Fear Itself

“Just another day locked up in my tower,” I sighed, looking to the purring kitten that rested on my lap. I had been playing with Ralph all day, every day, since I had received him just mere days ago, and I was enthralled with the tiny creature. Finally, I had a playmate, somebody to keep me company through my father’s long shifts at work. I was perched on the edge of my bed as I stroked Ralph’s soft, silver coat, listening to him purr as his claws kneaded into my legs. I didn’t mind, even if it did hurt and sting something awful; I had been left with quite a few puncture wounds and scratches over the last couple of days because Ralph wasn’t quite aware of just how sharp his claws were, but I assumed he would probably grow into them and learn to control them.

Though I recognized Ralph was merely a ploy for my father to buy his way back into my good graces, I was quite in love with him. He was a distraction enough. My father certainly found a good way to keep me inside, I would give him that much. What a lonely existence, I thought as I flopped back on my bed with a huff. Ralph mewed and crawled his way onto my stomach, curling up in a ball and laying on me as per usual. I gave a breathy laugh at my kitten, but my eyes drifted toward my window within mere seconds. As hard as I tried, I kept coming back to it. Ralph had only distracted me from the outdoors for about a day; still I tried to keep my mind off of the freedom I wouldn’t have. I was finding that nothing could quell the craving.

There were simply too many things I hadn’t seen yet. To think I’d never get to travel or have a job or a house or a husband was something I found thoroughly depressing. I didn’t enjoy dwelling on such things, but my mind continuously wandered back to it. I knew nothing of outside. In fact, my father left details very sparse in almost every area.

He was superb at dodging questions, just as I was superb at asking them. My father’s existence seemed almost as lonely as mine at times, at least from what I had gotten from him. He never had anyone over, not since my mother’s death. He never mentioned having parents or siblings… nothing, but I was sure he must have. I had dug through my mother’s old photo albums many times, and I had seen a young girl spring up a lot who was very pretty, very blonde, and had blue eyes to match my father’s. Father looked considerably younger in all of the photos, so whoever this woman was, my father must not have seen her in a very long time, at least ten years ago but probably longer. She had photos with the woman as an infant, but none past the age of three months, and the nameless faces bothered me.

I turned my head from the window and tried to focus on the wall instead. It was useless to think of questions I would never get answers to, I supposed. With a quiet sigh, I turned my head to the ceiling, and I moved my right hand to pet Ralph, who had dozed off rather comfortably at this point. My eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and I briefly considered taking a nap, but a noise caught me off-guard. The sound of footsteps from outside the brick blockade surrounding our home alerted me, forcing me to sit up and startle Ralph (who just as easily relocated to laying on my lap).

Ralph, however, was not as pleased when I scooped him up in my arms. He mewed in protest almost immediately while I ventured quietly to the window for a better look. Shifting Ralph over to my right arm, I parted my curtains with the left, just far enough to see out. I craned my neck to get a glimpse of a short, blonde woman approaching the door. With a gasp, I stepped back and let the curtain drop. “No,” I muttered in disbelief. Upon a second look, the women seemed awfully familiar, but there was no way she was who I thought she was. I furrowed my eyebrows, deep in thought.

The sound of rapping on the front door sent my head swiveling toward my own door. “A visitor?” I asked myself softly, quite curious as to who this woman was and what business she had for stopping by, especially while my father was off working. Ralph yawned in my arms as I weighed my options: I could easily stay in my room like a good girl, play obedient, and just wait until the woman left. I could also answer the door and risk being recognized, discovered, or even punished, but the women just looked so familiar that the situation had me reeling. I groaned a little in response to my dilemma and rubbed my forehead before I opened my bedroom door and headed for the stairs. Curiosity was practically bleeding out of my ears; I had to know. I just had to.

