by Mikki Sadil
It just suddenly hit me. Katherine didn’t take my dad away. He didn’t really want to be with us at this point in his life. He didn’t want to be married to Mom, or to be a good father to us kids. He left with Katherine because he wanted to leave. If it hadn’t been Katherine, it would have been someone else.
I stopped writing and read what I had just written. See, I told you all along, but you wouldn’t believe me. That blasted little voice again. I knew it was right. My dad…uh, Michael, was a very strong and independent person. I had always said I wanted to be just like him. Well, until now, that is. But I knew in my heart that he would not have left this family if he didn’t want to. Maybe I’ll never know WHY he wanted to leave us, but I realize now that no one ‘took’ him away. Michael left because that’s what he wanted to do.
Maybe I’ll cry later.
* * * *
Same night, later —
We’ve had dinner, and I’ve done my homework. Nobody said another word about Michael at dinner. Gee, it’s so easy to call him by his first name instead of ‘dad.’ I wonder why? Well, I don’t really care why, I’m not going to ‘ponder on it’, as my grandmother would say.
I still think a lot about Amberley and why she had to die. I guess I’ll never know why God decided it was time for her to go to Heaven. I used to have some really scary dreams about her. Mom told me I would wake her up crying, but I don’t remember that part. I just know that I really miss her. I guess I always will.
It’s late. I gotta go.
I closed the journal and put it under my pillow. I looked out the window and saw that the clouds were gone, and the moon was shining. I saw the reflection of Sunni’s picture in my dresser mirror. I had put that one over my bed, and Mom hung the painting of the Golden Gate Bridge over the fireplace in the family room.
The Golden Gate Bridge. I thought about all the fun Amberley and I could have had if we’d been able to go to San Francisco together. We would have walked over the Bridge and gone to Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square. We would have gone to that big park where the huge old carrousel still works, even though it’s over a hundred years old. It would have been so cool!
I turned over and pulled the covers up. I was sleepy, but I couldn’t help smiling in the darkness. Amberley was there, somewhere. It’s not that I believed in dumb things like ghosts or spirits or stuff like that. But there were times when I had this…this feeling. I could almost hear her giggling. I just knew she was there, looking out for me and saying, “We’re best friends forever, AJ. We don’t have to say goodbye.”
The End
Mikki Sadil is a wife, mother, and grandmother who has been writing most of her life. As a child, she sat beside her French grandmother and listened to the stories of fairies and elves and ghosts and spirits that came from the “old country” of Alsace Lorraine, France. Her love of stories came from those early years, and she began her own writing when she was ten years old. Today, she has published more than thirty short stories and non-fiction articles as well as two books. She shares her home on the beautiful Central Coast of California with her husband, their beloved Corgi, and fat Siamese/Himalayan cat.