a life like ours

 

Mario was a stranger to Caitlin. She didn't recognize him. Of course, Mario only laughed at her. 

"Yeah, dad didn't want you to remember me, anyway," he was dead serious. Still, she couldn't imagine who he was as she sank into the dining room chair next to him. He got out some photos then. Of course, they were of him and her Dad. 

"You..you could.." Her eyes swelled big with all sorts of scenarios. Maybe it was her dad's boyfriend.

Mario only smiled at her as if she was overthinking. Finally, he passed an old photo of the two of them together eating Cheerios. Caitlin only stared at the photo, a vague memory came to her. He was the neighbor boy who always seemed to be over when she visited her Dad on weekends. But she could hardly think what she called him. Mayo? She shook her head.

"You used to call me Mio." He told her he was five years older than her. "My mom didn't want me to know you."

There was a certain sadness about his eyes that made Caitlin sad too. Finally, it occurred to her that her mother was the other woman. Her parents weren't even married, after all.

He told her that his mom would take him to his maternal grandmother's on the weekend. "But I wanted to know you."

"But..but when I was four you weren't there." She remembered. "He said you moved away."

He nodded. His parents got divorced. His mom met someone in the military and they were stationed in Germany.

Caitlin could see her brother was fighting back tears. "By the time I came back, I was almost out of middle school. I remember how much I hated my mother back then. She didn't want me to see our dad, but I moved in with him. I kept wanting to see you even then, but he said no, or it was always, well someday I'm going to tell her about you..but it never happened."

Caitlin couldn't think the last time she even called her dad. She couldn't even say where he actually was.  That's when he told her their father was in the hospital.