Page 7 of Of Heather and Thistle
When her mom died, everything changed. It was sudden—a car accident on a rainy night—and in an instant, the vibrant, joyful world she had built for them had come crashing down.
For a while, Heather’s dad tried. He did. He held it together long enough to get through the funeral and to assure everyone that they’d be okay. But they weren’t. He wasn’t okay. Without her, the house felt lifeless, as if the air had been sucked out of it. The garden she’d once filled with flowers grew wild and untamed, and the laughter that used to echo through the halls was replaced by silence. It wasn’t long before the silence turned into something worse. Her dadstarted drinking—not just the occasional beer after work, but bottle after bottle of liquor.
At first, he’d drink quietly, sitting in his chair and staring at the television, the flickering light casting shadows across his face, but never really seeing it. He quickly turned into a man who was angry, bitter, and unpredictable at all times. The man who used to sweep her mom off her feet in the rain turned into someone Heather didn’t recognize. He snapped at little things, his voice sharp and cutting. When the liquor took hold, he would yell—at Heather, at the world, at nothing in particular. There were nights when she’d lie awake in her room, afraid to make a sound, listening to him rant in the living room. Other nights, he’d collapse into tears, mumbling apologies to no one, and she’d feel a confusing mixture of pity and resentment.
Heather tried to fill the void her Mom left behind, though she was only a child. She cleaned the house, cooked simple meals, and kept things as normal as possible. But nothing she did was ever enough to fix him. The more Heather tried, the more invisible she felt.
By her teens, she spent most of her time at Ivy’s house, where the noise and warmth were a different world. Ivy’s parents welcomed her. Her siblings teased her like she belonged. And Ivy… Ivy became her rock. A soft place to land. A way to feel like herself again.
But no matter how far Heather ran, the weight of her father’s grief and anger always found her. The house, once so full of love, became a place she dreaded—a constant reminder of the mother she had lost and the father she could no longer reach. Her childhood ended the day her mom died, and in the years that followed, she learned to survive in the shadowsof her father’s pain. Her father hated that she looked like her mother. He never said so outright, but Heather could feel it in the way his eyes would linger too long on her hair or the soft lines of her face. He’d never been able to hide the bitterness in his voice when he said her name as if she were some cruel reminder of what he had lost.
She was ten the first time she trulyfelthis anger.
She had been spinning in front of the mirror, draped in her mother’s old shawl. It smelled of lavender and something earthy she couldn’t name. For a moment, she imagined her mother walking through the door, laughing at her clumsy twirling.
But instead, her father stormed in—red-faced, unsteady from drink.
“What the hell are you doing?” he had barked, snatching the shawl from her shoulders. Heather had frozen, her tiny body trembling under the weight of his fury.
“I was just—”
“Don’t.” He had snapped at her, his words sharp enough to cut.
“Don’t you ever touch her things again.”
He threw the shawl into the corner, its delicate fabric crumpling into a heap. Then he just stared at her. Too long. Too hard.
From then on, her resemblance became a wound he couldn’t stop poking.
“Fix that mess,”he’d snap if her hair was loose.
“Don’t smile like that,”he’d mutter.“You look too much like her.”
Her laugh grated on him, and he would snap at her to quiet down. The worst came when he was drunk. His wordsturned cruel—slurred insults for things she couldn’t change.“You think you’re so special, looking like her,”he’d sneer. “But you’re not. You’re nothing like her.”
He never hit her—not in the way people expected.
His punishments were quieter. Meaner.
He took away everything that reminded her of her mother: a scarf, a photo, even the stories she told herself to remember.
Piece by piece, he erased her—until she felt like a stranger in her own skin.
As Heather stood in front of the mirror, her emerald eyes swept over her reflection, again landing on her fiery red curls that framed her freckled cheeks. Her hair was a wild reminder of her mother, untamed and vibrant, though Heather often felt it only made her stand out in ways she didn’t want. Her fingers traced the curve of her jaw, then dropped to her shoulders. Lower still. She took in the rest of her figure with a familiar mix of frustration and resignation. Her body always felt like a contradiction—average in build but impossible to ignore.
Her full hips and softer belly made her feel conspicuous, her freckled cheeks flushed with irritation as she tugged at her waistband. She wished she could make herself even smaller—less noticeable, less her.
With a sigh, she turned away from the mirror, her curls bouncing as she moved. Pulling open her dresser, she grabbed a pair of loose sweatpants and an oversized sweater, their worn fabric offering a small, familiar comfort. She slipped them on quickly, the baggy clothes swallowing her figure, wrapping her in a cocoon where she could feel less exposed, less critical of the person staring back at her.
By the time she padded back into the living room, Byrdiewas curled up on the couch, her tail curled lazily around her legs. Heather sat beside Byrdie and pulled the blanket over her legs. Her eyes fell on the envelope, still sitting on the table like it was watching her.
“Just open it,” she whispered, reaching for it before she could talk herself out of it.
Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the thick, worn paper. The handwriting was instantly familiar—jagged and uneven, like he’d been angry even while writing it:
Heather,
I don’t know how to say this, and I’m not good with words, so I’ll get to it. I screwed up. A lot. It’s more than I ever want to admit, but I can’t ignore it anymore. I know I wasn’t the father you needed, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for all of it. The yelling, the silences, the way I blamed you for things that were never your fault. You didn’t deserve any of it, and I hate myself for the way I treated you.
