful house and best of all, it’s paid off. No more high ass rent.”

“I guess that’s a bonus. Can y’all help me bring in the stuff from the car? I need to go by a few places, and I need some food.”

We retreated outside. I looked back at the house once more as we approached the car. It really was beautiful. I’d spared no expense with renovations and landscaping and the house was now one of, if not the best, looking house on the block.

“It’s about time someone did something to the place,” I heard behind us.

I turned to see where the voice was coming from and was met with the face of that fucking Karen. The years hadn’t been good to her old, meddling ass.

“Get the fuck away from my property,” I snapped.

She gasped. “Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Your property was a travesty, young lady. It should have been condemned a long time ago for being such an eyesore. I warned that man he was going to die in there and?—”

Before she could finish the sentence, I was in her face.

“You don’t mention my father!” I yelled. “Don’t you ever fucking speak on him!”

“Wynter, stop,” Aunt Kira said, pulling me back.

“Let me at her! She’s the reason CPS wanted to take me. She called them!”

The Karen bitch squinted at me. “So you’re the daughter, huh?” she smirked. “Well, you should be thanking me. You didn’t have to continue living in this dump. If it wasn’t for me, you might have died right along with him.”

I snatched away from my aunt and slapped the shit out of that bitch. She stumbled backward, holding her cheek and looking at me in disbelief.

“You hit me!”

“You’re lucky that’s all she did,” Tinka said, grabbing me. “Take a walk before I let my cousin unleash her grief on you. Go!”

Karen ran off to her house, yelling obscenities at me. I couldn’t believe I’d hit her either. I wasn’t a violent person, but her face took me back to the day I was taken from my father. That was the day I lost all hope of him ever getting it together.

“Come on, baby,” Aunt Kira said, steering my shoulders toward the trunk.

I took a deep breath and began grabbing things to unload.

Since I was making the trip down here, I decided to bring a few things now to lessen the load I’d be bringing next week.

As we got to the last of the items, my gaze dropped to the old, tattered scrapbook.

It had been in the back of the car since the cleaning crew found it.

I couldn’t bring myself to go through it, so I left it in the car. I’d seen my father look through it a million times. He was always adding things to it, although he never let me look in it. I remembered him telling me that I could only have it when he died… I guess it was mine now.

I reached for it, and placed it on top of the box I was carrying before taking it inside. With all of the boxes in their designated rooms, I grabbed the photo album and took it into the kitchen where Aunt Kira and Tinka were staring out the window at the back yard.

“You really did your big one on this, cousin,” Tinka said. “When I come to visit, just know the back yard is mine.”

I giggled. “If you say so, girl.”

They turned to face me.

“What’s that?” Aunt Kira asked.

“Daddy’s scrapbook. He loved this thing. Barely let me touch it.”

The two of them gathered at the island with me. For a moment, I just stared down at the old book of memories I knew was filled with happiness and sadness. With a trembling hand, I flipped the scrapbook open. There were so many pictures of my parents. It was like a timeline of their life together.

A smile found its way to my face as I flipped through the pages. They seemed so happy and in love. The way my father looked at my mom told me just how much he loved her. She’d been his everything. He kept ticket stubs from movie dates, napkins from restaurants, hotel brochures…all kinds of things.

The photos switched to their wedding, then my impending birth.

My father captured everything. There was rarely a picture where he wasn’t touching my mom’s stomach.

“He wanted you so bad, Wynter,” Aunt Kira said softly. “When Lianna told him she was pregnant, he’d never been so excited. You and her were all that man talked about.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at the pictures.

They changed from pregnancy to a single picture of me and my father after my birth.

From there, it just became a homage to my mom.

There were birthday, Mother’s Day, and Christmas cards.

He’d written so many love letters expressing how much he missed her.

In the beginning, he talked about me a lot, but it gradually shifted.

I was able to pinpoint the moment his grief took over. His writing was filled with different memories of their time together. It was like I didn’t exist anymore, and that was exactly how I felt.

