"Are these my grandparents?" I asked, barely whispering, as if my voice alone would disrupt the air around us. I could hear Alyana's footsteps behind me and as she stepped closer, I looked back at her, seeing the nostalgia written all over her face.
"They are," she confirmed, her steady hand lifting up in the air, toward the picture that had both my mom and Alyana. "This was Daniela's eighteenth birthday," she added.
My mother was sitting right in front of a massive cake with the number eighteen as candles, with Alyana behind her, hugging her, both of them smiling widely as if they had no care in the world. My grandparents were standing just behind them, proud, their eyes shining as the camera clicked, forever etching that emotion on this canvas.
"Are they still alive?" I asked after a moment of silence, seeing all the emotions passing over my aunt's face. She seemed cold when I first saw her, almost bitter, but it was just a mask she wore.
A mask she took off the moment we passed the threshold of this house, allowing me to see the real her.
Her hand dropped down and she cleared her throat as she passed by me and toward the room at the end of the hallway. "They died ten years ago," she said. "Well, my father died almost twenty years ago, but I wouldn't call the ten years my mother was alive after that living. No one would."
Goose bumps erupted all over my skin as I followed after her, hearing the emotion in her voice so similar to mine. Ten years ago… Ten years ago my mom disappeared on one of her trips and didn't come back for almost a month.
I remember it as if it were yesterday, it was a cold December morning and my mom left in a hurry, kissing both Thalia and me on our foreheads before exiting the house. She had missed Christmas that year, letting us spend it alone with our dad.Thalia was still in elementary school when that happened, never letting her forget she had missed Christmastime.
But she forgave her, eventually.
Thalia was always the forgiving one, but me—it took me far too long to forgive my mother for disappearing without a trace that morning, not telling any of us where she was going. Our dad told us she needed to do something, but we never went to find out the truth.
"Was my mother here for the funeral?" I asked as we entered what looked to be a living room. My eyes scanned the beige walls, the floor-to-ceiling windows in the back, and an entrance to what seemed to be a kitchen or maybe even a dining room. Pictures lined the mantel above the fireplace on my left, with herbs I have never seen gracing the space between them.
Alyana stood in the middle of the room, right in front of the sofa that didn't belong in this century but was weirdly fitting with the overall aesthetic of the house, and turned toward me, her head tilted. "My sister never came back to Nevermere Island, Kaira. She wasn't here for the funeral, neither one of them. She didn't step foot here for more than twenty-nine years."
Meaning, the last time she saw my mother was when she was still pregnant with me, leaving this island like she wrote in her journal.
"Make yourself at home," Alyana suddenly said. "I'll show you to your room later, but I'm sure you're hungry and maybe even thirsty, so we will get to that first."
She disappeared into the room on my left without a word, leaving me with the sadness lacing those words that came from her lips.
I wasn't the only one who had lost something. Before she was my mother, she was someone's sister, someone's daughter, a best friend, a member of this community, and all of that disappeared overnight when she decided to leave, only for herto never come back. I was so lost in my own grief, in my own questions, that I never stopped myself and asked if there were others affected by her disappearance.
I was looking for answers to questions I had, but what about questions Alyana probably had? What about all those memories the two of them shared?
It was obvious she loved my mother, and the way my mom wrote about her, it was obvious she both respected and loved her, with a decent dose of fear most older sisters inflicted upon their siblings. I know Thalia sometimes feared my reactions more than she feared our parents' reactions, and I understood the underlying anger simmering in Alyana's words.
She loved her sister, my mother, but she didn't forgive her for leaving her. And that's essentially what Alyana was—alone. Just like I was.
I thought my house was a tomb rotting with the memories still stuck on the walls that would never hear our laughter or feel our love, but I was wrong.
As I sat down on the sofa, I could feel the dreadful silence coming from every single part of this house. I could feel the ghosts playing in the hallway where a once happy family used to live. I could sense the bitterness sewn into the covers on this sofa, like a living thing, existing only to haunt the only person that was left of the unit that once radiated life.
I lived with my misery for one year and I thought I would die. How did Alyana survive this long without another to share this space? How did she move on when everything and everyone she loved ceased to exist? My mother died only last year, but she was dead to her sister long before that.
Daniela Vale died on the day she left Nevermere Island. Never to return. Never to hug Alyana. Never to make each other smile like they did in that photo.
Yet even though my mom never told me of this island and of her family, I felt the tendrils of history wrapping around my legs as I sat here, luring me deeper into an embrace.
This place felt like home. Like it was my final destination. Regardless of the weirdness surrounding the town and the journey I took to get here, I knew this was my place and I had no doubt my mother felt the same. And if she had to leave her family behind and my biological father, the man she seemed to have loved, then she was braver than I ever would be.
"I hope you're okay with eggs," Alyana said, her voice coming from the room she had disappeared to. "I haven't done the grocery shopping yet, but I will. I promise."
"Eggs are fine," I answered, still trying to wrap my mind around everything. "Alyana," I stood up and walked toward the other room, passing by the massive dining table that could fit up to fifteen people and into the small kitchen located in the back. My aunt stood in front of the stove, mixing the eggs in a bowl, ignoring my presence. "Have you ever seen my mother after she had left?"
She placed the bowl next to the stove and added oil onto the pan, her eyes firmly plastered to the task at hand.
"No." One word. One simple word that had confirmed my thoughts, laced with an anger she never got to unleash.
Laced with pain she would forever feel and just like me, she would never get the closure she probably desperately needed.
