Shattered Dreams [EDITING] - Chapter 76: Chapter 76

COREY'S POV:
We got back home and my mum put the kettle on. She even went as far as to get our special scones out, something which never happens in our household as they are reserved for when we have guests over, which is hardly ever as she isn't keen on it.
My mum's hobby is baking. She bakes when she is having a hard time mentally and physically. Most times when she is in too much pain to do anything, she will just lie in bed until she feels better but when she gets to the point where she needs to be out of her bed because she is losing the will to live then she will bake.
For my mum, baking is what ice skating is for Nadia and what hockey is for me; it's an outlet for all things in life. She pours her stress and feelings into the bowl and whisks it away leaving behind a more tasteful thing.
My mum sets her scones on the table. I wouldn't say that she is the best baker in the world but it is something she enjoys doing. My father whispers something in her ear and she takes a seat on the sofa and he takes her place in the kitchen. We are all sat in silence when he walks in again with a tray of tea for everyone.
No one wants to be the first to speak in this ridiculous scenario and even if they did want to speak, none of us know what to say in the slightest. What do you say when you have just met your sister who you had no idea was even alive until a few hours ago and the way you find out is by your hockey coach telling you he is getting married to her?
It's all just a lot to take in at once and it's a lot to handle. I wish that Nadia could be with me for this but I need to not rely on her as much as I want her to not rely on me.
My dad sits down and we are all left in silence again and I can only hear the sound of our deep breaths filling the silence. Everyone looks as though they would rather be anywhere else but here and I'm playing with my hands on my lap in an attempt to stop myself from growing stressed at the anxiety coursing through my veins.
I hate being in the quiet as it leaves me to ponder with my own thoughts and in my head is not my favourite place in the world.
Thankfully, the door opens before anyone has to be the first one to start speaking but the breath I was about to exhale is short lived as I realise it is Lily, Ed and his boyfriend.
"Fuck." I mutter under my breath, with my palms starting to sweat with anxiety. This
is a big thing for our family and I have no idea how they will handle it, especially Lily as she is so fragile. My sister isn't weak by any means, but I can barely handle this information myself, hearing it almost cost us the semi-final.
"Woah, what's going on here?" Lily asks the room, looking curiously around at everyone.
"They probably want to talk through Corey's hockey career and stuff, we should leave them to it." My brother responds, pulling his boyfriend, Will, to go up the stairs with him. I want to shout at them to stop going up but I am frozen in place. I need my siblings to know but I won't be able to handle the looks on their faces when they find out.
"I think it's best if you two come and sit down here and Will leaves." My dad says to them calmly, putting some jam onto his scone.
"Of course Mr Meloche." Will nods and makes his way back downstairs but is soon intercepted by Ed.
"He can stay."
"I think he should go." I speak up now, finally saying my first words since being back home. I look at my siblings and they look back at me and they know something is wrong. Ed's gaze softens when he sees my expression. He doesn't say anything and only nods towards me before whispering something to his boyfriend. I notice Ed looking out the corner of his eye before planting a kiss on Will's lips and I smile, happy that he has finally felt confident in himself and his relationship to be able to be affectionate with his boyfriend in front of our family.
Will leaves and we are all left alone in silence once more. My siblings join me on the sofa, with Lily positioning herself on the arm of the chair and her innocence kills me. She has never even had the chance to really start living yet and she doesn't have a lot of friends. She's always been a lone wolf and always clings to the people she looks up to. That's why she gets so embarrassed and shy whenever Nadia is around, because she wants to be someone she is not whenever she's around and it isn't in her nature. Nadia thinks that Lily has a little crush on her and although I think that might be true, I also think there's something more, something like Lily just wanting to be her friend.
She has also never really gotten on well with girls as the ones at school have never been too nice to her as she is so different to them. They see Lily as the favourite because she is allowed time off school to train and so they try and make everything else as difficult for her as possible.
When people think of figure skaters you would assume it's someone popular, but not my little sister, she only really has herself, and me and Ed to look after her.