Hesitation broke into my mind as I inched toward the front door, bare feet sinking in the carpet as I stopped dead in my tracks, eyes locked on the door. I nervously stroked Ralph one last time for comfort, and I strode forward and opened the door just a crack. I pressed my back against in for cover. “Sorry, if you’re looking for Nathaniel Giroux, he isn’t in right now,” I explained. “If it’s an emergency, you can reach him at the League Towers. He’s due to be there until later on this evening,” I continued. Curiosity got the best of me, despite my better judgment, and cause me to poke my head out just enough to see this woman’s face.

I wasn’t sure exactly what compelled me to do it, but I opened the door all way to look down at this woman and stare her in the face. “Um, hello,” I greeted her, standing stock-still, eyes frozen stiff much like my limbs. “I… um,” I began to say, unsure of why I wanted to introduce myself in the first place; I just felt as though I should, but something told me that I had already met this woman. Perhaps it was the undeniable mix of shock and nostalgia in this woman’s blue eyes that implied we wee previously acquainted. “I’m Tali. And… you are?” I asked, eyebrows raised, eyes still stuck on the woman in the doorway, unsure of what to do next.

“Tali…?” the woman repeated rather blankly as she perused my face. “Tali,” she repeated again. Suddenly, the woman gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, but she quickly withdrew it. I blinked, eyes wide with a mix of shock and utter confusion. “Tali as in Thalia?” she asked, finally seeming to come back to reality. Her eyes fell on my face, eyebrows suddenly furrowed in confusion. “That can’t be… Thalia is dead,” the woman continued, much to my shock.

“Um, yes, my name is Thalia. Thalia Rosalind,” I explained, nodding slowly, pausing. “Giroux.” I blinked, glancing around, trying to make sense of all of this information I was getting. I looked at the sleeping kitten in my arm, and then to my hand. I pinched myself to make sure I was awake and existing, and I slowly lifted my head to the woman. “And… I mean, I’m very much alive, always have been.” I stammered a bit, tripping over words, but the woman began to speak again, so I very quickly quieted myself and listened.

“Tali, it’s me… it’s Sophie,” the woman, this Sophie, reached out her hand to touch me but swiftly withdrew. I’m glad she did because I was still too shocked at this point to even think about touching this woman. “What am I thinking? You don’t remember me,” Sophie commented with a quiet sigh. “You were still so small… I’m your aunt, Tali,” she confessed. She gave me a very quiet laugh and a tiny smile. Her eyes studied me closely. “You’ve grown so much.”

“I…” I found myself at a loss for words. What was I supposed to say to her? What could I honestly say in response to, ‘Hello, I’m the aunt you never had?’ My eyes fell to my feet for a moment, and I said the only thing that came to mind when I lifted my gaze to Sophie once more. “I’m sorry… it’s just that… my father never mentioned having a sister.”

“Can I come in, Tali?” she asked meekly. “Is that… is that okay? I think it’d be nice to… talk.”

I looked around for a moment, and I realized that I was still blocking the doorway. “Oh, I… yes,” I decided, giving my newfound aunt a decisive nod before I stepped out of the way. “Yes, come in, please,” I offered with a nod, and I closed the door behind her once she stepped in. She stopped in the living room and looked around for moment. She didn’t look too surprised; she almost looked nostalgic. My assumption was that the home probably hadn’t changed all that much in the last two decades, save for the pictures of my father and I hanging on the wall. “Can I get you anything?” I asked, trying to be as polite as I could, but I honestly didn’t know the first thing about having guests in the house. “Something to drink, I suppose, since I’m an awful cook.” I grinned sheepishly. “But I do make a mean bowl of cereal,” I joked with a crooked smile, still confused and dumbstruck by this whole situation.

Sophie laughed quietly. “You sound just like her, you know,” she commented with a smile as she skirted around the coffee table and sat on the living room sofa. I quirked an eyebrow, and she must have sensed my confusion because she laughed and smiled at me. “Your mother… she was Scottish,” my aunt explained. I was still getting used to that: my aunt. “It’s odd, but your accent breaks at times, and you sound like Amelia.” She paused. “You look like her too. That was the first thing I noticed when I saw you a few weeks ago… not for very long, just a flash from the window… if I had known it was you, I would have come sooner,” Sophie explained as I inched my way over and sat down the couch, sure to leave a good amount of space between us. I was still hesitant. “To be quite honest, I was sure I had seen a ghost.”

