But then I watched her, really watched her, and I realized how wrong I had been. Because she couldn’t have been more different from her family, from Mason. The hair, the eyes—Mason and Adeline looked like twins, but despite the obvious resemblance to her father and brother, that’s where the similarities had stopped.
Unlike Mason, she never had anyone by her side. No oneonher side. She didn’t have any friends either.
If loneliness was a person, it would most definitely be Adeline Ross.
I continued to watch her walk back home from school after her brother failed to remember he had not two sisters but three. I continued to watch her as she walked to school in tears,knowing she was walking from one prison to another. And as she sat in the café, waiting for someone, but no one.
I realized then that Mason would be a problem. That he hadbeena problem, and I just hadn’t seen it.
I could appreciate his talent in certain areas of academia, sport and art; however, that’s as far as my fondness for the boy extended.
In the end, he turned out to be nothing but a disappointment.
In fact, it wasn’t difficult for me to piece together (through both observation and experience) that alongside his inelegant indulgence in alcohol (which in my opinion is monotony in a bottle) he might have even had bipolar disorder.
Upon this revelation, I could have even felt sorry for him, because I’d seen what it did to people. Had seen Will suffer because his father couldn’t keep it under wraps.
Ultimately, no one could help the boy from succumbing to his addiction, and most—I imagine—weren’t even aware heneededhelp in the first place.
I didn’t mourn him when he died. Didn’t care much for the person he was when he passed. What I could do, however, was acknowledge the tragedy of it all.
The death of a star, after all, is a lonely thing. And the most beautiful proof that light lies.
“There’s nothing more to it,” she replies, her tone defensive despite her efforts to conceal it. I almost roll my eyes. She doesn’t owe me any explanations, that much is true.
But it’s not like I won’t figure it out on my own. I have my ways of finding things out.
In fact, I know exactly who to ask.
Still, I can’t help it. My gaze lingers on her. Her eyes specifically, for a bit too long. It’s become a habit, an incredibly frustrating one, but I can’t seem to stop.
There’s something in her eyes—just a flicker—that freezes me for a moment. Something that bubbles up from low in my stomach and drags up memories from that night.
Wren.
I see her face as clearly as if she were standing in front of me. The fear. The pain. The emptiness. And for a split second, Adeline becomes her, and it’s like staring into a nightmare. One that’s freakishly similar to reality.
I can’t look at her without seeingher. I can’t think about her without remembering what happened.
John Ross. A sick old man who dragged my family into his spiral of destruction. A selfish, cruel pest who took and took until there was nothing left.
And then there was the accident, and also the night my sister’s life was ripped from her cold, blood-stained hands. The night John Ross murdered her. A pathetic, low-life, drunk driver whose green eyes were the last thing Wren saw before she died.
All because he justhadto pick up his precious daughter, Adeline, while leaving my sister bleeding and alone on the pavement.
She was dying, and he didn’t even care.
The night he had been drunk and speeding, and hehither. He didn’t even pull over.
She was waiting for him that night, wasn’t she? Probably sitting in some corner, clueless about the life that had just been stolen so he could get to her faster.
It’s almost poetic, in a sick, twisted way. He didn’t even survive the crash that followed. I wonder sometimes if he saw it coming, a moment when he realized how he didn’tdeserveto live, before his car smashed into a tree.
The memory of that night still haunts me, as much as I try to shove it into the depths of my mind. I remember every detail. To this day, I still see her. How one of her legs was bent the wrongway, completely twisted under her body in a way that made my stomach turn. Can still see her hair, fanned out around her head like a halo, but it wasn’t golden anymore. It was soaked, clinging to the growing pool of red spreading beneath her.
There was so much of it.
It ran down the cracks in the pavement like tiny rivers, soaking into my sleeves, my skin, seeping beneath my fingernails and I couldn’t stop staring at it—how it kept coming, kept spilling. It stained everything it touched. My hands. My knees. It smelled like metal, and salt, and death.
