"Hugh, that's our baby girl up there," Louise said and tears were already welling up in her eyes. There was a large group of students with graduation caps on their heads and among them was a brunette with bright blue eyes scanning the crowd, the tassles around the girls neck dictated she was graduating with honors. It was the University of Vancouver's 2016 commencement ceremony and you couldn't find two prouder parents. Any second their daughter would walk across that stage with a degree in education. She wanted to become a special education teacher.
"Eleanor Rose Cormican," the voice rang out and it was in that moment the stoic man beside the near crying woman let out a holler of pride as he watched his baby girl take those steps across the stage she'd worked four hard years for.
vancouver. august 27th, 2018.
"Mom!" The voice rang out as a door slammed shut. "Come on!" Dessie was 18, the second child to head off to college. Today was the first day, and he was eager to go and already irritated that his mom insisted on seeing him off as if this were his first day of kindergarten. But she'd always been like that. Firsts were important, no matter what it was. That's what she would always remind him. Dad was a lot more practical. A pat on the back and a "survive the wolves, son" and he'd headed off to work that morning.
Desmond, who went strictly by Dessie, was raised as the middle child, smack dab between his older brother and his baby sister. Technically, he was the third born, though he'd never known his older sister. No one had. She would have been twenty-four. But she never made it past three hours old. Even though she'd never really had a chance at life, she colored the Cormican family in her own way. Eleanor Rose. Named after Eleanor Roosevelt, his mother always said, "because she was destined for great things". Dessie was named after his grandfather, his mother's father. He wondered what that meant he was destined for, but he never asked.
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vancouver. november 19th, 1994.
It had been ten months since Hugh had lost his daughter and nothing had been the same. He knew it, everyone around knew it. He and his wife really tried to pick up the pieces, but he hadn't been able to. The first month or two had been filled with tears. The months after that, fights. The once happy marriage, full of hope and a future had seemed to disintegrate in his very hands. All the good in his world he'd once felt slipped through his open fingers like sand.
He swished the whiskey around in its cup before he downed it in a go, the days conversation flowing through his brain on loop. He'd do anything to erase it, but the words repeated like a broken cassette. Divorce. He drank too much, she cried too much. Blame was everywhere when it should have been no where. Neither truly blaming the other just each other and the world. Still in their mutual grievance they didn't come together but rather fought against one another.
Words once laced with honey were now sharpened to daggers. It wasn't healthy, he knew that. Even so, he didn't want to give up the way she seemed to want to. Throwing that confession out.