The Beauty All Along: Prologue
I called the number my aunt had given me. I was nervous each time I picked up the phone. My stepfather answered the phone every time with “Hola”, I’d let him know it was me and with no more words he’d hold the phone up to her ear while I talked.
Sometimes I could hear her breathing. But mostly it was silence that met my words. There was only one time I heard her speak. It was a faint and broken “Why?”
When she said it, my throat constricted and I wanted to reach through the phone to her, to see her eyes, to feel her breath. I wanted to be in the same room, breathing the same air, connecting over the brokenness because we had never connected at all. I knew that question intimately. It was the same question that had haunted me for years. It was a question I had no answer for.
“Mummy? What did you say?”
There was only quiet in response. I asked again. When again she didn’t speak, my eyes spilled their tears. I gave her the only answer I could after all these years of searching.
“I don’t k…