1
Cherri
Waking up in the mornings now made me sadder than it used to.
At least when I woke up in Deon’s bed, it smelled like him, but it’d been eight months since he’d last been there, and his scent was officially gone. Any clothes he left behind were clean and smelled only of laundry detergent or the gathered mildew from being untouched for more than half a year. If I wasn’t staying with his mother, I’d be inclined to say that I didn’t have anything left of him, but at least I still had his smile through hers.
Even if she didn’t smile much those days.
“Good morning, sweetheart.” Ciara was standing at the kitchen counter and looked back over her shoulder to smile at me when I walked in. “Would you like some eggs? We have leftover ham, so I could put some ham in like you like them?”
“That sounds really yummy, thank you,” I replied.
Sinking down into one of the kitchen chairs, I noticed that the microwave said it was just past seven in the morning.
Eventually I’d have to leave and face my life.
Ciara’s deep red hair was pulled back into a messy bun with wisps hanging off of it, and her eyes were sunken and sallow. Though she had never been a particularly large woman, she was borderline emaciated from how little she’d been eating as of late, and whatever energy she did have from the little bits of food she ate were going into worrying about her son.
I couldn’t blame her.
“You’re having some too, right?” I asked.
“I’ve already eaten,” she replied.
Without responding, I scooted my chair back from the table and walked over to the sink, I looked into it, seeing it totally bare and bone dry, then I looked over at Ciara. “Really? Out of your hand?”
She glared over at me. “What are you, my mother?”
“I might as well be,” I said. She was cracking eggs into a bowl, so I walked over, picked a few additional ones out of the carton and cracked them into the bowl. “There. Enough for two.”
A huff of frustration puffed out of Ciara’s nose, but she didn’t say anything back, just resumed mixing the eggs with a little bit of milk and some seasonings. I returned to my seat and rested my head on the table, knowing that Deon would want me to be making his mother eat, at least a little bit. If he knew she was starving to death while he was missing, it’d make everything worse.
I was making a list in my mind of everything that I had to take care of, starting with leaving my current accommodations and ending with going to my new ones. It would require a chat with my parents, and probably my brother too, though I was dreading that the most. I also had to face my friends, to whom I’d been absolutely awful for the past six months.
“Ugh,” I opted to say out loud. “It’s gonna be a long day.”
Ciara snickered from over near the oven. “What makes one of the first days of summer vacation for a rich girl a long day?”
One place Ciara and I differed was in our pocketbooks, but nearly everything else was the same. I used to live in the same rundown neighborhood as her until my dad got promoted and we moved to South Postings. Being back in her house in North Postings felt much better to me. I missed being in a house where you actually crossed paths with the people you’re living with.
“Well, first—and this is bad news for you and me—” I started, and Ciara looked over at me. “I think I’m moving out today.”
She scoffed. “So much for sixty days’ notice.” Then she chuckled. “I’ll be sad not to have you around anymore. Are you going back to your parents’?”
“No,” I said. “I’m actually—prepare to lose your mind—going to stay with Nathan.”
Ciara’s eyes widened. “What?”
My cheeks puffed up as I took in a huge gulp of air, and deflated as I sputtered out. “I’ll wait until the eggs are done. I’ve got some explaining to do.”
Ciara’s eyebrows went up, but she took my excuse and returned to the eggs. Like me, Ciara always maintained that Deon was still alive. When I lost my mind a little bit after his disappearance, my parents kicked me out and I ended up going to stay with Ciara. I hadn’t told her that, as of a week ago, I had confirmation that Deon was alive out there somewhere, even if I didn’t know where. There was no guarantee he was going to survive his battle with Connor. There was no guarantee any of us were going to survive. Ciara was better off with false hope than worrying herself even sicker that her son was maybe tied up in a chair somewhere being tormented by his own father.
Eventually, Ciara finished putting together the ham and eggs and set a couple of plates down on the table. She then got some coffee and a bottle of water for me and brought them over and set them down as well. She sat down across from me, and we each took a few bites of our food before I finally cleared my throat.
“So, these past six months living with you have been so amazing,” I started. “I’m really going to miss you, but I wasn’t myself. I was… mourning, and it made me treat my friends terribly.”
“Mourning?” Ciara said. “Deon’s not dead.”
“I think that too,” I replied, “but at this point he’s gone, and as far as I know, he isn’t coming back.”
“Did Nathan tell you this? Is that where it’s coming from? He’s pressuring you into moving in with him or something?”
“No. Nathan actually thinks he’s alive too, but none of us has any clue where he is or anything… My old friend group, The Royal Court, they’ve had a tough six months and we all just really need to hunker down together and treat ourselves well after the time we’ve all had. It won’t just be Nathan and me. Sicily will be there a lot too, plus all of my other friends, and Nathan has a new girlfriend now. A girl he’s always been in love with, named Nikita.”
“After what he did to you, suddenly he’s a good guy?” Ciara asked.
She was referring to the fact that, by all accounts, Nathan raped me. I was far from the last person that was going to make any excuses for a man that assaulted me, but the man that was in that bathroom that day, pointing a gun at me and forcing me down to my knees, was not Nathan Loche. He was Connor Loche’s darkness in Nathan Loche’s shell.
“What he did wasn’t okay, but he was just as much a victim to Connor Loche as me or you. Maybe even more because you were able to fight back, I was able to leave, but Nathan had nothing. Connor tortured him, Ciara. For all intents and purposes, he tortured his own son. It’s not his fault. I’ve forgiven Nathan for that. Truth told, I forgave him for that before Deon even went missing. I knew it wasn’t him.”
“That’s why you went to save him from Connor?” Ciara asked.
“Yeah, and I know you won’t believe me, but Nathan loves Deon. He loved Deon when he went to live with them, and even when Deon came home, Nathan tried in his own way to extend an olive branch. It was covered in Connor’s shit, so it didn’t work, but he did try. He’d be just as happy to see Deon again as we would be.”
Ciara sat in silence for a few minutes, took a few bites of her food, took a few sips of her coffee, and then sighed. “So you’re going to work with Nathan to find Deon?”