Secrets Best Kept
Originally posted on November 1, 2007
Kohana: All right, Asher, enough’s enough.
Asher: Now what did I do?
Kohana: Nothing, but don’t you think it’s time you told me exactly what is going on?
Asher: Yeah, you’re exactly right.
Kohana: Oh - I am?
Asher: I never meant to keep any of it from you. Before I left there wasn’t time, and I didn’t know much anyway…. And then when I got back…..I was just so angry.
Kohana: Angry with me?
Asher: No, Sweetheart, never with you.
Kohana: Asher, tell me. You’ve let me lean on you often enough. If something is bothering you enough to make you angry, you can lean on me. I want you to..
Asher: OK, I’ll try. Maybe you can help me understand……It all started last week when I got a letter. A letter from my grandmother. That’s what sent me to New York on what I told you was family business……………………….
………….…a little later………………
Asher: I know I shouldn’t be angry, but I am. What in the world could she have been thinking?
Kohana: From what little I know about your grandmother, she must have had a good reason. And from what you’ve told me, a lot of times she erred on the side of caution, in trying to protect you. Maybe this was one of those times.
Asher: Kohana….. I don’t remember my father. I could never figure out why. I mean, most three-year-olds would have some recollection of a father who disappeared when they were that age, wouldn’t you think? So maybe he just wasn’t around enough for me to remember him. He was too busy with another woman, another family. If that was the case, why did my mother allow him to come back? Because she did, at least long enough for him to leave her pregnant with my brothers.
Kohana: Maybe the twins were born after some sort of attempt by your parents to reconcile.
Asher: And worse still, Gideon is only a few weeks younger than I am. That means my father was cheating on my mother right after he married her…. basically as soon as they arrived in New York….
Asher: And that means my mother was never happy…. That’s one of the things that hurts the most.
Kohana: I understand why you are angry with your father. And I thought you were angry at your grandmother for waiting so long to tell you about your half brothers. But that’s not the reason, is it?
Asher: No, it isn’t.
Asher: I wish she had taken those secrets to her grave. That she didn’t – well, that’s what’s so hard to forgive.