“and I lost you and I lost my mind”—Turn Back Time by Daniel Schulz
“And you have been staying with Nicole and that…”
I nod, chuckling softly. “Her pedophilic boyfriend? Yeah, unfortunately.”
“I cannot believe she is still seeing him,” my grandmother says, letting out a long sigh while picking up her teacup.
My Grandma and I have been talking for a while now, I’m not sure how long exactly, but enough for me to get more and more comfortable with the second. She’s asked me so many questions about what I’ve been up to, what it’s like for me living in Germany, whether it was difficult to learn German or not.
She’s also told me all about her elderly neighbor that keeps stopping by every morning to bring her some fresh milk because she once told him she preferred the fresh one over these packaged milk containers. I thought it’s cute, in some ways.
We still haven’t gotten to why I suddenly showed up here, but I’m not exactly upset about it either. Just having a short while with my grandma, talking to her like nothing ever happened is something I might never get ever again, so I will take every moment I can.
Oh, she has also told me about how Keith, the elderly neighbor, has fixed the fence in the front yard for my grandma. Apparently, my grandfather wanted to do that but, well, he never got to do it.
I thought this might be a great chance to ask her why she’s not mad at me for pushing her husband down the stairs, but then she changed the topic and talked about her newest addition to her flowerbed. She has started growing lilacs because they reminded her of me, and since she never got to hear from me ever, it was all she had left of me. After telling me this, she even asked if I still liked them or if she has to find another flower to keep alive.
My heart was doing all sorts of things when she said this. Mostly hurt.
The tears in my eyes are threatening to swell over with every new topic she starts to talk about, especially the ones that remind her of me and how I used to always come around the house to help her bake cookies on Saturdays.
Between you and me, I only ever wanted to bake cookies because I knew I’d see Aaron the next day, and I tried to impress him with my baking skills. It didn’t work, but still, I tried every week again.
“Your boyfriend,” my grandma starts, a small smile tugging on her lips as she speaks, “is he the little boy you always liked when you were younger?”
“He is,” I confirm. It’s kind of weird how life turns out. Sometimes one door closes and another opens. Other times one door closes, and ten doors open, making you choose. Then you choose the wrong one, and for a while your life seems great, but it turns into one big mess because that door wasn’t for you. So now you somehow have to find back through the chaos to the door that was supposed to be yours.
I think Aaron and my relationship was part of that whole choosing-the-wrong-door escapade. But, hey, years later and I finally found the right one.
“So, is he finally taller than you are?”
I chuckle, nodding.
For a short time, Aaron was shorter than me, and I always made fun of him for that. Even Lily used to be taller than him, but he still always insisted he was the tallest. He was the whiniest little boy known to human history, that’s what he was.
Anyway, no more beating around the bush.
Inhaling deeply, I finally rush out a couple of words that could lead to a very bad ending to all of this. “Listen, Grams…” My lips tremble when I speak, but I push through. “I actually came here to speak with you about something else.”
She nods like she knows. “Figured,” she says with a smile. “You brought flowers to your grandfathers grave.”
Okay, how?
There could have been at least a million different other things I wanted to say, how would she know it is my grandfather I want to discuss?
“I… Yes. But I wasn’t going to say that.” Here goes absolutely nothing, nor will here go anything if I keep rambling and not saying what I have to say.
“I know, Sofia.” She leans forward, reaching a hand over the small coffee table to grasp mine. “You’re not as secretive with your motives as you think you are.”
“What?”
“Dear, I’ve always known when you were upset. And I admit, for a while when you were ignoring me, I thought it was because you were upset with me, when I should have known you were upset with yourself all along.”
Upset with myself? That’s quite an understatement. I loathe myself for what I have done to my family, to her, to my very own grandfather.
How could she say I am upset when I had wished to exchange my place with my grandfather’s since the day he has passed?
I am not suicidal, but if there would have been a chance, I could’ve brought him back to life in exchange for my own, I would have taken it rather than live with the guilt of having killed him by accident.
The tears in my eyes become too much and swell over, one after the other running down my cheeks faster than I thought they would. Even when I wipe them away, they keep on coming.
“Oh, Sofia,” my grandmother sighs with sympathy, carefully forcing herself to get up from her seat. She walks over to me, sitting down beside me. “There is no need for you to cry.”
I shouldn’t do this, and yet I wrap my arms around her. My shoulders shake as I sob, tears falling onto her shirt, but she doesn’t tell me to move, instead, her arms come around my body, holding me.
“How are you so…” I gasp for air, my breath shaking. “How are you still willing to speak to me?”
Her hand strokes through the length of my hair before eventually feeling up the bow on the back of my head. “Why wouldn’t I, Sofia?”
“Because I killed your husband?” I break away from the hug, scooting a little over on the couch to bring some space between us.
I barely have enough courage to look my grandma in her eyes, but I do so anyway. Facing my trauma means facing it. I don’t start shit and then back out; I pull through with it.
When our eyes meet, she looks horrified. It’s like she has no idea what I am talking about. But she should, she was there. I mean, alright, she didn’t see me push my grandpa down the stairs but I’m sure my father has told her.
“Your grandpa died because of a heart failure, Sofia. What are you talking about?”
A heart failure? No. No, that can’t be. I specifically remember him grabbing on to my shoulder, holding on to me when I wanted to run upstairs. I kicked around myself and could only listen to the painfilled groans before he let go of my shirt and fell.
There is no way I made that up.
“He fell. There was blood everywhere. I kicked him and he fell.”
“He fell because he had a heart attack. The autopsy confirmed it. Your grandpa was sick, had a weak heart. We didn’t know how long it would take until he could finally rest, but we were all aware of it happening sometime soonish,” she says, laying a hand on my leg. “You were twelve, honey, even if you had kicked him down the stairs, it would have been an accident. You are not a bad person, sweetie. Especially not a murderer.”
So… she’s telling me I ran away from my home, my friends and family for nothing? I felt guilty for something that has never been my fault in the first place?
Either she’s lying to make me feel better, or my parents have done a shitshow of a job to console me.
