gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

15: may 27th 2011

ELLIE

TUESDAY, MAY 27TH, 2011

It was almost six when Ellie reached home, and by then the sky was beginning to darken. She hadn't texted her dad to pick her up after all and instead chose to walk, letting the cold air chill her lungs and freeze her chest.

When she walked in, she found her dad sitting in the living room. He glanced up when he heard her lock the door.

"Ellie? Is that you?"

"Yeah. What is it?"

Tall, slim and aloof, David Harrington was one of Melbourne's top surgeons, and he made no secret of the money he had earned through his many years of overtime work. Today, as always, he was dressed in a suit and holding a glass of whiskey, with one eye perpetually on the rapid notifications which popped up on his expensive new iPad and the other on the day's unfolded newspaper. 

They couldn't have looked more dissimilar: Ellie with her dark curls and petite stature and olive skin, and her father with his slick blonde hair and bright blue eyes. And their differences certainly didn't end at the surface level. 

"I'm going away again," he said as she entered, slinging her bag down by the door. He took another slow sip from his drink. "Tomorrow night."

"Thanks for the warning," Ellie said, but the words came out more weary than annoyed. She had grown so used to his long absences.

"Ellie." He looked at her sternly. "It's just to Adelaide for a couple of weeks. Not long."

"You should take a break for once," she said, as she walked over to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice which she couldn't quite hide. "It'd do you good."

"Would you honestly rather I did?" he sighed. "This keeps the family going."

"No, it doesn't," Ellie retorted as she walked back in, glass in hand. "It keeps the bank account running. There's a difference."

He gave her another stern look. "Let's not get into this."

You have kids, Ellie wanted to say. You have two sons who miss you. But she held her tongue, and instead only exhaled  loudly and pressed the back of her head to the wall. 

"Is Mor—" She stopped, already anticipating that her father would scold her for the use of her mother's full name. "Is Mum home?"

"Not right now, no." Her dad leaned forward and grabbed the paper again, re-opening it to one of the headline pages. "She's out with Karen."

"I fucking hate Karen," Ellie muttered. She doubted it even was Karen who Morgan was with. Morgan had been spending more and more nights out, coming back in the early hours of the morning and sleeping until the sun set again; there was only one person who Ellie could imagine her doing that with. She wondered what Luke thought of it.

"What was that?" 

"Nothing."

Without waiting for further conversation, Ellie dumped her glass back in the kitchen, picked up her bag, walked upstairs, dropped her bag in her room, and collapsed on her bed. She was tired, to the point where her head felt like a deadweight and her eyes almost refused to open. The day had been so long, and she wasn't one to sleep often at night.

Before she could find a moment of rest, her door opened.

"Ellie?"

She glanced up. "Oh, hi, Ro," she said, forcing herself to smile as her little brother entered. It wasn't his fault that she wanted to be alone, and he would always be the exception to the rule.