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The Cold

The truth that warms the heart

By Kawan GloverPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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It was freezing for most of the year where they lived. The wind was whipping, snow was always on the ground, and there was never enough salt to clear the roads. The house they lived in felt empty these days. It sounded like air swirled through a hollow shell whenever a door open, echoing off the eggshell-colored walls. The paint was begging to separate itself from the sheetrock, and the tile was escaping the kitchen floorboards. This house that was once a home was dying, but neither of its residents’ felt motivated to prevent further dilapidation.

The air was rank and dense, circulating the grief that lay over the household. Friends and family stopped trying to visit years ago, as they were always met with some halfhearted excuse, which they knew were complete falsehoods. Financial struggles were plentiful in this household. Fortunately, the house was in the family and completely paid for in full. When the current occupants moved in, they were a young, spry family of four, but now, things are… different.

“Wes…Wes,” a voice cried weakly up the stairs.

The voice is met with resolute silence.

“Wes!” the voice cried again, only slightly louder and more strained.

There was a recognizable creak coming from the top of the stairs. Eventually, a hooded boy wanders down the stairs. He has a slouch in his posture, stains on his hoody, and a vacancy behind his grey eyes. His left cheek had a slight discoloration, and there was an old scar above his lip shaped like a crescent moon.

Wes reached the bottom of the stairs. “I heard you. Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear any response, Wes.”

“Whatever.”

Wes didn’t have many words for Ann these days. He was a brooding 17-year-old who hated the universe and loathed his position in life. Wes went through the kitchen and sat down at a foldable table in the dining room. Unfortunately, the actual dining room table, or what was left of it, was overrun with termite damage. It was no longer suitable for anyone, or anything, to eat from. Wes no longer sat on pristine dining table chairs but cloud-white lawn chairs made of brittle plastic.

Ann dragged her feet into the kitchen but stopped at the deteriorating gas stove. She grabbed the only two oven mitts in the house, with holes in the thumbhole, and slid them on. But, unfortunately, she could only hold the handles of the pot with her forefingers, so she needed to tread carefully, else she would waste this evening’s dinner.

Ann laid the pot carefully on the table.

“Whoa!?”

Ann looked alarmed.

Wes continued. “You’re gonna burn a hole in the table.”

“Oh, right.”

Ann picked up the pot quickly and noticed only a small burn mark, to which Wes just shook his head. He went into the disorganized and virtually empty kitchen to grab a wooden plank. Ann carefully put the pot down atop wood and grabbed three porcelain bowls from the rickety cabinets. While Ann was setting the table, a pitter-patter barreled down the steps. The pitter-patter turned into a gallop until a little human burst into the dining room.

“I’m here!”

Wesley smiled for the first time today. “Hiya, Julie!”

“Hello, my dear! Ready to eat?” asked Ann.

“Yep! I’m so hungry.”

Julie was only three years old and had no idea she was living in dire circumstances. Having no other life to compare it to, Julie was just as content, if not more so, than the children that had everything. She had a shaggy mane of shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair, and her teeth were beginning to loosen. Julie also had large round electric green eyes that could enchant anyone. However, by far, her most impressive feature wasn’t physical but her undying optimism.

Ann smiled and divided up the stew from the pot.

Julie couldn’t contain her excitement. “MMM! I love stew!”

Wes looked up at Julie and smiled. Then he continued to eat his stew in silence.

Julie broke the uncomfortable silence. “I wish we could all stay together forever! Don’t you, Wessy?”

Wes looked at Julie and wasn’t exactly sure what to say. He simply smiled halfheartedly, glanced at Ann, and returned to his bowl of stew. Tears were welling up in Ann’s eyes, but she forced them back, specifically hide them from Wes.

“Julie, honey. One day you’re gonna get big and move away from here. You’re gonna meet new people and everything! That’ll be so nice. Right?”

Julie stopped eating, and for the first time, lost her ubiquitous smile. “No. I only wanna meet my Daddy.”

Ann took a deep inhale and did everything she could to keep her composure. Wes sat erect in his chair, staring at Julie, with tears running down his face. Julie had since returned her attention to the last bits of her stew. She was quite happy about finding her last potato but remained unawares of the emotional shockwave she hurled at the dinner table.

Wes stood up. “Thanks.”

Ann nodded, and he lumbered through the weather-beaten kitchen and trudged up the decaying stairs to his room.

Julie grabbed Ann’s wrist. “Mommy! Come look at this!”

Ann glanced in the direction of Wes’s room, shook her head, and sighed.

“He needs to know,” she thought.

Julie tugged on Ann’s shirt. “Mommy! Come see!”

“Yes, my dear. Right away!”

Julie smiled and whisked her mother away into the living room to show off her new paintings.

Ann and Julie spent the day together until Julie tuckered herself out. Then, Ann swaddled her spirited daughter, placed her on the antiquated mattress, and kissed her forehead.

“Goodnight, my little angel.”

Ann turned and left her daughter’s room, closing the door on the way out. As she reached her bedroom, Wes brushed hurriedly past her.

