Helin doesn’t sense her sister’s apprehensiveness. Probably because she feels the complete opposite about the preparing of eating dinner at the table. They have a lot of time to make up for the years Yasmin had been away. Eating as a family was a massive part of the Solak family. It was a time and space to acknowledge each other wholly. It was a bit of a ritual, wasn’t it? The setting of the table that offers a small piece of real estate for each person. This is your plate, because your place here matters. You matter. Anyone was welcomed at that table, just as long as they were as acceptable of the others who had come before them and those who will come after them. It was a sense of belonging.
Then, with a flip of a switch, that was all suddenly taken away. The dining room turned cold and grey for sometime. Dust settled thick, four chairs remained untouched, but coats were dumped on the table during Christmas. Wet bathing suits hung over the edges to dry. It’s only been recently that the dining room table has been cleaned and polished. At some point, Helin had finally grown tired of the mess scattered and growing. It was beginning to feel suffocating. It took almost three and a half days, but Helin managed to clean it out. And now relief waits for the dining table. It’s still hard, sitting at the table without Can. His empty seat is a loud, hurting gushing wound for all three women.
The hug feels awkward at first. Rigid. They couldn’t have forgotten to hug, have they? Just when Helin begins to feel the beating of heart quicken with the anxiety of this being too much, too soon, Yasmin is balancing into the hug and she relishes in the feeling of having her sister close again.
‘ ah, look at my loves, ’ Rosie coos as she comes down the stairs, gazing with adoration at her girls. Looking over Yasmin’s shoulder, Helin opens her eyes to meet her mother’s. Although, yes, this is an incredibly touching for a mother to witness, Helin would have prefered it to be private, seeing as now Rosie will more then likely begin to make a big deal in three … two … one: ‘ Neden ikiniz daha fazla kucaklamıyorsunuz? Sevgili annen hiç gençleşmiyor ve ben gitmeden önce bazı mutlu anılar istiyorum. ’ ── Why don’t you two embrace more, huh? Your dear mother isn’t getting any younger, and I would like some happy memories before I’m gone.
Letting go of Yasmin, Helin gives her little sister a bit of an eye-roll while their mother breezes past them to go back to whatever it was she was doing in the kitchen.
With the touch of mother’s magical hands back in the kitchen, Helin felt more ease to take her seat back at the dining table that is more than a table made of wood, and begins to clean up her papers scattered everywhere. A small sense of guilt makes itself known. She shouldn’t have been working here in the first place. ❛ How’s work, Yas? You must be busy with the robberies happening around town. ❜
Everything feels so familiar — the three of them, being under the same roof.. enjoying the anticipation of only the tastiest meal in the world, thanks to their mom’s cooking skills and talents. Well, talents.. but she can’t help but smile at the amount of times their mom had started, or almost started, a fire. Rosie was almost scatterbrained that way, so consumed in her own thoughts and daydreams, she could quite easily forget the pan or the oven. All natural talent, half the time she forgot her own recipes, given that she was so very much about throwing in ingredients as she saw fit. That was the way she’d always functioned.
“—Oh, come off it, ma,” Yasmin couldn’t help but chuckle as she pulled back from her sister. Rosie couldn’t help but embrace the idea of her daughters showing each other love, especially given the years of tension. But she’d always been that way too — it made her happy to see so much love between her family members. And the one thing she loathed more than anything else was family arguments and tension. All of which she was sure she and Helin had brought to the table the last few years, no matter the distance. But given their most recent exchange, being that of an actual unexpected hug.. perhaps that was changing. “I think what you need is an embrace,” and before she could utter another word, she was roping her mother into a hug, squeezing her tight and placing a kiss to the side of her head.
In a bid to assist Helin, she starts to put out the cutlery and glasses, all of which felt too familiar. “You know, it’s crazy right now.. thankfully I’m just helping gather stories, but you know Mystic.. there’s always a lot of stories. Even if they’re mostly fabricated and one hundred percent exaggerated. Nothing new to report with the robberies, though.. the police department are keeping very tight lipped about it all. Which only tells me there’s far more to it than they’re letting on.” Yasmin was nothing if not persistent, even if it didn’t come across in the most obvious of ways. She, like Rosie, was very much a daydreamer.. but not when it came to her passions. “How about you?” Setting the last cup down, she begins to walk over to the other side of the table, picking up a stack of paper. “I’m assuming becoming an owner of a business means a lot of paperwork?”
