Ana Oliveira Part 4

Ana...
I’m sorry for doing this without talking to you, but it’s impossible to keep living this way. I didn’t choose to have children, and taking care of you has been killing me. I look at your face and see my sister, and before I do something drastic with my life, I’m leaving. There’s a savings account in your name at the bank, with the money from the sale of your parents’ old house. You can use that money to refurnish this house. I’m leaving it as a gift for you. I’m taking the furniture because it was my mother’s inheritance, and I couldn’t leave it behind. Forgive me, Ana! Now you have Josiah, and I know you’re strong enough to keep living without me.
Forgive me, Marina!
She couldn’t leave the furniture behind, but I was something she could?
I grabbed the phone from my chest, on the left side, and called her, sliding down to the floor in tears. I called for almost an hour, but she didn’t bother to answer. Lying on the kitchen floor, crying, I felt like trash, felt like there must be something wrong with me after all. Why didn’t anyone want to stay with me?
How could she think that leaving without telling me, abandoning me like a bag of trash, taking everything from the house, could be excused with a stupid letter? With a stupid empty house?
“How could you do this to me?” I screamed into her voicemail, leaving one message after another.
So that’s why she had been acting strange.
How long had my aunt been planning to abandon me in such a cowardly way? She took all the furniture from the house... All of it. My God! When would this end? I couldn’t take it anymore! I couldn’t! I was so angry! I started scratching my own arms, trying to feel something worse than the pain inside my chest, crying, screaming, wanting to die.
How much more could I endure?
Why was life destroying me?
Why did the people I loved leave me?
Leave without saying goodbye?
I screamed so much that my throat hurt. When the door opened, I thought it was her, my aunt, who had regretted her decision.
I lifted my head from the floor, dizzy, crumpling the letter as I squinted through tear-blurred eyes.
“Are you okay?” Lucah asked, slowly kneeling in front of me, trying to hold my shoulders. My God! Terrified, I pulled away from his wood-scented fingers, crawling backward. “I was dropping off a delivery from my mom with the neighbor, and we heard you screaming.”
“Are you alright, dear?” Mrs. Helena asked, her raspy voice questioning me from behind her half-moon glasses, wearing a floral nightgown. I felt calmer seeing I wasn’t alone with that dangerous man. “Do you want me to call your boyfriend?”
“My aunt...” I whispered. “She... She...”
“I thought you knew Marina was leaving. Did you two have a fight?” the neighbor inquired, her compassionate gaze scanning me. “Help the girl up, my son...”
“No! She abandoned me... She abandoned me, like my parents!” I screamed, collapsing into the arms of that man as he tried to lift me.
“Calm down!” Lucah said, his voice gentle and soothing as he lifted me from the floor. “I’ll take you to my mother’s house!”
“No! Jow will get mad at me. I can’t stay close, I promised, and you’re a pervert...” I spoke too quickly, trying to pull away from him.
I was losing it. I needed to breathe... I was going crazy.
“It’s okay! I’m not a pervert, but fine, I can call my mom to come here and get you, but I can’t leave you alone, especially in this state.”
It took me a long time to finally focus on something other than the screaming thoughts in my head. The feeling of being abandoned was exactly the same as what I felt when I found out my parents had died. It was identical, the same feeling of being broken, of being bad, of not deserving to be loved. It was the certainty that, in the end, maybe it was all my fault.
I stared into those almost blue-green eyes, with words jumbled in my head, with heavy, aching eyes, and I observed that face. He was so handsome, with a face slightly thinner than Josiah’s, he was so blond, almost as tall as his younger brother, with a light beard on his jawline, and dressed in a more formal style. He was wearing a dark blue button-down shirt, loose over jeans.
“Why isn’t Josiah blond?” I wondered aloud, staring at the tousled hair of Marta’s eldest son.
“Because he dyes his hair black. Josiah is a rebellious kid...” he said, sounding like he was holding back affection in his voice.
I kept looking at Lucah, obsessed with how he was so different from what I had imagined. He didn’t seem like a monster; on the contrary, his voice was so calm, so serene, that it was managing to distract me.

“Call Jow, please!” I asked. “Mrs. Helena…”
I turned to the elderly woman, grabbing her dry, wrinkled hands.
She smelled like talcum powder, and I realized she was ready for bed... Alone, on Christmas Eve... She really had no one; I had never seen children or relatives at her house, and suddenly, I was terrified of being alone in the future. I started crying again, feeling sorry for her and for myself.
“I don’t want to stay in this house! I need... I need to get out of here!” I murmured, holding my hair with both hands.
“Come on, dear! Let’s go to my house, I’ll give you something to drink while we wait.”
Mrs. Helena seemed sad as she glanced at the empty house, holding my shoulder as she walked with me and Lucah to her home. When I sat on her porch, on a dense, dark wooden chair, I watched Lucah on the phone. He seemed irritated, arguing with someone on the other end. It looked like he was talking to my boyfriend.
I was terrified. What would become of me? I couldn’t just move into Josiah’s house, forcing him to stay with me in such a serious way. What a disaster! What a mess! I was still afraid that my boyfriend would be mad at me for talking to Lucah.
I don’t know how long it took for him to arrive, but I sat there drinking the hot milk Mrs. Helena gave me, thinking about what to do, how it would be devastating to try to rebuild my life once again.
I only knew it was Josiah because the white BMW X4 stopped with screeching tires in front of the house, while he got out of the driver’s seat, with Marta pulling him by the collar and yelling at him to calm down. I didn’t know Jow could drive...
“What the hell happened, huh?” Josiah shouted, kicking the wooden gate as he entered. “Why are you near her? Didn’t I tell you to stay away?”
I cried uncontrollably, seeing how angry he was, the rage on his face as he looked at his brother, the vein bulging in his neck. Lucah was very calm, staring at my boyfriend with a serene look. They were opposites in every sense...
“Calm down, Jow!” I pleaded.
“I told you not to mess around, Josiah! Things are already bad enough!” Marta shouted, pinching his arm before coming over to me. “My dear, I didn’t understand anything... Did your aunt leave?”
I told them everything, how it happened, how I arrived to find the house empty, about the letter, the documents, and the overwhelming urge I had to die. To end everything, to finally make the damn pain inside my chest go away.
“And, Jow, your brother, he didn’t even do anything... He didn’t... I... I’m the one who did it. I always do, I mess everything up. I only know how to ruin people, and then they run away, they die, they disappear, and I end up alone.”
“Shhh!” Josiah whispered, squatting in front of me and cupping my face with his hands, forcing me to look at him. “It’s not like that. It wasn’t your fault. You’re a sixteen-year-old girl, you’re not responsible for what Marina did.” He whispered, kissing my face, then wrapping me in a hug.
“Yes... I am, of course I am,” I said too quickly, pulling at his shirt, trying to push him away. “It all started with Ben, and it ended here. My aunt left because I came to live with her, and she... She...”
“Stop, my love... Look at me!” he pleaded, again holding my face and positioning it so I had to look at him. I fixed my gaze on his face, feeling the air starting to escape from my lungs. “Listen, you are the sweetest and most wonderful person I’ve ever met. I’m in love with you, and everyone who meets you falls in love with your way... So, your aunt left in a very, very wrong way, but that has nothing to do with you. It says more about her. Calm down!”
I let my head fall onto his shoulder, inhaling his scent, trying to really focus on his words. But...