The Gift.
- I promised her I wouldn't come back here.
- I respect that.
- I gave her my word. You were there, you sat waiting by the door when she made me promise to leave and never come back. You should know.
- I heard her. And I heard you make the promise.
His voice was hoarse. Like wood in need of glass paper and a steady hand. She had often imagined his words like rough, uneven pieces of pine in her slender hands. A strange thought, she admitted.
- So why are you asking me to break it?
He wouldn't look her in the eye. Instead he scrutinized his own hands, wandered off in the lines and crevaces created from a life of hard labour.
- I didn't realize what it really meant at the time. For me, for this place. She should not have made you promise that. She should have known better.
- Perhaps she knew better, and that's why she made me do it.
Her words fell like polished, glass balls. He finally let his gaze brush against her. It was hurt.
- She didn't realize what she asked of you when she made you promise a thing like that. She was ill. Delirious. Dying. Why would she otherwise ask you not to return to your home?
- That was the first time my mother talked to me, instead of at me. Do you know that?
He shook his head. Went back to studying the map in his hand, outlining his life.
- My mother knew exactly what she was saying and you know that. In those final moments of her life everything seemed clear to her. You couldn't make her forget what she knew deep inside anymore. She was free and all she wanted was for me to be free too.
- That's crazy talk, he hissed and suddenly his old self reared its ugly head at her.
She smiled and rose as she reached for her coat. It was green and scented with the faraway life she had grown accustomed to. Her hand touched the handle of the kitchen door for the very last time.
- She knew you so well. And she wanted me to know what she knew before you trapped me here too. That was her precious gift to me, father. Her final, precious gift.
Bildkälla: http://musformation.com/%3Cpic%3E/Birthday-Gift.jpg
