Traces

I've never really talked to anyone about my father. Chloe knows because she was always there, Stephanie too, mother pretends it never happened. Whenever I feel like saying something I stumble on the fact that no words can ever describe what he meant to me, so I keep the memories hidden inside where no one can reach them. It's just easier that way.

The only one who ever came close is that boy I fell in love with just before it happened. When he finally came back to the house that night, that summer, Carl, his parents were shouting at me. Belle kept to her family, mother was at her hysterical bests and Stephanie cried like a baby. I looked at my father and through all the tears and agitated voices the expression on his face scared me more than anything else.

I sometimes see it when I close my eyes and in my dreams, but most of all I see it when I look at that black and white picture of my grandfather, my mother's father, taken in the middle of Moscow's Red Square sometime around 1970: its barely noticeable but impossible to ignore and it looks just like fear.