Things made a little more sense. He finally understood that when he thought of his mother, he couldn't bring to his mind his father's face. Though, when he reminded himself that she wasn't warm anymore, he remembered Rustom's fallen expression. Defeated.
His mother never seemed to fit into Rustom's world. Neither did Rustom belong in the same world as hers. They were worlds-apart, literally.
At times, Rumi thought, speaking of them was like speaking two different languages. Two cuisines served on the same plate.
Unfortunately, for Rumi, he didn't and would never know— what wouldn't he know? A secret to be kept from him his entire life— that things had happened the way it perhaps should have. That what was once supposed to take place, didn't. And in the meantime, while time passed like a physical being, it took place again, and claimed what it was to in the first place.
The past, however, ridden by the present, however, ridiculed by the future, has its way of coming back, in various forms— of different people and time and space.
***
He had inherited his parents' lives long ago. And it was lives— not a life, for they were never together.
But things had happened so far back in time, one would imagine, all of what was so much dug under the past, that one wouldn't be needing to look at it at all. And he hoped to forgive it. All of it. All of what he had seen and he didn't, he understood and didn't, he heard and hoped he hadn't. He even imagined that if he wouldn't have been born, things might've happened differently.
Overtime, he only saw his father decay. With the house, he too, was dying, slowly and steadily. It was made clear to him that Rustom was wounded, perhaps fatally, by his mother's demise. At first Rumi would question himself about his father. Eventually, the corrosion began. It crept, swiftly catching it's target area like a virus, and took charge. It wasn't long after that Rumi had to take his place at the cafeteria.
A physical inheritance.
***