I laughed quietly, awkwardly, under my breath. My eyebrows furrowed for a moment, and I looked at Sophie with an arsenal of questions prepared for her. She was willing to talk to me, and I was more than willing to probe for answers, but at the same time, I had a creeping suspicion that my father was going to come home. He wasn’t due home yet, though. I still had a few hours; the sun was still high, not even near setting. “So… why did you come here in the first place?” I asked, not meaning to be rude, merely curious.

“To speak with Nate—your father—about you, actually,” she admitted. “If it was really you, I didn’t think…” Sophie paused, sighing softly. Her hands clutched at the fabric of her pale pink skirt. “I had to make sure it was really you. All these years, I’ve been led to believe that you had died,” she explained. “If there was even a chance that you existed, I wanted to find you. We’ve been kept apart for so long,” she told me. She reached a hand toward mine, comfortingly, reassuringly, but I jerked mine away. I glanced at Sophie apologetically.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” I mumbled quietly and dropped my gaze, but I could see from the corner of my eye that she was smiling at me rather forgivingly.

When I cautiously offered my hand again, she took it and squeezed it just momentarily before returning her hand to her lap. “We aren’t strangers, Tali,” she explained encouragingly, and I merely shook my head.

“I know, I’ve seen us together,” I replied quietly, my voice barely above a whisper.

Sophie seemed rather surprised to hear this. Her eyes widened a little, and her eyebrows raised. “Really?” she inquired. “Where?”

“My mother’s photo albums,” I explained, smiling and raising my voice a little. “I look her through things a lot when my father isn’t home. You’re in so many pictures,” I told her with a nod, my smile widening, suddenly enjoying the fact that I had company. “And when I saw you from the window, I… I got kind of excited because you seemed so familiar.”

“You’re at the window a lot, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I responded with a nod. “I love my window. I sit at my window every single day. I can see people, clouds, the fireworks… everything. I watch the world from there.”

“It sounds lonely,” Sophie said to me, looking at me with genuine sympathy. I could see it in her eyes. There was a battle between utter joy for finding me and utter sadness for my pathetic existence. I would later grow to hate it when people gave me that look. “I wish I could have been here to watch with you.”

I shook my head quickly, adamantly. “I don’t have guests,” I corrected her. “Ever. Absolutely not allowed,” I added. “My father would flip his lid if he knew you were here. He’d ground me again and take all of my books and my records away,” I explained with a sigh. “If he found out I even let you inside—“
Sophie’s face fell into a bit of shock once more, and she glanced at the clock. My eyes followed; it was only about five-thirty now. There was plenty of time before my father returned home, but Sophie was following my train of thought it seemed. “I should probably go,” she decided. She glanced back to me. “Don’t be a stranger, Tali,” she said. “Promise me. You’re free to come over whenever you please. Here,” she said as she pulled a notepad from her purse and scrawled down an address. “That’s where I live. Stop by whenever you like.”

I gave her a nod, stuck the paper in my pocket, and I wanted to reply, but the sight of a shadow and the sound of footsteps behind the front door made my heart stop. My eyes widened, and there wasn’t enough time to tell Sophie to leave. Nearly throwing my kitten, I raced back up the stairs just as the door creaked open. “Tali, why is the door unlocked—“ my father called out and stopped dead when he saw his sister seated on the couch. “Sophie,” he said, feigning a small amount of enthusiasm. I recognized the voice; he didn’t want to seem impolite. “How did you get in here?” he asked, clearly done with formalities as he closed the door and entered as I watched from a hiding spot behind the railing of the staircase.

“It’s been a while. How are you holding up, Nate?” Sophie asked, genuinely being kind and polite, unlike my father. A smile graced her fragile features, and my father met her compassion with stark indifference as he reached the hall closet to hang his coat.

