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CHAPTER FIFTEEN XV. when worlds collide [ season 2, episode 9 ]
Steph could still remember the first time she was told the story about her missing step-cousin, Veronica Hayes.
She was ten. They just moved back to Hawkins after her father's unprecedented death ( a freak car accident on the highway that wiped his car out completely ) to shack up with Aunt Jenny whilst her Mom saved up enough cash to buy them another, smaller home in Atlanta City. You see, her father made all the big bucks. After he died, Loretta Miller was forced to work, which was something she had never done in her entire life. And to work, she needed a babysitter ── her own sister proved to be more than sufficient.
During their time together, Jenny liked to tell Steph stories. Some of them make believe, some true. None of the anecdotes ever really clung to her memory, standing out amongst the rest. None of them but one.
Steph had been riding her scooter around Aunt Jenny's house, which was against the rules ── this was during her rebellious phase when she went against everything her Mom set in stone. Mistakenly, she collided with the drawers mounted beside the TV, as well as tearing a wavering tapestry down from the ceiling. One of the frames slipped off the box of smoothed oak and shattered into several little pieces of glinting glass. But the photo wedged inside remained untouched, obscured behind the broken shards. Steph had never really noticed it before: a young girl, a mane long red hair tamed into two pigtails, perched on a swing. Jenny's husband, Norman Hayes, was standing behind her with an enormous grin splitting across his face. Steph remembered staring at the photograph for a while, trying to understand. Nothing came to mind.
She knew Norman's face from photo albums, the wedding photo Jenny had pinned to the kitchen wall. But this girl . . . Steph had never seen her before. She had the same green eyes as her late Uncle, but that was where the similarities ended. And she looked nothing alike to her Aunt.
Further confusion.
She decided to leave it alone and question the meaning behind the photo at a later date. She also didn't want to be reprimanded for knocking over something with value, so jumped in to begin discarding the evidence.
When her Aunt Jenny returned from pampering the front garden, covered in molecules of smeared dirt from the flower beds, she saw Steph trying to sweep up the smashed pieces of a picture frame. Consider Jenny's curiosity piqued ── until she saw which drawer it was that had been disturbed. The intricately carved drawer hidden next to the TV, concealed by a hanging tapestry.
That one.
She was left with little to no choice. Jenny had to tell her niece who that mysterious girl in the photo was. She was badgered with questions. Answers were demanded. Confusion set in. Shock. Horror.
