Prologue
“I’m going to buy you a mockingbird, and I’m going to give you the world,” my sister’s soft voice sang to me. As I lay tucked up in bed, I wondered why it was that specific song that she decided to sing to me each and every night. “We’re going to get through this, honey, I promise, and all of this will be nothing but a distant memory.”
I heard the same words every night, right before I closed my eyes. The same words I hated. I thought that it was her words that were giving me nightmares.
I never wanted all of this to be a distant memory. I wanted to remember my parents forever. Wherever they were, I hoped they still remembered me. I hoped that they remembered me for the good times, not how things ended.
I never questioned my sister’s words or song choice, because I thought that every time that she sang them, they were giving her the comfort that she needed. But as I closed my eyes and tried to drift to sleep, I felt the nightmares crawling up behindmy eyes again. The memory of the moment, of what I did, haunting me behind my eyelids.
“What’s a mockingbird?” I asked. I knew that the song she was singing wasn’t hers. More like her version of the song she had on repeat every single time I went into her room. Elyse sat up next to me as I lay down in my small single bed. We both wore our matching white night gowns and although I never asked her why she wore the same white cotton as me every night I was sure it was the same reason I did. It reminded me of the last Christmas we had with our parents, and it was one thing that I shared with my sister.
I always felt so different to Elyse. She was calm and collected, I was always called the erratic one. She was serious, I was more fun. She had red hair and I was a brunette. She had green eyes and mine were blue. And she could never hide the emotions on her face as much as she tried to, I could read through them, but I don’t think she ever understood mine.
My sister looked at me with the familiar half painted on smile that I had become accustomed too. The one where she made sure her lips were always slightly curved up anytime, but her bright green eyes were so obviously filled with fear.
“It’s a bird, and it’s known as a symbol of innocence.”
“Do you not think that I’m innocent?” I asked my sister, sitting up in bed. My body instantly began to shake as she spoke the words that I had feared. We were in this situation because of me.
“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” she said placing her hands on my shoulders and tucking my hair behind my ear.
“I dream about it,” I said, finally speaking about the very memory that woke me up in the middle of the night screaming. I had no doubt she knew that I was reliving the car crash, but it wasn’t until now that I spoke about the clear details.
“You sing about a mockingbird and my innocence, but I don’t have any innocence. I was the one that killed them. No one is saying anything, but we both know it. I was screaming, I threw the toy, it affected Dad’s driving, they crashed and now that is why we are here right now.” I did it on purpose. I wanted to hit him. He wasn’t listening to me. I just wanted him to listen to me. No one listened to me. And now we were here.
“Wait… Molly? That’s what you dream about? No, no, no that isn’t true. Have you spoken to anyone else about this?” My sister’s eyes drew wide as she bit her lips.
I shook my head, and she leaned in close to me, her voice now barely a whisper, “And you’re not going to tell anyone else again either. You’re never to speak to anyone about this, okay?”
I nodded as a shiver ran down my spine. My sister scared me every time that she spoke to me like this. She was now the only immediate family that I had left, the last thing that I wanted to do was make her leave as well.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” I said resting my head back down on the bed as she tucked me in tight.
“For the record, when I speak about innocence, it isn’t because of that. It’s because I want you to feel young and carefree,” she said.
I nodded, but I didn’t agree with her. She wanted me to be innocent more than I did.
“I just sing it because I like the song, maybe we need to come up with another meaning for mockingbird…” she said.
“Like what?’
“Well, ‘mockingbird’ could be our secret code for something. Something that we can finally say to each other when we’re alright or, when we’re exactly where we need to be.”
“Like when we live in a mansion, when we have all the money in the world, and we can live free and happy together forever.” My sister’s lips smiled, but her eyes didn’t.
“Never stop dreaming, Molly, because that’s the innocence that you keep. But yes, I agree,” she said holding out her pinkie towards me as I untucked mine from underneath the blanket. “Let’s pinkie promise that we’ll only use the word ‘mockingbird’ again once we’ve found the mansion and the life of our dreams.”
My sister kissed my forehead as she stood up from my bed and went to turn the light out. “I will find it for us. I will. I’ll make up for all of this, for everything that I’ve done one day. I pinkie promise.” I closed my eyes, and I heard my bedroom door shut, missing my sister’s reaction.
She never did sing me the mockingbird song again.
And soon enough my nightmares turned into a dream.
Chapter One
“Oh my God! Lily fucking Allen!” the high pitch screech escaped my lips as every single muscle in my body contracted. The heat that I had harbored in between my legs escaped, flowing both out of me and back up my spine, forcing my hips to rock uncontrollably.
