October, The Odd Ones

I couldn't sleep. As the room grew quieter, my thoughts got louder. Guilt still pricked at me in sharp, familiar places but underneath it, there was something steadier: a need to do better. To show her, not just say it once and expect it to last.

I've never been good at saying the right words out loud, not when it matters most. Feelings pile up inside me until they tangle and catch in my throat. But writing... writing gives me time. It lets me slow down, untie the knots, and let the words come out one by one, honestly. So I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and sat by the small desk near the window. Under the lamplight, I opened a fresh page.

There, in my uneven handwriting, I wrote the title across the top:

« Pensées du cœur » Thoughts from the Heart

One thought every week. Short or long. About the week that passed, a childhood memory, a fear, a promise, or just thank you for being here, even now. A small ritual. Not something to impress her, but something to remind both of us that love needs tending. That even when I can't always say it right, it doesn't mean I don't feel it, fiercely, deeply, stubbornly.

Tonight, it is an apology.

I m sorry for every time you had to guess whether I loved you. For every time I looked away instead of reaching for your hand. For every moment I let your shoulders carry the weight of both of us. You should never have had to doubt that you were wanted. Cherished. Safe.

But you don't have to wonder if I'm listening. I am.

You are my home October, and I will spend whatever time I have left becoming the kind of home you never want to leave.

I love you.

— T.

I folded the first letter carefully and placed it in the old wooden box, I will giver her these letters the right time, when she is ready. The box felt almost too small for what I hoped to put inside. When I slipped back under the blanket, October stirred, blinking at me with soft confusion. "Everything alright?" she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart," I whispered, pressing my hand over hers. "Everything's alright."

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, my chest tight with guilt and memory. The room was quiet, the kind of quiet that doesn't soothe; it accuses. Every creak in the walls, every breath of wind outside the window, echoed against the silence I'd built inside myself.

I keep replaying it all like some endless film loop I can't pause or mute. The choices I made. The excuses I whispered into the dark like prayers. The split-second moments when I could've turned back, could've chosen her, could've chosen us but didn't. Cowardice dressed up as confusion. Fear disguised as logic.

Some nights, the shame feels heavier than my own bones. It lies across my chest, relentless. And worse than the shame is the aftermath I see in her: the hesitation in her laughter, like she has to scan the room for danger before she lets joy in. The heaviness in her hugs, like she's holding something back. The shadows in her gaze that weren't there before, ones I put there.

I know I can't rewrite it. I can't explain it into something smaller or less cruel. There are no poetic metaphors strong enough to make betrayal sound like an accident. I don't want to be forgiven because I asked for it, I want to be forgiven because I earned it and until then, all I can do is show up. Every day. Not just loving her in the quiet safety of my thoughts, but out loud. Not perfectly. Not dramatically. Just stubbornly.

Just then, I heard a soft sound, floorboards creaking under cautious feet, the whisper of someone trying not to wake the house. I got up, padded down the hall, and paused outside Jimmy's door. The faintest strip of light bled out from under it.

I knocked gently, then pushed the door open with care. Jimmy was sitting on the edge of his bed, posture stiff and still like he'd been caught mid-crime. The unmistakable glow of a phone had just vanished beneath his pillow, but not fast enough to hide the fact he'd been using it.

"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" I said, leaning casually against the doorframe.

He glanced up, guilt flickering across his face. "Sorry," he muttered. "Just texting."

"A girl?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, half-smiling.

He tried to look casual, but the grin gave him away. "Yeah."

I narrowed my eyes. "Wait — the one who rejected you?"

He snorted. "God, no. Even my best friend rejected her. She was rude to everyone."

He leaned back a little, the smile growing. "This is Carissa. She's new. Just moved here last week."

I walked in slowly and sat down beside him, keeping my voice gentle. "She nice?"

He nodded, still avoiding my eyes. "She... she draws little cartoons in her notebook. Like, in the margins. Today she showed me one of a cat playing the drums and then she gave it to me."

He pulled a folded piece of paper from under his pillow and handed it to me, careful, like it was something fragile. I unfolded it, and there it was, an adorably scribbled cat, sunglasses on, banging away at a drum set made out of teacups. My chest ached, full and warm. In the middle of all the heaviness of life, he had this—this strange, pure kind of light.

"She gave this to you?"

He nodded. "She said it reminded her of me. Because the cat looks serious, but it's actually kinda ridiculous."

I smiled, handing it back. "She sees you, huh?"

He shrugged, but the smile he tried to hide gave him away.

