Close Up: Exposure Book Three Read Free

on Sundays and have dinner, but I saw them other times as well. Birthdays, holidays, etc. Especially when my mother was going through a crisis, which she often did. During those times, such as when my mother would be going through yet another divorce, I saw her often.
    Yet she wouldn’t talk to me, and hadn’t since the death of my brother?
    I had to get to the bottom of this.
    The cab got to my mom’s house, and I bravely gave him the money for the fare and told him to drive on. I probably should have asked him to hang around, because my mom would throw me out, but I felt that if I asked him to leave, perhaps my mother would at least hear me out. If there was a cab out in the street, then that would give her more of an excuse to ask me to leave.
    That was my thought process, anyhow.
    I took a deep breath, and rang her doorbell.
    I looked at my watch. It was 9 PM. My mother typically was a bit of a night owl, and stayed up late watching television. I hoped that tonight would be a typical night for her, and that I wouldn’t be waking her up.
    I held my breath, counting the seconds. I wondered if she would answer the door if she peeked out the peep hole and saw me. Maybe she wouldn’t.
    I felt like crying, but then I heard rustling behind the door.
    And, to my surprise and delight, she opened the door and just stood there and looked at me.
    “Mom,” I said to her.
    She shook her head and started speaking in Italian, which was her native tongue. Her last name was Parker because she was adopted by a family when she was only 10, but, at the time that she was adopted, she didn’t know a word of English.
    I wished that I could understand her, but Italian was a language that I unfortunately never learned. She only spoke it when she was upset, so it wasn’t necessarily a language that I needed to know.
    “Mom, can I come in?”
    She shook her head again, and yelled “Stella, come here right now. It’s your sister. She’s here.”
    Then she walked away.
    Five minutes later, Stella, my sister, was standing at the door. “What are you doing here? You know you can’t be here.”
    “Come out on this porch right now and talk to me. I understand that you and mom have been avoiding me ever since….” I shook my head, still not able to say the words. “I think that it’s time that you guys talk to me again.”
    “Mom can’t stand the sight of you, and neither can I. Every time we look at you, all we can think is that, if it weren’t for you, that little boy would still be alive.”
    I sighed. I knew that what she was saying was true. But, even so, I needed to bring some rationality to their brains. “Stella, you and mom aren’t perfect. I seem to remember that time on the playground that you were talking on your cell phone and Nathaniel went missing. Yes, he turned up an hour later, but you got lucky. And mom used to leave us in the car all the time while she went shopping at the mall.”
    Stella narrowed her eyes. “You seem awful flippant about your behavior and how it led to the loss of our precious brother.”
    “If I do, it’s because I don’t really remember any of it happening. I can feel it in my heart, though, and believe me, I’m grieving. But I feel that he forgives me for what I have done, and now it’s time for you and mom to do the same.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t really remember it happening?”
    “Let me come in, and I’ll tell you.”
    Stella looked doubtful, and my mom was standing behind her in the living room. I could see her, standing there with her arms crossed in front of her, her head rapidly shaking back and forth, Italian words spewing from her mouth. I had no idea what she was saying, and I didn’t really want to know, either.
    “You can’t come in. You’ll just upset mom.”
    I sighed. “Tough. Let me in, or I’ll make you let me in.” I was prepared to just push her to the side, but she relented, and stood to the side and made a gesture with her hand.
    “Come on in,