Free The Lost Door by Marc Buhmann Page A

all you have, and I don’t want you withering away and dying alone.”
    “I’m not alone.”
    “I’ll haunt your sorry ass,” Elliott quipped.
    Willem smiled. He knew it was sad, but he didn’t care. “What do you think happened to him?”
    “Who? Dad?”
    “Yeah.”
    “There’s a lot of strange and beautiful things in the world, Willem,” he sighed. “I like to think he found something that made his life less hateful.”
    His heart was heavy, and Willem didn’t know he was crying until he felt the tears on his cheeks. He thought he’d flicked them away before Elliott had seen, but because of the look his brother was giving him he knew otherwise. Willem shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “I was just thinking to myself what it was about me he hated so much. Why I was the one he singled out. I suppose that’s pretty stupid, wondering about that now I mean.”
    Elliott shook his head. “No, not at all.” There was a moment of hesitation, then he let out a long sigh. “The last few months before he disappeared even mom really had no idea what was going on with him.” He opened his mouth to say more, closed it.
    “What?” Willem wanted to know.
    Elliott looked at him with intense eyes. “Dad lost it. There is no other explanation. According to mom he was becoming increasingly paranoid and agitated, part of the reason—she thinks—he began to drink so heavily. You want to know why dad singled you out? It’s because he thought you weren’t you, that someone different had taken over.”
    “Someone different? But that’s crazy.”
    “That’s what mom tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. She tried to calm him, to get him help, but he refused. That’s why dad took out his anger on you. He was sick, Willem. Nothing more.”
    “She told you?”
    “We talked about it, yes. She couldn’t understand why you left the way you did or why you estranged yourself.”
    “Because she didn’t do anything,” Willem said coldly. “All that I went through and she looked the other way.”
    “But that’s the thing—she didn’t. You know the old adage ‘love blinds you’? There’s truth to that. She didn’t know how bad it had gotten for you because she still loved her husband and was trying to understand what was going on. So she wasn’t ignoring what was happening, she didn’t see it.”
    “She had to have known—”
    “Why? Because you told her?”
    Had he talked to her about it at the time? He thought so, but now as he sat here he was second guessing himself. Regardless, the anger and disappointment he’d latched onto toward his mother and brother had grabbed onto him and wouldn’t let go. “Never you or mom or Sammy. Me. It was only me.” The tears began to flow again, this time freely, and without humility. And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he understood why he’d become the man he had. “You want to know why I never married, Elliott?” He stood, wanting to be out of here, away from Elliott and the memories. He needed fresh air, the coolness of the breeze. “I was afraid.”
    Willem went to the door, opened it.
    “Please don’t go.”
    “I need to step outside for a few minutes. Clear my head.”
    “Have you ever considered that the accident gave him the excuse he needed to leave? Maybe he didn’t like what he was becoming and left to protect us?”
    Willem didn’t buy it— couldn’t buy it. What father would run off like that?
    Elliott coughed and seemed to deflate into the bed. “Sometimes you just have to let it go, Willem. Sometimes there just isn’t always an answer to be had.”
    Willem looked back. “You want to know what I think happened to dad? I think he ran away like you said, and I think it was because of me. He abandoned us all because of me.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’ll be back.”
    Elliott gave a slight nod. I understand , it said. Go.
    And he did.
    Elliott passed a few minutes later.
     
    * * *
     
    A few months ago David started to