I had claimed her upstairs, and long ago, I should be the one comforting her. But before I could lash out, Amelia lifted her head and sniffled.
“Caiden,” she huffed and released another conflicted wail, “I just got a call. My mother is gone.Dead.” There was another pause, and through teary eyes and a croaky voice, she confessed something that chilled me to the bone.
“I have to go back home. Our hometown.”
Our hometown. Where it all began.
Just like that, everything fell apart, and I sank back into darkness.
20
AMELIA
I felt like a ghost,lost in a terrifying fever dream.
We left the beach a day after I received the phone call, and soon I found myself standing outside Shane and Sabrina’s house again, the world spinning.
My bags laid by my feet, and I watched everybody, feeling like an invisible outsider, as if I were drowning beneath the waves, screaming, yet nobody could hear me.
My car was still at my home, since Alex had picked me up when we were on our way to the beach. I told him to just leave me at Shane and Sabrina’s house. I couldn’t be alone, not now.
“You can stay in the guest room, sweetie.” Sabrina led me inside the house towards the room, where I set my bags down. Looking around the room, I remembered the last time I had stayed here.
After our escape from the wilderness.
Flashes of Caiden swept through my mind. I remembered our kiss on this bed, the spark igniting a fire that had burned too bright, too fast. I had kissed him in a moment of vulnerability, only to lash out, confused and scared, when those feelings became too intense.
Then, my mind went to our moment in the beach house.
His hands. His lips. His eyes. Our unraveling madness as we lost ourselves in each other.
“Thank you, Sabrina. You’re a good friend,” I whispered, my voice brittle with exhaustion and sorrow. The ache in my chest felt heavy enough to crush my ribs.
Sabrina’s warm hand pressed against mine, her eyes soft. “I know this is the hardest time of your life. You stay here with us as long as you need. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you home.”
I glanced out the window at the late-afternoon light sinking behind the pines, washing her living room in a bruised orange glow. “I’ll only be here a few days,” I managed. “Just enough to plan, to weep, and to prepare myself for returning to my hometown…to face her death.”
Sabrina nodded solemnly, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Understandable. You haven’t seen her since graduation, right?”
I swallowed a jagged breath. “It felt right at the time,” I muttered, the guilt surfacing again like a slow, cold wave.
She squeezed my shoulder. “You did what you needed for your own peace of mind. Don’t carry more blame. She chose her own path.
I closed my eyes, letting her words settle around me like a thin blanket. “I’ll try.”
Sabrina left to go unpack.
In times of sorrow, I'd retreat, a self-imposed exile. The world faded to muted grays, a macabre silence floating in my heart.
I curled into my bones, a fetal shape in the suffocating darkness of my mind, a black void smelling faintly of dust and forgotten things.
I still remember the shock that coursed through me as I listened to those words that fell from the sheriff’s lips through the phone.
Your mother is dead. I’m so sorry.
Before leaving, I gave my phone number to a few trusted people, including the sheriff, in case of emergency. I also left a note with my contact information written for my mother.
She never called.
