Love at Second Sight

Chapter 12

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

~Haruki Murakami

***

Savannah hadn't gone to the kitchen today at all. She wanted to spend the day alone. With books probably—the one she always carried with her. Her sister's favorite book. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This was the one day in the year she always spent alone, in the corner of her room. Remembering.

Today was the day, back in 2010, that her world had come crashing down. Rather the whole of her family's had. And then it had crashed yet again, in 2011. Back when she was seventeen, today, her sister had died, subsequently followed by their father, too, on the same day. And the next year, the incident with Zac, the same one she always wanted so badly to erase from her memory, to forget, had taken place.

Her sister, Ella Reece, suffered from BPAN. She was going to die eventually. Though the doctors had alerted the family of this, it didn't make the actual moment she died any less miserable. Just because it was always bound to happen, didn't mean they'd known it would be that day. Her father, Arthur Reece, had been out of town when it happened. He'd gone to San Diego for work. The moment he was informed of her death, he dad left every job to be done aside and decided to drive back to LA.

The Reeces would never know how it happened, it could've been her dad's fault for all she knew, but he died on the return trip in a car wreck. Perhaps it was because of his hurried, reckless driving, she didn't know. She didn't want to know. She couldn't bear to.

Four months later after the hideous day, her mom had decided to shift to another city for the better. One day, when they were packing up all their stuff, just because, Savannah had visited Ella's room. The room that had been kept locked for all of the six months since her death.

In one of Ella's wardrobe drawers, she'd found a letter. Already, visiting her room awakened a whole lot of sad memories, but looking at 'For Savannah, my baby sister' written on the envelope brought tears to her eyes. Her sister had written her a letter? Oh God! Taking that letter along with all the other items that she wanted to keep close to herself in remembrance of Ella, she returned to her room and packed all of it with her own luggage.

Her mom had strictly prohibited her from carrying anything that belonged to either her dad or her sister, probably because it stirred up only the horrible memories. Savannah, however, couldn't help herself. She'd always been immensely close to both her dad and her sister. She needed something—anything, everything—to remember her dad and Ella. So she'd dropped by her dad's room, too, when her mom hadn't been looking and picked up some things that would always remind her of him—his cologne, his clothes that smelled like him, his spare glasses.

Then they'd come to Boston. Her mom had chosen this city mainly because Savannah had gotten into BU. She'd started college in the spring semester. Because of Ella's death, she couldn't start from the fall semester. She'd made a new friend, Khalid Hassan in the first two weeks of joining. And there had been this boy who'd gotten her attention. He was in the same business lecture with her. He was undeniably smart. Intelligent. Extremely good-looking. She liked everything about him. The way he talked, the way he walked, the way he laughed, the way he smiled. Every single thing. But then...

As Savannah remembered all these things sitting in the corner of her room in the Villa, tears started to rush down her cheeks. However many years passed, she would never be able to get over both those deaths. She just couldn't.

Once again, like every year, she opened the letter that Ella had written. It was her personal ritual she followed. Once a year, every year. More tears ran down her cheeks when she saw her sister's rather illegible handwriting sprawled on the white sheet—which had turned a shade of yellow now, over time.