"That's special, Jimmy. When someone notices the little things, when they see the quiet parts of you and like them anyway? That's rare. That's good."

He looked at the drawing again, running his thumb over the edge. "It just... made my whole day better."

I rested a hand on his back. "You deserve that, buddy."

He laughed, head finally lifting. "She's weird. In a good way."

"You like weird."

"I do."

We sat in the soft quiet of his room for a while, surrounded by posters, mismatched socks, and the steady hum of a teenage world still unfolding.

"I'm so proud of you," I told him, grinning. "Kind, respectful, and totally adorable. You're like a rom-com hero in the making."

He let out a dramatic groan and buried his face in his hands. "Oh my God, please never say that again."

I laughed, reaching over to ruffle his hair. "Too late. Immortalized forever."

"Ugh," he muttered, but I caught the smile sneaking through.

"Can I text her goodnight first?" he asked, eyes hopeful.

"Two minutes."

He nodded, already typing.

At the door, I turned back. "Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"She's lucky if she gets to know you."

He didn't look up, but his smile stretched wide across his face. "Thanks, Dad." Then he looked up at me, eyes open and earnest, "Dad... do you have any advice?"

For a second, I was seventeen again, awkward and eager, hands clammy around a phone, staring at October's name like it was sacred. Drawing her initials on the backs of notebooks. Holding my breath when she laughed at something dumb I said, like that laugh made me worthy.

"She already likes you," I said, sitting beside him. "That's the hardest part. Just... be honest. Be gentle and listen more than you talk."

He smiled a little, "Okay." I reached out and ruffled his hair again, and he rolled his eyes like it was the most embarrassing thing in the world but he didn't pull away.

"Now sleep," I added, standing and turning off the bedside lamp.

As I closed his door most of the way, I stood in the hallway for a second, swallowed in memory.

It felt like only yesterday that I was calling October late into the night, listening to the way her voice curled around a joke, how even her silences felt like lullabies. She used to leave me notes, little torn scraps of paper that smelled like her skin. "You were in my dream again." "I hope you're smiling today." "Come find me."

I used to carry them in my wallet until the ink faded and the corners went soft. She called me mon velours or my velvet when we were young. Because I was tall and quiet, all sharp edges on the outside, but soft where it mattered. Soft with her. Always soft with her. She said I was loud in silence, constant, comforting.

God, how I miss her words. How the world feels emptier without them. I walked back to our room. The sheets were still warm from where she'd lain. I slipped under them slowly, careful not to wake her but I didn't need to. Even in sleep, she found me. She shifted, curling toward me, her hand resting gently over my heart, fingers twisting slightly in the fabric of my shirt like she used to when she needed grounding. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper—barely even a sound—she murmured into my chest: "I love you,"

For a moment, everything else, guilt, fear, shame, the uncertain weight of trying to repair something so deeply fractured, fell away. There was just her voice. Her warmth. The past we shared and the future still clinging stubbornly to us, waiting. In that moment, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we weren't lost yet. Maybe we were just finding our way back. One breath at a time. 

She went back to sleep and I murmured, "I love you too and I'll keep loving you until I've silenced every ghost that tells you otherwise. One day, you'll believe me."

**

I woke up early and got the kids ready while October was already gone, off to the lab before the rest of us had even finished brushing our teeth. She kissed the kids, her bag slung over one shoulder, hair pulled back, eyes sharp with that kind of quiet purpose that makes you stop and stare.  She was already knee-deep in formulas and dreams, already halfway inside the world she was building for herself, one scent at a time. Then I dropped off the kids and I went to my appartment. 

 When I came in, I found Beth standing in the living room, arms folded so tightly across her chest I could almost hear the tension buzzing in her muscles. She looked like she'd been standing there a while, waiting for the right words and not finding them and then I saw her—my mother. She was standing just behind Beth, looking older than I remembered, smaller too. The sight of her hit me like ice water down my spine. Something in my chest locked tight. Beth's voice cracked the silence. "Thomas... I didn't know what to do. She just showed up. I'm sorry."

I nodded slowly, my voice barely rising. "It's okay," but it wasn't especially after what happened with Laura. None of this was okay. The air was too thick, the past too loud, and I couldn't look at my mother without seeing a thousand moments I'd tried to forget.

"Mom..." I forced the word out like a stone lodged in my throat. "Please. Leave. I can't, I can't do this right now. I came to change and go to work."

She didn't move. She just took a slow, stumbling step forward. Her eyes, red and glossy, searched my face like she was trying to find the boy I used to be. Then her face crumpled, and the years caught up to her all at once.