I hope that Lily takes the news she is about to receive well, she has always been a hothouse flower. If anyone deserves to have Natalie in their lives, get it's Lily as she was the loneliest growing up. She was younger than me and Ed were, so we never wanted to play with her when we got older, leaving her alone and it didn't help that she was the only girl in our family after Natalie left us.
Lily deserves to have her sister back so they can have the chance to bloom into a proper sister relationship. I love my sister but my bond is better with my brother simply because we are both male, that's just naturally how it is and that will also be the case for my sisters.
If they get to a close enough point then Natalie will be like a second mother to Lily as women have a mother's instinct about them and that instinct protects the people you care about from anything.
Lily needs protecting, she is lonely and she is vulnerable.
"Is he not allowed to skate again or something?" Lily questions the group, looking around the room, her eyes landing on Natalie and I can see her mentally going into her shell. She is terrified of other girls simply because of how they will treat her and much like with Nadia, I wish nothing more than to be able to take away anything bad that's ever happened and does continue to happen to her.
Everyone shares confused glances but my mum laughs when she realises it's because my coach is in the room. "Oh, no dear, it's not about hockey, or even your brother really."
"Then what is it about?" Ed asks, leaning his head in his arms now as he grows more agitated.
No one replies to them because no one knows what to say. It's not as easy as it was in the hospital as it's not a case of revealing Natalie behind a curtain as she is sitting here in plain sight. No one wants to say it as my reaction to when coach told me wasn't exactly the most pleasant.
"Oh my fucking god will you just spit it out?" My sister shocks us all as she cries out, almost standing up off the arm of the sofa. "I am so fed up with all the secrets and all of the lies. Tell us what the fuck is happening right now or so help me god."
We are all shocked by her sudden outburst as this is not in her character at all. My sister has never been the one to speak out on matters like this, usually only staying quiet even if it ends up hurting her. I smile at myself at her speaking up and I notice my brother's eyebrow quirk up at her.
"I cheated on your father many years ago." My mum blurts out, causing all of our faces to turn shocked.
"What happened to easing things?" Natalie laughs, although the situation is the furthest thing from funny.
"And who are you?" Lily asks but when my brother's eyes land on the woman who cracked the joke, his features turn dark. He catches my eye and his gaze is full of questions, all I can do is nod to tell him that it is who he's thinking and he looks back at her, studying her intently.
"I'm your sister." Natalie responds and everyone stays quiet, watching this interaction behind worried eyes.
"Oh." Lily says, stunned into silence and she shifts on the arm of the chair slightly. I slide over a little so she can slot herself in to be protected between me and the arm of the chair.
"Is anyone going to explain what the fuck is going on?" Ed pipes up now, demanding more answers. "You can't just drop two bombs on us like that and not tell us anything else."
"Where are we even supposed to start with something like this?" My father queries, looking stressed and I can't even let myself get worried about whether or not he will shout at us in a minute as I'm so confused.
"Start with the truth," I announce, feeling as though I have some new found confidence. "For once."
"As your mother said, she cheated on me many years ago with one of my hockey teammates and it was before any of you were born and they both said it only happened once," My father starts off the trip down memory lane, not showing one but of emotion over it other than a slight crack to his voice. "And let's just say that Natalie isn't mine."
"Oh." We all say quietly, not really having anything else to say at all because how do you even respond to information like this? We all thought that my mum was the most innocent woman ever and dad just resented her for no reason other than her being sick but now I look at it with this new perspective, it makes so much more sense. My mother isn't a saint, she broke my dad's trust and in turn that messed him up and turned him into the man he is today.
Everything is starting to make sense in my head the more that I think about it but the only thing that I would say I don't agree with is the treatment towards Natalie and how he seemed to have so much hatred towards her, when it should've been my mum he targeted those feelings towards.
I'm glad I'm finally finding all this out now but if there is one thing I want to take away from this is that my parents can find peace in themselves and their relationship now it's all out in the open and not some private battle they both have to face alone.
"I found out about their affair just before I went on the ice and that's where I had my accident, which ruined my career as you all know." My dad begins to explain further and my heart cracks at how similar our scenarios are. I'm glad my career isn't ruined like his but I understand exactly what he felt in those moments.
