Page 47 of The Man in the Painting

I stare blankly at her, unable to grasp the concept of her presence. It suddenly seems like a heavy weight has tipped my world on the scale, and reality is catching up with me too fast. I’d deluded myself into thinking I’d live this dream forever...

“B...Brenda,” I stutter. “You’re back.”

Brenda’s brows pull together in a slight frown of concern.

“What’s wrong, Mel? You look pale. You must be overworking yourself again. I told you to take things easy, didn’t I? I thought you’d be cleaning this place around this time, so I thought I’d drop by. I swear I’d kill for coffee.”

She makes to enter the house, and I step aside dazed.

“Girl, I missed you so much,” Brenda chatters on, oblivious to the dread curling up in the pit of my stomach as I slowly close the door behind her. “Ella wouldn’t stop asking for you, too. And before you ask, mom is....” Brenda stops so suddenly that I almost run into her.

“Abram?” She calls, staring at him in disbelief. “Is that you, Abe?”

Abram is standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pants pocket.

“Brenda.”

His voice is cold, totally void of any emotion. He suddenly seems like an entirely different person from the Abram I turned my back to just a few seconds ago.

Every sign of warmth has drained from his eyes, and his face a hard mask of nothingness.

“Wh...What’s going on here,” Brenda asks, glancing at me and right back at Abram. “How are you here? This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“I guess it isn’t,” Abram replies coldly. “I believe you’ve been well.”

Brenda angrily drops her bag on the ground and marches up to him.

“You bastard!” She screams, hitting his chest with her fist. Tears roll down her cheeks in rapid succession. “How could you leave like that?”

I stay frozen to my spot, unsure what to do about the drama unfolding in front of me.

Abram takes her hits with an impassive expression. “I no longer had business here.” His voice remains cold, drained of any emotions, just like a robot.

“What?” Brenda gasps, fisting his shirt in her hands. “That’s your excuse for never coming back? Not even when Dad died? I sent you countless emails, you bastard!”

“He’s your father,” he says, gently removing her hands from his shirt. “Not mine.”

“What?” Brenda says, stepping away from him in disbelief. She looks at him like he’s slapped her or worse like he’s dashed any hopes she had left for their relationship. “How could you say a thing like that? You know how much he loved you... Damn it. He waited for you even in his dying moments. He left this house to you in case you decided to come back home.”

“The old man was always too damn nosy,” Abram says with a dismissive shrug. “I never asked to be loved by him.”

Brenda scoffs in disbelief.

“What about Mom?” she asks, wiping angrily at her tears. “She’s your mother, isn’t she? What do you have to say about that?”

“I’m sure she’s doing great without me,” Abram says with a tired sigh. “She didn’t need a son like me in the first place.”

“That’s not true,” Brenda says, shaking her head slowly. “She’s waiting for you. You know that we all love you.”

“Love?” Abram says with a scoff, his eyes rapidly filling with a venomous anger that sends chills crawling up my skin. “That’s big coming from you. You’re practically a stranger to me. And Mom?”

He laughs dryly.

“What does she know about love? Where was that love when I needed to be protected from that monster? All she did was cower in a corner while I got beaten to a pulp. Where was the love when he spat hateful words in my face? Where was the damn love when I needed to be protected, damn it?”

He runs a hand through his hair and turns away from her, probably to hide the overwhelming rush of emotions that I glimpsed in his eyes just before he turned away.

“But she got you out,” Brenda says in a softer tone. “She ran away with you and changed your lives around. Things got better when she met dad. You were the one who pulled away from us. You wouldn’t let anyone in.”

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