“I’m busy,” he responded rather bluntly, heading for the kitchen without paying her much attention, but my aunt, bless her soul, continued trying to engage in conversation with him.

Sophie sighed a bit, almost as though she expected this kind of reaction from him. “You’ve been quiet recently,” she commented, no doubt using ‘recently’ as a euphemism for ‘the past eighteen years.’ He ignored her, and she rose from the couch to approach him. “You told me Thalia died, Nate,” she said rather bluntly, to which my father tried to rebut. She simply continued to speak. “Nate, I promised Amelia that I would take care of her.”

“Please, Sophie,” my father finally replied. “Thalia’s very sick. She’s been that way since birth, and the stress of personal relationships isn’t good for her health. I think it’d be best if you left.”

My face twisted up into a look of confusion and disgust as I watched my father flat-out lie to his younger sister right in front of me, telling her that I was ill, that I wasn’t fit to see people. I had never once been ill in my life, and in my outrage, I found it difficult to restrain my anger. I marched back down the stairs. “Dad, let her stay,” I demanded, a rather serious look on my face.

He looked shocked to see me coming down the stairs, unaware that I had been listening, but the look faded into one of judgment. He turned to Sophie with a cold gaze, no doubt trying to persuade her. “No, Thalia. She was actually just about leave. Weren’t you, Sophie?”

I flew down the last few steps and grabbed my father’s forearm. He was taken aback, and he really didn’t expect or appreciate the wrought-iron grip I had on his arm. “Let her stay, Dad. You’ve lied to her for eighteen years,” I begged. “It’s the least you could do.”

My father shook his head in absolute dismissal. “I never lied,” he argued, still shaking his head. He tugged his arm from my grasp and grabbed mine instead, about to lead me back up the stairs to my room until I ripped my arm away. He merely turned to Sophie. “See, she’s not well. I told you. I never lied. She’s making things up,” my father told her. “Your presence is stressing her out. You really need to leave.” With that, my father grabbed her arm instead, gripping tight, beginning to drag her back toward the front door.

I saw her grimace in protest, squirming. “Nate,” she squeaked. “Nate, you’re hurting me.”

“Dad!” I called out, trying to get him to just let go of her, but my shouts were going unanswered. He just wasn’t listening to me.

“Sophie, you have to understand,” he told her. “It’s imperative that Thalia gets her rest.” He continued leading her to the door, though she turned her head to me and gave me a reassuring nod.

“Tali, don’t worry,” she told me, ignoring my father’s insistence that she leave. “It’s all going to be fine, okay? I’m fine.”

“Thalia, go to bed,” my father commanded, trying to shout over my aunt, and the noise was all flying at me at once. It felt like I was drowning in sound, and the anxiety had my heart racing and my eyes welling up with tears.

Just before the door, Sophie seemed to look around at the room again, then back to my father. “Nate, what happened to you? This house feels empty… it’s cold,” she told him. “Like a tomb, Nate. This isn’t a home anymore.” Her eyes looking at him, almost pleadingly. “Amelia wouldn’t have wanted this, Nathaniel. Not for you and certainly not for Thalia.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I watched this all transpire. My father continued trying to force her through the front door he had now opened. “Sophie, I asked you to leave nicely,” he told her, no longer listening at all. I sobbed quietly from the stairs, wishing and pleading that he wouldn’t make her leave, but it was all taking place right in front of me. “I told you Thalia was ill, and now you’ve upset here. I can’t have this, Sophie. I’m not going to ask you again.”

“Set her free, Nate!” Sophie shouted just as my father shoved her out and slammed the door shut in her face. Before my father could even turn around, I grabbed my mewing cat and raced up the stairs, slamming my door and locking it behind me. I rushed over the window, trying to see my aunt. My eyes darted around frantically, still stung with tears, until I saw. I took Ralph in my left hand and banged on the window with my right, screaming, “Come back!” I hoped that she would hear me, but she didn’t.

I watched as my aunt walked off into the distance, knowing this could very well be the last time I ever got to see her.