Everything I Never Say ✓

[ six ]

Six

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I was eight when my parents didn't come back from their weekend trip to that resort.

The police showed up at your door instead, where I was staying over till my parents came back.

Car accident, was what they said. Something about them being driven off a cliff due to slippery roads and heavy rain. I can barely remember.

The funeral is an even bigger blur to me; just flashes of a large crowd, sea of bodies clad in black, and the steady drizzle that spilt from the sky throughout the day.

I didn't understand, of course, at first. But eventually it fell into place.

Mum was no longer going to be waking me up in the morning, yelling my name at the top of her lungs at least twenty two times before I finally woke; she wasn't going to apply the toothpaste on my brush because I always squeezed the tube a little too hard. She wasn't going to untangle my hair every night and then twist it into a simple plait just before I went to sleep. She wasn't going to remind me to read a book every day.

And daddy. He was no longer going to stuff the fridge at the beginning of every month with all the candy my heart could desire; he was no longer going to tackle me to the ground or the sofa and tickle me until there were tears streaming down my cheeks and breathless laughter tumbling out my mouth. I was not going to feel his rough stubble prick my cheeks when I kissed him goodbye whenever I boarded the school bus.

I understood. I was eight, just a kid, but I understood. People always told me I was a little too mature for my age—sometimes I wished that wasn't true. I'm okay with it now, though. But back then, the lesser I understood things, the better it would've been.

My dad had no siblings and my mother had been disowned from her family—leaving me with nobody else to call my own. At least, that's what I thought then.

Until, of course, a few days later, Vivian and your father, Mathew, sat me down in the living room with a mug of hot chocolate that had two pink marshmallows floating on the top, and told me that I was going to become part of this family. The Harrington family. That they were taking me in. That I wasn't going anywhere else. That they were not going to let anybody else have me.

I was over the clouds, Daniel. Euphoric, of course. But mostly relieved. I think I felt a huge boulder being lifted off my insides—off my chest. Off my lungs.

And I could finally breathe easy.

Your parents were already like my second parents. It didn't take away the pain, or the shock, of losing mine, but it brought me a ray of light in that very dark time. It gave me a sense of safety and a feeling of belonging, and I suppose that was what got me through along the way.

I was, after all, at home.

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