SWEET NICOTINE | CHAPTER ZERO (THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF...) 'collection of an un-emancipated minor'
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There are five stages of grief, or so all of the experts say. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Amelia Jade Whitlock thought that was bullshit.
A ringing pounded in the teenage girl's head and she put her head into her hands. She tried to shake the ringing from her head but she couldn't. She could never forget it. She would never forget the ringing or the voice on the other end of the line. She would never forget the way she told them she didn't need to go and identify the body because it wasn't her mother. Amelia Jade Whitlock would never forget the day she walked into the freezing cold room and saw her mother laying dead on a metal table.
Amelia Jade Whitlock paced in the house that was going to be striped soon enough, the bank repossessing all of the family's things. She gripped her phone tightly in her left hand, staring at it and willing it to come alive with a notification from her brother.
It had been a month since looking at the pale cold dead body that looked nothing like her mother. The bruises on her body that the examiner stated were conclusive with the cause of her death. She was in a boating accident. A hurricane that she shouldn't have been out during is what caused that accident. And the marks on her body were conclusive of that. Those words repeated in her head as a comfort. Amelia liked knowing the facts.
Amelia slowed in front of the office door. She hadn't been inside yet, not since before Brianne left. Not since before the girl was orphaned. Not since before she was the only one left. Amelia's hands shook with nervousness and fear as she tried to bring herself to open the door.
She knew it would be any day now that the bank would come knocking. Any day now the house would be emptied and listed once again. As if wasn't the girl's home since her seventh year of life.
She let out a frustrated and shaky breath before throwing her phone down. She gave herself only a moment to feel all of her emotions before she took a breath in and stilled.
She was told her brother overdosed. They found his body. They found his body. These were given to her as facts so she tried to repeat them over in her head. Amelia liked knowing facts.
The house around her was in shambles. Amelia had torn it down. Cupboards opened as their contents laid shattered on the floor. Her brother's room was upside down, every article of clothing thrown from their hangers and scattered.
The office was the only room left. It acted as Brianne's bedroom as well but in all of Amelia's life, she swore she never saw the woman sleep. Between her mysterious job Amelia never questioned to her obsession with whatever laid behind the office door to raising her two children and working as a waitress Brianne Whitlock did not have the time to sleep.
