Five siblings, catapulted into chaos.
Striving hard to create a grounded foundation amidst a cruel world, hoping that building walls will protect them against the hungry hands trying to tear them into pieces. They only ever wanted to love and be lo...
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His mind was as foggy as the mist that clung to the morning air. He was nailed to the ground when her face entered his line of vision. He couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye but he could still hear her. Her lips were moving, she was talking to him.
"Jordan? You okay?"
Not really, he wanted to say. Or maybe he did. Jordan couldn't tell, his ears were ringing too loud to make sense of anything else.
"Maybe you should take a seat." She reached out to him, the tips of her fingers barely grazing his skin. He flinched. "Jordan, it's me. Lydia."
"Ah fuck," he breathed out as he lowered himself on the bench.
"You alright?" she asked again after a few seconds.
Jordan dropped his head between his hands and inhaled through his nose. "Fuck. For a second I thought - I thought you were ..."
"It's the hair, huh? I know I shouldn't have dyed it," she chuckled breathily and the familiarity of it was enough to knock the oxygen out of his lungs again.
"You look so much like your sister," he eventually said, voice barely above a whisper.
The air shifted as she took a seat next to him. She tentatively put a hand on his shoulder and this time he allowed the touch. "I must've given you quite the scare."
"I thought I was seeing ghosts." He picked up his head and laughed a huffing sound.
"Sorry," she smiled sheepishly. She sighed deeply and gazed at the gravestone. A shudder ran up and down her spine. "It's so weird."
"What is?"
Lydia gestured at the grave. "I mean she's right there but she's not here, with us."
"Mhmm."
"I wanted a cremation," she suddenly said. "Did you know that?"
"Like your mother?" he guessed.
"Like mom," she nodded, burying her chin in her thick scarf. "Spread her ashes across the ocean. Don't know why my dad insisted to bury her instead."
"He wanted her somewhere he could still visit her," Jordan recalled.
"That sounds like him," Lydia mused with a wan smile. "You and Tristan always knew him better than us girls. You were like the sons he never had."
"And he was like the father we never had." He looked down at the silver ring on his finger, the same ring that used to belong to the father figure. A moment of comfortable silence passed before Jordan spoke up again. "Do you still miss her?"
"Of course I miss her. It's all I do." She turned her head. "What about you?"
Jordan wetted his dry lips. "When I close my eyes I see her. And when I open them I miss her."