“I can’t do this,” I said, feeling the emotions creeping back in. “Please, put it away.”

Tinka went to close the book, but something caught her eye. “What’s this?”

She pulled an envelope out and turned it around. Scribbled in my father’s handwriting was my name. It didn’t look old like most of the things in the book, so he had to have written it before he died. With a trembling hand, I took it from her and opened it to find a letter.

My Dearest Wynter,

I’ve started this letter a hundred times in my head, baby girl. I never knew how to put these words on paper, though. There’s so much I need to say to you. Things I need to own up to, and I’m not sure where to begin except with the truth.

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry for the childhood you didn’t get to have because of me.

I’m sorry that our house was never a home you could invite friends over to without immense shame.

I’m sorry that you had to navigate narrow walkways between towers of boxes and bags just to get to your bedroom.

I’m sorry that you learned to make yourself small in spaces that should have been wide open for you to grow.

My need to hold on to treasures to preserve a memory stole so many precious things from you. It stole your sense of home as a sanctuary. It stole your ability to breathe freely in your own space. Most of all, it stole the security you deserved to feel safe in your own house.

I see now how you learned to be quiet about your needs. I know why you never asked for friends to come over because I didn’t make it easy for you to have them. I understand why you found reasons to spend most of your time in your room because it was the only place that felt normal.

I understand why no matter how many times I begged you, coming home always felt impossible.

I never gave you a real home, only a roof over your head.

The walls I built weren’t just made of stuff that I accumulated over the years.

They were barriers between us…between you and the father you needed me to be. I deeply regret that.

My hoarding wasn’t about the things, though I told myself it was.

It was about fear, loss, and feeling like I needed to hold onto everything that reminded me of your mother because I was terrified of having nothing left of her.

But in trying to keep everything, I lost the most precious thing she left me.

I lost you, Wynter. I lost pieces of my relationship with you that I can never get back.

I know I put you in impossible positions.

I know there were times you tried to help, tried to clean, or tried to talk to me about it, and I got defensive or angry.

I know you felt responsible for fixing something that wasn’t yours to fix because it was me that was broken.

You begged me to get it together and I wouldn’t…

I couldn’t. That wasn’t fair to you, and I’m so sorry for the weight of that burden, baby girl.

You deserved a father who could see past his own pain to recognize yours.

A pain that I caused. You deserved a home where you could bring friends, find what you needed, and where you could feel proud of where you came from.

You deserved stability, space, and a parent who put your needs first. You needed your daddy, and I wasn’t there.

I can’t give you back those years, and I can’t undo all the ways my illness shaped your childhood and probably adulthood.

But I can tell you this: none of it was ever your fault.

You were never too much, baby. You weren’t asking for too much.

You deserved everything you needed and then some.

You deserved all the love and affection I wasn’t able to provide.

I don’t expect this letter to fix anything between us, and I don’t expect forgiveness.

I’m sure I’ll be long gone by the time you ever read this.

I just needed you to know that I see you now in ways I couldn’t back then.

I’m proud of you in ways I never knew how to express, but desperately wish that I could.

You deserved so much better than what I gave you.

That’s why I let Kira take you… to give you a fighting chance.

That’s why I never came to live with you.

I knew I’d eventually turn your home into a replica of mine, and I couldn’t do that.

I hope you’ve found spaces in your life now that are truly yours.

I hope you can breathe freely and feel at peace.

I hope you’ve surrounded yourself with people who see your worth and treat you with the care I should have shown you from the beginning.

You are loved, you are valued, and you always were.

With all my love and deepest regret,

Dad

Tears streamed down my face as I read the letter over and over again.

He never knew how bad I needed this. The little girl in me was dying to hear these words, that he cared.

I’d spent so many years believing that he didn’t, no matter how much he said it because he never chose me.

Years of therapy helped me realize that he was sick, but it never made me feel any better.

But this…it didn’t fix what was wrong with me, but it was the start I needed to finally start healing.