I exit N.N.P.O. not with a heavy heart as I expected but with relief and grief. Relief because I felt like somebody had finally decided that I was carrying a weight that I did not deserve for such a long time and grief because a very dear friend of mine was no more and I didn't even know about it.

I was feeling a lot of emotions but in a sequence, like two phases of a wave. Firstly, I wanted to cry because I was framed which culminated in me losing my job. So I do.

I start to sob as I think back to how hard I worked to get into the organisation. I remember the good days, but more than that I remember the bad ones. I remember being down but still getting back up on my feet. I remember how many times people had walked over me but my intelligence, hard work, and consistency saved me every time. I remember how much I gave it. 

After I was done crying, I felt a little breathless, but my brain was silenced. Is this called dealing with your emotions? I must've looked like such a fool, crying in her car, blowing her nose on tissue papers to people driving by, but what can I do? I am a fountain right now and I need space to let my water sprinkle.

Suddenly my phone started ringing, disturbing my healing process. I cursed and picked it up, along with the charging wire to see who was calling me. It was Elliot. I swipe on the end.

After his call, my phone starts to blow up. People from my company started calling me. I got a call from Mr. Gonsalez. I think the news of me handing in my resignation, from N.N.P.O. might have been made public and the email that I had sent to my company and Pete is what is making them call me up so many times. Pete calls me up three times but I keep on ending it. Elliot leaves me three calls. I guess he was also calling me because of this only.

What shocks me and makes me press the brakes on my car is the call that I get from him. My father.

Shit.

I picked up his call with a heavy bitterness in my heart. I think the bitterness that I have been unwantedly harbouring over the years is going to show.

"This must be the happiest day of your life, Dad," I press on my bottom lip and pull it inside my mouth after saying that.

"Shut up. I want you to come home right now," he says on the other end.

"What home? I don't have one," I reply impassively.

"Charlotte. Enough of this nonsense. I won't ask you twice. Just come home," he says again.

"Why now, out of all the times? You want to smudge the defeat in my face?" I ask him.

I hear him breathe heavily on the other side of the phone.

"Yes. If that's what will make you come home, then yeah. But remember, it wasn't me who said those words," he says.

His statement ends up confusing me.

"Why would that make me come home?" I scoff. My father is becoming delusional with his growing age.

"Charlotte! Come home! Right now!" He screams.

Geez! I think I annoyed him.

"Okay," I reply timidly and press end on the phone. Phew! I breathe out.

"What the fuck," I mouth, recovering from the shock.

There are already too many problems right now, and now on top of all of those, I have another one. My father.

My phone starts to ring again. What the hell!

I turn the power off. I can't handle it ringing all the damn twenty-four hours. Can't I just breathe for once!

The fact that I have enough money is why I am not that bothered by all the things that have been happening. But the thing that's going to irk me once I am out of my relief phase is how all of this is going to affect my credibility as a nuclear engineer and a businesswoman.

I was having a spectacular year but now it's not the same. No doubt it is still spectacular, just in the wrong sense.

I see my house as I enter the long-forgotten street. My family house is right in front of a park, where I used to play with all the kids on the block. 

The guards open the door for me to park my car inside but I park it against the wall. I get out and start to walk towards the gate. 

"Miss, you'll have to walk all through the driveway in this scorching heat. You should've just taken your car inside," one of the guards says to me.

I smile at him, "thank you so much. Your concern is heartwarming."

I don't give him any explanation as to why I am not taking my car inside.

The truth is— It feels weird.

I don't feel like I belong in this house anymore. I feel like I'm going to jail and I would much rather keep my things away from this place. My car by the side of the wall feels like a getaway car.  I don't want it to get stained. I don't want it trapped. I don't intend to stay here for so long. I'll walk in and walk out. That's it.

I start to walk but I see another car coming straight towards me. As it approaches me, I recognize the face of my father inside it. He swerves and takes a u-turn in front of me, making the tires skid and come to a stop. I walk towards him. He pushes the door open signifying for me to get into the passenger's seat. 

I hop in and fold my hands in my lap. I don't know if I should say anything. He races the car onto the driveway and within a couple of seconds, we are in front of the giant gates of the house. It's rather a semi palace than a house, I must say.

He gets out and I follow him. He throws the keys at a man, I guess he was a chauffeur. At the main gate, I met my mother who was looking at us, more particularly her eyes were on me, as I entered.

The reunion is.

So.

Awkward.

This is all that I can think of right now. 

"Are you hungry?" She asks me, her voice soothing and gentle.

Took me by surprise because her timbre was so different than the last time she had talked to me. 

I think my voice got left behind in my car so I just ended up nodding.

I follow both of them towards the dining table. They had changed the place completely. I don't remember a single thing being the same. Catching my gaze, my mother spoke up, "I refurbished the house myself to kill my loneliness."

My father coughed as he sat on the table and turned the plate around very loudly. My mother went to the kitchen. I followed her because why would I throw myself in a cage with a tiger by sitting with my dad on the table.

"Do you need any help?" I ask her.

"Sure. If you want to, you can carry this. Be careful, it's hot," she says as she points toward a vessel.

I find a tray and place the vessel in it. I placed some more items in the tray which my mother told me we had to pick up. After I was done, I walked outside and placed the material on the table. Dad was looking at something in his tab.

He narrowed his eyes at me as he saw I was trying to sit on the chair next to him. I gulped and stopped with my ass mid-air.

"Sit," he said and I sat down hurriedly. I think I saw a little smile on the corner of his lips like he was internally laughing at me.

We ate the food in silence. I tried to cut the items with my cutlery properly. I wanted to avoid the commotion of any kind. In awkward conditions like these, I end up throwing spoons and glasses on the floor, by mistake. Some situations are my trademark. If those don't happen around me, it means I haven't yet arrived. True to that, I end up scratching the cutlery on the glass plate and it makes a loud screeching noise which makes my parents look at my plate.

