Omission

Failure to Act

Hey everyone! This story is from the same universe as Excavate and Fallout, but I was having a bit of a block with Fallout and a prompt from kikiiriss gave me an idea for a short side story. This will likely have 4-5 chapters over all, and will top out around 15,000 words if my outline stays the same. 

I hope you enjoy! And if anyone else has ideas or prompts, feel free to hit me with them, because I love a writing challenge.

Thanks! Patches

One of Sharon's most prominent flaws was her tendency to put off unpleasant situations for as long as possible, usually until the situation absolutely demanded to be handled, whether due to potential or actual consequences, or her arm being twisted and having no other option but to face the situation.

Sharon was more than well aware that the majority of times, the situation could be better received or even have less severe consequences if she addressed it head on. But her intense dislike of unpleasant or awkward situations, confrontations, and instances where she wanted something, but was too afraid of being told no paralyzed her constantly.

This personal flaw was the driver behind why she stayed with Keith for as long as she did. And why she ignored and mistreated her son as long as she did.

So many situations that Sharon had experienced, especially as of late, were messes made by her own hand. They were worsened by her anxieties, and while she paid a price when things came to a head, the price Riley paid was always substantially steeper.

Sharon swore she wouldn't let this situation get this bad. That it wouldn't reach this point. She'd had more than enough time to address the elephant in the room, but had instead thrown an enormous tarp over it and told herself that it could always wait another day.

Well, the day that the situation could no longer wait another day, had arrived. It was time to pull the tarp off the elephant. And it was time to face whatever rightful reaction Riley would have to her news. She hoped he wouldn't feel hurt, and more fervently, she hoped he wouldn't be angry.

The next day was Sharon's birthday. And per annual tradition, her mother and father were planning to visit for a birthday dinner. And with their visit, Sharon dreaded the inevitable betrayals, hurt feelings, and anger that would accompany.

Riley didn't know about his grandparents. And Riley's grandparents didn't know about him.

And tomorrow, they would meet. Learn about each other, and in turn learn about not Sharon's lies, but her grievous omissions of truth.

So Sharon ran. Metaphorically, she ran away from the situation, but in reality she was just running the three-mile loop around their suburban neighborhood. The wind whipped at her face, numbing her cheeks and lips, and every huff of breath appeared as a cloud in front of her face. Each footfall was emphasized with the crunch of ice and snow on the sidewalks.

She didn't like running in these cold and icy conditions, but it gave her time alone, away from the hustle and bustle of the full house, and it gave her time to think, to strategize. Sharon had to come up with a game plan of how she was going to tell Riley about his grandparents' extremely imminent visit, and she had to tell him that they didn't know about him.

When she blinked the cold air away from her eyes, she saw the hurt and resigned expression of Riley's that she knew far too well. Sharon hated to be the cause of that expression, but she couldn't seem to avoid making decisions that led to that exact scenario.

Yes, she was more than well aware that she could have told both her parents about her son, and her son about his grandparents long before this. Riley had been with them nearly four months now. And her parents' visit came as reliably as Christmas each year. So yes, this was avoidable.