MEMORIES were like a trickle of blood from a thorn’s pick in her mind as she wrote in her journal.
She was returning home from Europe to South America for the first time after 18 years, doubts lingering in her mind, though her brother and sister had spent days trying to convince her it was something she needed to do.

“He doesn’t have much time,” her sister Caroline had told her.
“I really don’t care,” Maria had responded, showing no interest.

“I know how hard this is for her,” her brother Jonathan had said, “Because you witnessed what happened that night.”
“Yes,” Caroline added, “You had always wanted to know why he took away what was most precious in your life, and as a writer, now is the time.”
After pondering for many hours, she came to the realisation, they were right. She had been six years old when an unexpected tragedy had silenced the songs in her young heart and took away her smiles and laughter.

The plane started its descent, and a sudden feeling of dread gripped her mind, “Oh god, will I be able to do this? How do I look at him and talk to him?”
She took a few deep breaths, telling herself, “I have to do this before he dies, it’s been long enough.”
The plane landed and as she stepped out, she closed her eyes briefly and whispered, “I’m home, Mom, help me see this through.”

Maria checked in at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, had a light lunch, and relaxed a little before travelling to the home for the elderly on the East Coast. A nurse directed her to the garden’s lawn and pointed to an old man sitting alone under an almond tree, her father. She walked slowly towards him and stopped a little way off. He seemed to feel her presence and looked up slowly at the young woman standing there, and as his eyes met hers, Maria gasped, the horror of that night suddenly storming into her mind.

She had been alone with her mother that fateful night because her older siblings had gone to see a school play. Her mother’s soft voice had sung her to sleep so she did not hear when her father came home. It was her mother’s pleas and screams of pain, and her father’s angry voice that had awoken her, and she had sat up in bed crying quietly, not sure what was happening. There was a loud, crashing sound, her mother screaming for her, then quiet. Maria had crept out of bed, trembling in fear, and opening the door a crack, she saw a scene that froze the blood in her little body. Her mother lying lifeless on the floor, and her father standing over her, a knife in his hand. She had tried to scream but couldn’t and only moved to hide under the bed when her father called her name.

He was calling her again, “Maria, my child.” His voice brought her back to the present and he rose, stretching his hand out to her, but she seemed to see the knife in his hand, and overcome by fear, she turned and ran.
She was sleepless in bed that night, wondering over and over, “How do I deal with this situation?”

After a while, she got up and looking at herself in the mirror, she said, “I’m a young woman, a journalist, not a scared six-year-old, I need to be strong.”
The next morning after a late breakfast, she went back to the home for the elderly. He was sitting in the same place, fiddling with some chess pieces on the table. He looked at her standing in front of him a few feet away, and said in a hoarse voice, “You look so much like your mother.”

Maria looked at him and said, with deep resentment, “You should never mention anything about her.”
He sighed, pain in his dull eyes, “I deserve to hear that.”

Heavy coughing wracked his body and after it subsided, he said, “Part of my suffering is this sickness and my children whom I’ve lost.”
Maria said nothing as she pulled up a chair and sat down, and after a short silence, she asked him the question that had haunted her all her life growing up,
“Why? What was her wrong?”

He looked at her and said weakly, “She cheated on me.”
“What?!” Maria questioned in an incredulous tone, “A simple woman with simple ways, who was so taken up with home, family, and her little shop, she hardly had any time for herself?”
She paused and took a deep breath to calm the rising anger within her, then she asked quietly, “How did that happen and with whom?”
Her father did not answer for a long moment, seeming to be battling with something in his mind, then he said, “My best friend told me a tall stranger would visit when I am not home.”
“Your friend told you?” Maria asked in disbelief, unable now to stop the anger in her voice.

“He told me several times, so I believed.”
Maria shook her head, a deep ache in her heart that brought tears to her eyes, “Your ignorance and cruelty took away the most beautiful person in our lives, our mother, because of a lie.”
He shook his head regretfully, and she got up to leave, but he pleaded, “No, please don’t go. I haven’t seen any of my children in such a long time.”
Looking at him, Maria was unable to feel pity for the man she was supposed to call father, “When you suffered our mother, and ended her life, you did not stop to think of your children, why should we think of you now?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I committed a grave sin.”
Maria said nothing, just leaving him with the burden of his sin, and got up again to leave, when a young woman approached her saying, “Hi, I’m Suzanne. My father would like to speak to you.” She pointed to an old man sitting not too far away.
“Why?” Maria asked.

“He says he’s your father’s friend, and he has something important to tell you.”
Maria nodded her consent, and the old man came over leaning heavily on a walking stick. He glanced at her father, and said to her in a shaky voice, “I’m sorry for the way your mother died. I’ve been living with that guilt for a long time.”
Maria looked at him, puzzled, “Why is that?”

He glanced again at her father and took a deep breath before answering, “It was my lies that put doubts in your father’s mind. I never thought he would have killed her, she did no wrong.”
Maria and Suzanne looked at the old man shocked, “You told a lie on your best friend’s wife, how could you?” Suzanne asked.
“We were drink buddies, and sometimes we said bad things about women, not realising the dangers it caused,” he said, guilt and shame written on his wrinkled face.
“Your lies destroyed a family, now my mother’s blood is also on your hands,” Maria said, still in shock.

“I’m really sorry,” he started to apologise when his own daughter interrupted.
“Sorry? You constantly abused my mother and caused her so much pain and unhappiness to the day she died, but I still took care of you, now this?”
Maria looked at her father one last time and she said, with a tinge of regret, “Goodbye.”

The two daughters turned and walked away, and their fathers watched them go, regrets too late for the wrongs they had done to the mothers.
They sat alone, deadly thorns, slowly dying, their sins their own.