“And where are you going?”

Wes halted his stride and responded without facing his mother.

“Out to the lake.”

Ann glanced at the ancient clock on the wall. “Now? It’s almost midnight.”

Wes turned around slowly. “Did you forget what today is?”

Sadness washed over Ann’s face. “I’ll never forget… but I was thinking all of us could go visit him tomorrow? You know, as a family.”

Anger began to seep from Wes’s pores, supplanting his sullen disposition. His face grew red, and his fists were wound tightly together. His front row of teeth protruded from his mouth, clamping down hard on his upper chin. Wes looked as though he could no longer hold it in, like the last tick on the time bomb had sounded. He had enough.

And then…nothing. All Wes’s muscles relaxed, his face lost the burning hue of red, and his teeth retracted. Despair had returned to stake his claim over Wes.

“We haven’t been a family since that day.” Said Wes.

Without uttering another word, he turned and slogged down the stairs. Ann stood by her door frame, quiet as a church mouse. When she heard the back door open and close, the tears began to fall like raindrops at the height of a thunderstorm.

Ann fell back into her bedroom. The grief of losing her husband was still fresh too, and it felt like 1000 blades to the heart every time she gave it a moment's thought. On top of that, she now had to raise two children in a house that he never got to finish building. Most days, Ann felt like she couldn’t even breathe, much less be a fully functioning single parent. Ann felt lost.

“If you’re lost, that means someone can find you. You know that, right?”

Ann heard his voice in her head, and she could see him extending his hand.

“Oh, Wesley, please help. I’m all alone and don’t know what to do.”

Wesley smiled at her. “Sure you do.”

He turned to the bedroom window overlooking the back of the house. When Ann looked out, she saw what she always saw, a large but wholly frozen lake. The only difference was the speck of green amongst the white of the snow. Wes, her son, was standing there staring down at the ice.

Wesley smiled back at his widow and vanished with the breeze.

Ann’s eyes widen, and the tears stopped when she had an epiphany.

.…

Wes stood atop the frozen body of water in the blistering cold, staring blankly off into the distance.

“I think it’s a bit too cold to be outside and not moving, Jr.”

Wes whipped his head 180 degrees, and there was his dad, kind of. Wes didn’t care though; his dad was the embodiment of everything good in the world. Wes felt a vast amount of conflicting emotions at the sight of him, but he held his composure.

“I miss you, Dad.”

Wesley smiled at his son. “I miss you too, Jr.”

A tear strolled down Wes’s face.

Wes Sr. “But you need to know it’s not your mother’s fault.”

“What? She knocked you off balance during an argument, and you fell through a crack in the ice.”

Then there was silence, except for the wind whipping, tossing around any loose snow. Scrapes across the ice came from the distance, and Wes Jr. turned around to see his mother.

Ann slowed her pace. “Hi, Wes. Aren’t you cold?”

Wes aggressively wiped away his tears. “I’m fine.”

There was a pause, and then Ann decided it was time to come clean.

She sighed. “Look, Wes, you’ll be 18 in four months, so I think you should know.”

“Know what?”

“Before…before your dad died, he was sick. Very sick.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He had lung cancer…stage four. We never talked about it in the house. Didn’t wanna worry you and Julie. It took him longer than it should have to tell me, and by then, it was terminal.”

Wes looked confused. “What does that have to with how he died?”

“Your dad,” Ann rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Came up with this plan to get the family some money when he died. He wanted me to take out a life insurance policy on him. We argued about it for weeks until I gave in. One night we were out here talking about it all, then he looked at me and said, “I ain't waitin to die in no hospital bed.”

Ann began to tear up, but she continued.

“I asked him what he meant by that, and he said, “I’m going out on my own terms, Anny” then I saw the crack in the ice and knew what he meant to do. “This is for my family,” he said, then he pushed me back hard and swam some distance under the ice. I tried to grab after him, but I can’t swim and couldn’t leave you two. I was devastated, and what’s worse is when I went to check on the policy, they told me suicide made the policy invalid. I-”

Wes grabbed his mom and buried his head in her shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, Momma! I been awful to you these past years.”

“It’s alright, baby, you didn’t know, but know that your daddy woulda gave any and everything he had for us. And he did.”

A pitter-patter was heard coming across the ice.

“Umm, what are yall doing? It’s cold out here! Plus, mommy said we gotta get up early so I can meet my Daddy.”

Wes smiled at his sister, then looked at his mom. “As a family, right?”

Ann smiled at her son. “Right. As a family.”

The three of them all walked off the ice that night and never spent any more time on the lake. They decided to visit warm places from now on. They invited people over, the community helped fix the house, and they received a mysterious check for the total amount of the insurance policy.

That night as they were walking off the ice, Wes looked back.

“Thanks, Dad”

And he felt the warmest he had ever felt, even amongst the cold.

family
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About the Creator

Kawan Glover

Kawan is a Survivor because he has lived through a stroke and three brain surgeries. Despite these hardships, he has started his own company called Overcome Adversity. He is a writer, public speaker, and self published author.

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