Finding Atlas

"Somebody please tell me what is going on." My voice quivered as I fell into the reading chair and set my mug on the glass table beside me.

"Sophia," Papa said, a warning blaring silently beneath his voice. My hands fumbled with themselves before I reminded myself to get a grip.

"She has to know." My hands reached for the hot chocolate again, their cold numbness in desperate need of some warmth.

"Do you miss your Nana Theriot?" My mother asked me, and I shrugged nonchalantly, ignoring the sad, throbbing heart in my chest. I missed my Nana like no other. Papa's face burned red as he got up and walked away, and as I opened my mouth to protest, my mother set her hand on my knee and said, "Let him go."

I could hear Grace yelling at my father in the kitchen, French weaving itself in and out of her words as she called him names. Something along the lines of an "insensitive bastard" and "coward."

"Is she—is she sick or something, is there something wrong with her?" My voice wavered as I chastised myself once more for being weak.

"Your Nana, well, she's been sick for a while." Mother talked slowly, as if I were a child again. "And up until a few weeks ago, she'd been doing pretty well. Treatment was working, medication was working, and the doctors were preparing to release her." I nodded along, expressionless, my face betraying nothing of the emotions that were raging on inside. I think I knew, then, that Nana wasn't okay, that she hadn't been okay for a long time. She took a deep breath before starting again.

"But then something happened, and the doctors couldn't explain it and, well," my mother continued, tears in her eyes. "She's gone." And it was out. Like a breath that had been held in for far too long, it was out. Like a candle that had been burning for centuries, it was out. And like emotions that had been bottled up for centuries, it was out. It was out.

"How long?" I asked, my voice quiet.

"Two weeks."

It felt like my life had paused for a moment then. I'm not entirely sure what my mother expected me to do, how she had expected me to react. She was full on crying now, releasing her emotions. I wasn't surprised, because she had always been close with Nana.

Me, I had always been close with Nana, too. Just as close, if not closer, as my mother. But not a single tear was shed, not a single emotion expressed. And then my life was in motion again. The mug I had been holding dropped to the floor and shattered, the hot chocolate staining the Persian rug covering the wood. I got up and sat beside my mother and held her as she cried. Her body shook, wracked with tears, as my arms wrapped around her and rubbed her back in comforting circles. It was the first time I'd actually been close with my mother. It was the first time my father had kept something from me, much less for that long, two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. My nana had been gone for two weeks, and my father had kept this from me.

Had it been killing him on the inside to tell me? Had he fought against the thought of telling me, had he not wanted to hurt me? Had he thought I wasn't strong enough to stomach the truth? Grace entered the room with her head held high before she started cleaning up the mess I'd made. The mug, shattered into jagged pieces of cream glass, scattered the floor as Grace swept them into a dustpan. As my hands still rubbed my mother's back, I focused on Grace's actions, entranced by the way thin bristles of hair could drag heavy shards of glass into a pan. Not that I'd ever admit it to anyone, but I felt like that mug. Shattered, that is. Broken to pieces. Although I'd never show it, I really was shattered.

And I was like that hot chocolate, too. Sprawling, clinging onto the nearest thing I could find and holding onto it for dear life because the surface that had been holding me up had just slipped away from beneath my feet. It was an odd analogy, but it made sense. I was shattered and holding onto whatever I could.