I step out of the room, ready, for the first time in a very long time, to see the people I love, the people I call family.
A fall breeze blows through an open window. A slanting, autumn sun bathes the hardwood floor with warmth.
Nate’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast. He’s taller than I remember, and more confident. The years have been good to him.
Ryan, with a full beard and a thinner frame, sits at the table, guitar on his lap and a notebook he’s writing in on the table. Those years I’ve slept, those years I hardly noticed anyone around me, only my own pain, they haven’t been as kind to Ryan.
“Hey, sis,” Nate says, tossing eggshells into a compost bucket. “I wondered when you might wake. It’s just the three of us today.”
Just the three of us. To hear Nate refer to us this way brings back memories. Good ones. Like the ones of playing in the park together, or of running around the neighborhood with our toy guns, or pieces of wood we pretended were guns. All the memories of before things got bad and weird and broken. To look at those memories now isn’t so upsetting. There was magic to that childhood, and reclaiming that may be possible.
Ryan lifts his eyes, sets down his pen and looks at me. “You look different.”
“I feel different,” I reply.
“Ryan’s right,” Nate says. “You look better than you have in years.”
“I feel that way too.”
“What happened?” Ryan angles his head as if he’s really looking at me, not just looking in my general direction. “Did you meet someone?”
“Yeah, you could say that.” That’s when I notice that I’m smiling. This isn’t Raphinea, and this isn’t the lamb’s mountain. I’m home again, but it looks brand new.
“Tell us about him,” Nate says as he turns on the tea kettle.
“I don’t know how to. It’s all so strange, but beautiful.”
“Does he treat you good?” Ryan closes his notebook. “Because you know, we’ll have to take care of him if he doesn’t.” And for the first time ever, this isn’t an idle threat.
I giggle, enjoying the warm embrace of protection these words provide. “It’s not like that at all. He’s more like, well, a king. The king. I feel so much more alive than I ever have before.”
“That’s good, sis, I’m really happy for you.” He doesn’t understand, but that’s okay. He will one day.
I sit across from Ryan and look him in the eye for the first time in years. We’re so much older now, older than the night of the party when I destroyed his reputation and spilled our dirty laundry all over the neighborhood. “Ryan, I want to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I told everyone what you did. I treated you like you would have hurt someone again, and you never did, nor did I think you would.”
Nate turns off the stove and quietly slips out of the kitchen.
Ryan’s eyes brim with tears. “You’re not the one who should be apologizing, Miya. That should be me.” He sets his guitar in the corner then sits back down again. “That should be me.” My brother, a full grown man now and tough as nails, weeps, tears streaming down his bearded face.
Tears burn the back of my throat. “But do you forgive me, Ryan?” I ask between his sobs.
“I do, Miya. I absolutely do.” He wipes his face on his sleeve and meets my gaze. “I know I don’t deserve it, not in a million years, I’ve done so much to hurt you. But do you think that maybe, one day, you’d forgive me?”
“I already have, Ryan. I forgive you.” I stand and round the table until I’m beside him. “Can I give you a hug?”
“You’d want to do that?”
“You’re my brother and one of the best people I’ve ever met. Yeah, I would.”
“I don’t understand how you could say that about me, but thanks.”
“I’ve seen you from a great height, and I think I know you better now.” My tears soak his shirt sleeve. His tears soak my hair.
And now I know, yet again, that the lamb was right. The healing at the far end is so much better.
THE END
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Ash Eater Page 20