When you fall on the ice and you can't feel much of anything and the only thing you can do is lay there, your mind starts to wander to the darkest places of your mind and you start to tell yourself that your career is over. A black cloud takes over your brain, and the memories replay in your mind as you mentally say goodbye to the thing you have been working towards your whole life.
Thankfully, mine was only a dream, but for my dad it turned into reality.
"Is that why you hated Natalie so much?" Ed asks what me, him and Lily were all thinking and my dad shakes his head sternly and even Natalie looks confused at this question.
"What?" He asks, sounding offended now. "I never even hated the girl, even though she wasn't mine I raised her like my own. I forgave your mother because I loved her and I loved our little girl, regardless if she was mine or not."
"I don't believe you," Lily offers. "Even I remember the bruises on her."
"Bruises?" Coach questions, looking towards his fiance with concern.
"She was covered in them. She was definitely being hit and now we know the reason." Ed composes a story and honestly it doesn't sound like it would be too far from the truth.
"I had cancer," Natalie raises her voice, shutting us up instantly. "I had bruises because I had leukaemia. Our dad, or mum never put their hands on me, or hurt me in any way."
We are all stunned into silence once more and now the dots of memories in my head are starting to be joined together and make sense.
"You had cancer?" I repeat, needing to hear this again because right now it seems as though I made it up in my head completely.
"You're lying," Ed says, not giving Natalie a chance to reply. "We would've known."
"She's not lying, son," Dad confirms and my heart aches all over again for my sister. "We didn't want to tell you because we didn't want to worry you."
"You didn't want to worry us?" Ed raises his voice at our father, standing up as he speaks, visibly showing his anger. "What type of parent keeps something like that from their kid?"
"Please enlighten me on how a parent is supposed to tell their children that their sister is dying," My father bites back, causing Ed to sit back down. "There is no way to tell children as young as you were that you need to prepare for your sister's death."
I can't even be as angry as I want to be because he is right. I would like to have known about everything back then as it would make me have more of a connection to my father now because I thought those bruises were from abuse and I resented my dad for it. But, I know why they didn't tell us and I'm not mad at them for it, they were just trying to protect us from the harsh reality. If we did know about my sister dying and she disappeared all these years then we would've thought she died.
At the age we were when Natalie was going through this cancer we all would've been too young to understand anyway so it's not as though telling us would've been beneficial in any way, just added stress onto my parents when they were already dealing so much with Natalie's treatment.
"You seem to be fine now, so you didn't die. So why did you disappear for all those years?" Lily uses her brain to ask the most meaningful question to us. We know that Natalie is okay now and if we didn't that would be the first thing we would ask her.
"I'm surprised you even remember, Lil," Natalie smiles to herself before composing herself again. "I don't really know how to answer that."
"We sent her to a relatives to stay with." My mum says and this confuses all of us.
"And why weren't we allowed to know this?" Ed asks, wanting more information than what's being given to us.
"We didn't want you all to complain about not seeing her," My dad begins explaining years of unanswered questions to us all. "We know it's bad and we know we should've told you as you grew up but we thought you would just forget, like we wanted to forget."
My mum puts a comforting hand on my dad's back and he sinks into the touch. I want to look away from them being affectionate to each other, but I can't, not when it's something I've been longing to see from them all throughout my life.
"We thought she died!" Lily cries out, being the only one of us to be angry at this.
I understand her anger very well but the more I learn about the situation, the more I just feel sorry for my parents, who had to make the difficult decision to let their daughter go.
"We know and we honestly thought it better you think that than be told what actually happened." My mum admits, embarrassment morphing into her features.
"Well, what actually happened then?" Ed questions, looking far more composed than Lily does.
"I was told a bunch of lies," Natalie is the one to explain now. "They told me that I never did have cancer and that my parents were forcing it onto me so they could gain sympathy and money from strangers. I became old enough to make my own decisions and I wanted them to be my legal guardians as I hated my parents after all the lies I was told."
