i have buried you
every place I've been
you keep ending up
in my shaking hands
–justin vernon

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I KNOW IT'S MY FATHER just by the sound of his domineering footsteps behind me. My hands tighten around the railing of the balcony until they turn as white as the painted metal underneath them.

    This morning, we drove to the family mansion in the suburbs, where they usually hold dinners and get-togethers, and everyone has either been threatened by grandmother with the bank-account-freeze card if they don't come or too drunk to notice they're here.

    It's exactly a week after my slip : the visit to Caterina's home.

    My mind has been an absolute shit-hole ever since that day, a chaotic mess of jumbled, unorganized thoughts and what-ifs.

    What if she really has gotten better? That night was proof. It was proof. We sat, spoke till morning came, reminisced, touched. We barely raised our voices save for some petty bickering. She was the epitome of health and stability, excluding those last moments where I up and left, never mind them. Was I not giving her a second chance? Was I not believing enough in the love of my life?

    But then that horrible night comes back to mind again, and I remember why I gave up on her a month ago. All the tears, the blood on her nightgown, that far-off, terrifying look in her eyes.

    If my family knew I went back to see her, even if I'm a responsible adult who lives in his own apartment and works in a company bearing his last name, they would have my head. They've warned me, time and time again, not to set foot there.

    "You should come in," Father's deep voice orders from behind me, and I feel unsettled, being in a position where I have my back to him. "Food's ready."

    I nod and murmur a quick "I'm coming," if only to get rid of him. My father and I don't have the best relationship, seeing as his idea of disciplining a child involved belts and locked closets. It's just the way things were, it was simply in his nature. I've been living with the weight ever since, knowing I could do nothing about it. He was a country man at heart, rough and used to labor, and he brought me up the way his parents brought him up.

    It's strange to me that years with my mother and all of her posh, sophisticated family hadn't been able to soften his country man edges.

    "Did you hear me, boy?" He seethes, a little louder, though he knows he can't lose his cool when his late wife's family is right next door. "I said–"

    "I heard you." I retort back, my voice overthrowing his. My eyes are still fixed on the view. "And I said I was coming."

    I hear his rapid footsteps getting closer and closer until I'm sure he's right behind me, and for a moment, the ten year old boy in me goes rigid in fear.

    "Now you listen to me, boy," He barks, though the sound is surprisingly muffled and discreet, so as not to alarm anyone. "Don't you dare think I'm stupid, do you hear me? You think I haven't seen the pills in the damn trash—"

    "—Nat, dear?" The sound of  grandmother's voice suddenly lifts a weight from my shoulders, and I feel disgusted with myself, with how much this man affects me.

    My grandmother must've felt the tension between us, because she gives me a small smile and motions for me to come towards her. "Come on, sweetpie. Don't want the food getting cold." Then, her gaze lands on her son in law in pure disdain. "Isn't that right, Dawson?" Years' worth of hatred bubbled in her fierce green eyes. After my mother's death, the only thing that kept the two of them in contact was my whereabouts.

  She takes my hand and leads me to the dining room, where the smell of turkey and the cacophony of fleeting conversation greets me with open arms, and I still manage to shiver from the eyes that were burning holes in my back.

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