I was struggling to cut a chicken piece with my knife. It was stuck and hard. I couldn't cut it.

"For God's sake, just hold the damn thing with your hand and bite on it," my father said and reverted to eating.

My eyes widened and I looked at my mom, knowing how she disliked bad table manners, but my mother just winked at me and went back to eating her food.

If I wasn't already feeling weird, I was surely shocked now. Have I come to a new house with my new parents?

I kind of miss those who used to scream all the time!

Being done with this timid shit, I decide to speak up, "okay what is up with this niceness?"

They both look at me and give me such a boring look like they had been expecting this. 

"It's bad manners to scream at the dining table when everybody is having their food. So just get this done with, and then we'll start," my mom answers.

My eyes bulge out of my sockets.

My dad starts to laugh and mom smirks.

"This is weird, guys," I mutter and look into my plate and start to eat my food faster.

 After all three of us are done with our food, we move to the drawing-room area.

I guess the storm is coming.

"So," my mom starts.

"So," my dad begins after her.

"So?" I replied.

"Why did you resign?" He asked me. My mom straightens her back.

"Do you want me to tell you the truth or lie?" I ask.

"Don't waste my time with lies. I will do a background check on your story anyway, so do us all a favour. Just tell me the truth," my dad replies.

"There is a detective. His name is Braun. He told me that if I resign, I would be cleared of the uranium laundering charges and the negligence charges." 

My father's eyes widened for a second.

"Are they real charges?" He asked me.

"No," I replied rapidly.

"Then. Why did you hand in your resignation like a coward?" He asked me.

"I had no choice," I say.

"Bullshit. You are never handed a choice, you always have to find one," he says.

I say nothing. I don't agree with him but why fight with an old soul.

"Is there anything else?" He asked me.

I stay silent. 

"Tell me," he says again.

I stay put. I don't utter a word.

"Honey, your dad wants to help you out. Tell him what is troubling you," my mom speaks up for the first time since we started having our conversation.

I scoff, "why would he want to help me?" I say to no one in particular.

"Aren't you glad that I have been deemed a loser now? Because that's all that I ever was to you, a loser," I say looking at my dad.

An expression of hurt crosses his face. What was he thinking that his hospitality was going to wipe off the pain that he had given me over so many years? No freaking way. 

"These wounds are way too deep to be cleaned by swabs, father," I tell him directly.

"But aren't swabs the first aid whatever be the injury?" He replies in his emotional state.

Is he ...crying?

I can't look at his glossy eyes so I turn around.

"Follow me," he tells me.

I turn around to see his back turned towards me. I think he is wiping his eyes with his fingers.

I look at my mom and she nods at me. Why is she behaving as if I should listen to her? She hasn't been a peach in my life. As far as I remember, she had me cry tears that hurt like lemon in my eyes.

I follow my dad.

He leads me to a room that looks like his study or a miniature office. When he turns on the lights, the scene that unfurls in front of me in full illumination knocks me off my rocker.

He has posted all of my accomplishments and newspaper clippings on the green boards which cover almost all the walls. 

"Did you?" My emotional state cuts me off. I can't say anything. With a hand over my mouth, I just stare at him.

He nods. He has tears in his eyes. Like me, my father doesn't voice out his emotions that much.

"Please just hear me out," he says.

We hear the voice of the door moving and soon mother enters the room. She looked like she had been listening with her ear to the door. Her eyes are also glossy as she sniffles and smiles at me.

My father takes my hand and makes me sit on the couch. I scoot over to let him sit beside me but he kneels on the floor with my hand still held tight in his.

"Charlotte, I was raised by your grandfather as a man from a very young age. I have been taking care of my sisters. None of them wanted to work," he started to talk. His eyes were lost in the past as he imagined the things he was telling me.

" Then your mother came, and I just assumed that she didn't want to work. What kind of a man would I be if I made your mother work when I didn't make my sisters work for a single penny, literally blowing it over them. So I didn't ask your mother anything and chose the path for her. She, being the supportive wife, never spoke anything and she let her wishes crumble at my hands."

My mother put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and smiled. All those years, I had never seen my mom and dad interact like this in front of me. I always wondered how they made their marriage work but today I could see the love and pride one had for the other. It made me feel happy.

"Then you came and you used to play with toy dinosaurs. When girls your age dressed up Barbies you wanted to play on your brother's PlayStation. I ignored all those things, thinking that you're just growing up. You chose to study science and I never stopped you. I didn't stop you from anything because I loved you so much. But then you said you wanted to learn how to do business, you wanted to come to the company with Pete and me, and that made me feel ashamed of myself. I felt like a failure, that I hadn't given you everything you wanted, that you wanted to take things into your hands. I wanted you to be like my sisters, my wife who chose to sit home and enjoy their life with the money that I earned for them," his voice cracked at the end. I stood up, "get up Papa."

As the words left my mouth, a surprised sob left his mouth. I wiped the tears on his face. He got up. I made him sit on the couch and grabbed the glass of water that rested on the side table and handed it to him. He drank from it and calmed down a bit.

"But dad, you did stop me from doing what I wanted to do," I said softly as I held his hand while I knelt in front of him.

"And I have paid for it by almost losing my marriage, my daughter, and my son. But it's enough. I want my family back. I want my kids back," he wails while he cries.

I hug him as he sobs into me and my mom also joins us. Peace is where home is. You can build so many homes, but the peace that you feel where your parents live is like no other and I have been so lucky to realise it during this lifetime.

***
Author's note

I'm back on track.
Feels good.
Let me know, how you felt during this chapter.

Luv, Leena ❤
Bye-bye, until next time.