"They never made me leave, it was my decision after what I had been told," Natalie carries on, pausing every now and then to allow time to compose herself from the emotions. "Eventually I became cancer free so they had no reason to come and see me anymore, therefore we lost contact and I was moved away by my new adoptive parents and that's that."
We all sit in silence now, each of us processing her words in our heads. Lily bursts out crying and Ed and I instinctively move over to her to wrap her up into a hug so she feels protected by her two brothers. Lily surprisingly breaks away from the embrace, only to head towards Natalie to give her a hug but then does something we all never saw coming. Lily goes up to our parents and then puts one arm around each of them, giving them both a hug and she rests there for a while. My parents don't know how to react first of all but they soon sink into it, as this is something they have been longing for for a while.
Ed and I get up next, going to join them and we all hug for a while and we are shortly joined by Natalie and the familiar scent of Lavender fills my senses. This embrace means so much for all of us because for me, it feels like a piece of me has finally slid back into place. This hug is an apology to our parents, our dad especially for how harsh we have been on him over the past few years as we have all blamed him for Natalie's disappearance. This hug is also a way of giving eachother a fresh start. We have all done something bad to aid in the falling apart of this family and we all have things to apologise for but this hug feels like we are wiping any resentment away and we are saying that we are all willing to try and be a normal functioning family now.
"I'm sorry I blamed you for everything." I tell dad as I back off the embrace and he looks at me with now glassy eyes.
"Thank you, son." He nods to me and his gaze is full of apology as well.
"Now that's all cleared up, may I just ask one question?" Lily asks, breaking her own hug with them now.
"If you must." My dad sighs, but you can tell the sarcasm is there this time.
"Why were you so harsh on her when you knew she was sick? I seem to remember you shouting at her a lot." Lily questions them and my mum sighs.
"We hate admitting this because it's not good at all, but we wanted to distance ourselves from her in a way. We would not be able to survive the loss of our first child so we tried to put the distance in as much as possible, which was awful and clearly didn't work because even when we knew she wasn't dead, all these years that have gone by without knowing where she was has been dreadful for us both," My mum explains and it doesn't make sense as to why they did it still but I won't question it as it might be something someone doesn't understand until they have kids of their own. "The reason we sent her to live with relatives wasn't to distance ourselves from her before you ask, we did that when we knew she was going to be okay."
"I really am terribly sorry for how all of this may sound to you," My father looks towards Natalie sitting next to him and holds her hands in his. "Please know that you were nothing less than loved by us all."
"I know that and I don't blame either of you for what you chose to do. I understood it more as I got older," Natalie confirms, causing my father to let out a short sigh of relief. "I knew my adoptive parents were arseholes when i found a bunch of opened letters from you guys to me, along with other things in a box under their bed."
"You never got those letters?" My mum asks, horrified and Natalie shakes her head to confirm. "Oh my god. I thought you resented us for what we did."
"I did, for a while,' I won't lie but then I grew more understanding. I've had many years to deal with the pain of what happened and I've come to terms with it. I don't speak to either of them anymore and I haven't done so in years." Natalie admits, cheeks growing red now that all the attention is on her as she is pouring her heart out.
"You will stay in our lives then? We don't want to let you go this time, not without a fight." My mum practically begs her not to go anywhere.
"I will stay, as long as dad keeps his promises to them," She nods her head towards the three of us. "They deserve the parents I never got and he needs to stay clean for them."
"I will, I will," Dad confirms, holding his hands up. "I actually want to tell you all that I have admitted myself into rehab and I'll be starting on monday. I will be a better father."
We are all shocked at this as we never even thought he would admit he had a problem, let alone act on it. My dad has been a very stubborn and unkind man most of our lives and it's clear to see why now but this sudden change in him makes me feel uneasy. I know that my father and I will never be the best of friends but if he doesn't change then he is out of my life for good, after all I am eighteen so I can access my trust fund now.
"Wow, that's amazing, Jon." Coach smiles, putting a comforting hand on his fiancé's lap and I cringe a little at the action because as I've not seen my sister in all those years, she is still the same old little girl in my head.