"Thomas," she whispered, voice trembling. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She took a shaky breath, her voice cracking.
"I've been trying to reach you for months, Thomas. I've written, I've called... but you wouldn't let me. Beth wouldn't either. I understand why, I do, but I just needed you to know I never stopped trying. I decided to give you space because I thought maybe that's what you needed. But I'm here now because I can't carry this silence anymore. I just want to talk to you. I want to apologise—properly."

The tears came fast. She tried to wipe them away, but they kept falling, messy and unrelenting. "I know I should've protected you. I know I should've stood up to him but I didn't. I let him fill the house with fear and I let that fear swallow me whole."

She paused to take a breath, but her words tumbled out in a rush, like she was afraid she wouldn't get another chance. "I thought I was doing the right thing. I was making a plan to protect us all from him. From the fallout and I did it behind his back, thinking that made me strong or clever but what I didn't realise until too late was that, by staying silent, I was betraying you. Every time I chose not to speak, every time I let your pain sit unacknowledged, I was protecting him more than I was protecting you.
I've been seeing someone. A therapist, and for the first time in my life, I'm being forced to actually look at the things I've spent decades burying. Things I thought I could outwork or outrun but I can't and now that I see them, the damage, the silence, the fear, I can't unsee them.

"I survived by making myself small," she added, by being quiet. By staying in the corners and never asking for too much, because asking meant risk but in doing that, in disappearing like that, I let you suffer. I let Beth suffer. I left you to carry more than your share of a burden I should have helped you bear and I hate that. I hate that I let myself become that version of a man."

Something inside me cracked, sharp and bitter. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her it was too late. That her sudden clarity didn't erase the nights I'd curled up in bed, too scared to breathe loud. It didn't undo the mornings I woke up already bracing for what he'd say, what he'd do. It didn't unteach the way I'd learned to disappear in a room, to flinch at kindness, to never trust peace when it arrived.

"Mom..." I began, my voice already breaking. "You watched him humiliate me. Over and over. You watched him tear me down until I didn't even know who I was anymore, until all that was left in me was shame, and silence, and this hollow ache that made me feel like I was broken by design."

Her sobs had softened now, like her body couldn't take the weight of them anymore. Like she was collapsing inward, slowly, painfully, as if every word I said cracked something deeper.

"and you never stopped him," I continued, my voice tightening. "You never stepped in. Never raised your voice. You just stood there. As if standing still made you invisible but I saw you. I saw you watching. I saw the way you flinched and then looked away like it wasn't happening, like I wasn't begging for you with my eyes."

I swallowed hard. "I was a child. I needed you. I needed someone to tell me I wasn't the problem. That I wasn't what he said I was and instead, you chose him. Again and again. Maybe you thought staying silent was a kind of peacekeeping but to me, it was betrayal. It told me I wasn't worth raising your voice for."

My hands were shaking now, but I didn't look away. "and what haunts me, what really makes it hard to breathe sometimes is that even then, even after everything, I still wanted you to love me. I still tried to earn it. I tried so hard to be good, to be easy, to be invisible too. Just so maybe you'd look at me the way you looked at him."

The silence that followed was thick with grief. Not just hers. Mine too. All the pain I'd buried under years of pretending I was fine, pretending it hadn't shaped every part of me.

"I don't know if I can forgive you," I said, barely breathing. "Maybe someday. Maybe not. But not today."

She nodded, tears streaking her face. "I understand," she whispered. "I really do. But please, Thomas... just one hug. One last hug. That's all I'm asking."

I didn't move. My feet felt rooted to the floor but somewhere, deep in the bruised part of me that still remembered being small and scared and wanting nothing more than a mother who saw me, I moved.

I stepped forward. She opened her arms slowly, like she didn't believe I'd really come. I wrapped mine around her, tentative at first, then tighter. She smelled like lavender lotion and something else, sterile, like hospital waiting rooms. I felt how small she was, how fragile, and for a moment, I was just a boy again, desperate for a comfort I'd never been given, holding the ghost of the mother I once needed and never quite got.

She pulled back, nodded through her tears, and walked out the door. Quiet. No last words. Just the soft click of the lock behind her. I stood frozen until Beth stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. She didn't say much, just held me, grounding me. I leaned into her shoulder, let my forehead fall there, let my breath shudder out in one long, broken exhale.

"I know," she whispered, voice steady and warm. "I know."

"I want to see him. It's time." I replied.