|||Of Stardust and Star Fragments|||

 Charlotte lent her weight to the wooden railing of the front porch, cigarette held loosely between her index and middle fingers, and sighed heavily through her nose.

The muggy, English weather about her had seemed relentlessly suffocating the weeks leading up to this day, but there was a reprieve in the chokehold of humidity. A light rain was pitter pattering away cooling the air about her, chasing away every tendril of heat as it brought about cool breezes.

Despite the weather, Charlotte had been dreading this day. Dreading it as she had done last year. And the year before. And the year before.

Mum and Dad were always withdrawn on this day, speaking little— to anyone.

Charlotte sighed again, a long-suffering sound, before raising the smoke to her lips and taking a long drag. On her exhale, she heard a window slide open a floor above her.

“Charlie.”

It was Dad.

“Yeah, Dad?” she called back.

“Put out the cigarette before your Mom gets back.”

Charlie rolled her eyes: of course it was fine if she smoked when it was just the pair of them, but smoke in front of Mum and she’d be a goner. An hour long rant about the dangers of smoking (which she already knew about), how much she was shortening her own life (which she already knew about), and how much she was putting everyone around her at risk of lung cancer (precisely why she smoked outdoors and alone) would follow.

“Actually, just come inside,” he called before sliding the window shut.

Charlie ground the still-glowing end of the cigarette into the ashtray by her elbow, then, ashtray in hand, she turned and walked inside.

“When’s she due home,” Charlie all but shouted up the stairs.

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” he replied, making his way down the stairs. “You’d better do something with that.”

“I’m about to toss it,” she murmured, looking her father up and down.

His already pale skin looked white as a sheet, and the bags beneath his dark eyes stood out more prominently—like bruises. His once obsidian hair was now sprinkled with grays that seemed to have grown in number.

“Are we going to head down to the cemetery,” she asked, already knowing the answer as she flicked the cigarette into the trash.

“Of course, Charlie,” his voice was quiet, barely audible over the now pouring rain.

“Right then,” she turned on her heel and made to walk up the stairs. “Well, I’ll go get changed.”

Upon reaching her bedroom door, Charlotte paused at the threshold, looking around at the closed door directly across the hall from hers. With one foot inside her room and the other still in the semi-dark hall, Charlie bit her lip, and wondered whether she dared follow the dangerous thought that was turning circles in her mind.

She took a step back and gingerly approached the closed door, her thin hand, pale as her father’s, shaking as she placed it on the doorknob. Then, quietly as though she were trying not to wake a sleeping child, Charlie pushed the door open about halfway, then let it swing wide open.

Ivy’s room had lain untouched, looking exactly as though it were waiting, waiting for the girl to come home, perhaps lay on her bed for a nap, or turn to the heavily grafitied desk to do some homework. But no such girl had come. No such girl would ever come.

 No one had even stepped in the room for five years.

Charlie steeled herself against the tears she knew were soon to come and ventured further into the room. The carpet wheezed out small puffs of dust everywhere she stepped, and, like a brick wall, the smell of the unused space, dank and dusty, hit Charlotte and she reeled as though physically struck. She sank to the floor, clutching the end of the bed, eyes locked on a few pictures, blanketed in dust.