"Whilst I'm gone, I'll need you three to look after your mum, okay?" My dad asks, showing us that he does actually care yet again. Over the years, I always thought that he resented our mum because she was sick, not because she cheated on him as that thought never even crossed my mind. It seems as though they are at a stronger place now, maybe they realised how much they really do mean to each other. "You can take it in turns so that you can still focus on your own lives too."
"Oh, we can help too," Natalie offers. "Can't we babe?" Natalie nudges coach and he springs into action. "Yes, of course we can." I laugh at how much my sister has him wrapped around her finger, which is weird to see as when we are at training he is this big, tough guy, who wouldn't take being told what to do off anyone.
"So, how the fuck do we become a family again?" Ed asks and we are all stumped because how the hell do you include your sister in a family she hasn't seen in over a decade.
"Quite easily I think because no matter how far away she's been, she's always had a place in this family waiting for her to get back where we left off." My mum states.
"Can I use the bathroom?" Natalie asks, looking the most awkward she has all night.
"Of course, it's your house too," My mum replies to her. "Do you remember where it is?"
It's weird seeing my parents turn into these new people. It's weird how yesterday they were their usual selves and barely emotional functioning and now here they are being sweet and loving. It is a bit unnerving to see and I don't know what to make of it as I've never experienced it before with them but I welcome it with open arms because I need the love from them.
The one thing I've been without my whole life is the love from my parents and now after all my years alive I'm getting it. I can't wait to tell Nadia about this, she will be so happy for me and I'm excited to see how well she will get on with my other sister now.
"Let's start with talking about how you two met." My father asks Natalie and coach and coach is the one to answer as Natalie stands up to use the bathroom.
I would love to sit and listen to how my coach fell in love with my sister and lied to me about it for years again but I don't want to hear it because it will anger me all over again. I stand up and go upstairs, wanting to have a minute to myself to process all the information that has been thrown at me over the past two days.
Although it's not the same in the slightest, I can somewhat understand what Nadia was feeling when she finally got diagnosed with CFS. She had so many unanswered questions regarding it and to finally have them answered is something you don't know what it's like until you are yearning for your own answers. Finally having my sister back and to know the reason we have been kept apart from each other for so long fills me with so much comfort. I have comfort because I know that we have each other now, the past is forgotten and the time we have now is to be spent together, getting to know each other all over again.
I notice that there is a door open upstairs and it's not the bathroom so I go and investigate. Natalie is standing there, in her old room and the memories flood back in as soon as I enter. Us all laughing under our own fort made of bed sheets and reading our favourite stories, Natalie and I playing doctors and Lily forcing us all to have a tea party with her teddies.
"Would you like an adventure now, or shall we have tea first?" Natalie says with a sad smile, breaking me out of my memories.
"Alice in wonderland." I say in a soothing tone, remembering how it was Natalie's favourite book as a child.
"I haven't been able to read it since, you know?" She says in a quiet voice, looking around at the Alice in wonderland themed room. "It reminded me too much of home."
"I haven't been able to do a lot of things when you left, so I get it," I try my best to comfort her, even though she went through so much more than me. "Lavender is my favourite smell now."
She gives me a small smile, then looks towards her childhood teddy that smells of Lavender. "Nadia seems like a lovely girl."
"She really is, she reminds me a lot of you and mum actually." I tell her, watching as she grows curious.
"Oh yeah? And why's that?" She asks, turning back to face me again.
"Because she's strong."
Natalie breaks the small distance between us and wraps her arms around me and I sink into her, her touch healing all the years of missing her and replacing it with nothing but love. Of course I love Ed and Lily so much, but Natalie has always been like a superhero to me and I start to cry at all the years we have been forced apart from each other. Natalie and I were the closest out of all of us so we really needed this alone time to be able to heal everything within us.
"I thought I would never see you again," I sob into her neck, smelling the familiar scent of lavender that I have missed so deeply.
"No, never," She states, holding me tighter as she begins to cry as well now. "Little brother, big sister, no matter wherever we are."