Two Ghosts {Leah Clearwater}

12: Panic

Pandora was surprised when she heard the sound of her father's old ranchera music coming softly from her mother's room. She could remember the last time she heard that music vividly in her head.

Her father would always put on his music when he was in an especially good mood, or he and her mom had a little too much to drink. Either way, that music was reserved for his good moods. And her father was always in a good mood, so it was a rare occasion that music wasn't blasting throughout their old house. Pandora remembers laughing as her father danced horrendously in the kitchen to the music the day before he died. It was times like that where she understood how her parents fell in love; they were both carefree and passionate. They were madly in love, and it didn't dwindle as they grew older. Her father and her mother were happy, and Pandora never felt unloved by her parents.

And then her father died.

And she never felt more neglected in her life.

So hearing her father's music made her mood take a swan dive rather than lift it up like it used to do.

"Mom?" Pandora called as she made her way to her mother's room. She wondered where her sister was, but brushed it off figuring her sister had left already. She didn't expect her sister to stay long.

Pandora knocked on her mother's door softly, frowning when she heard small sobs under the music.

"Mom?" Pandora said softly, her heart breaking at the scene in front of her when she opened the door.

Sitting on the floor was her mother, surrounded by boxes and a nearly empty bottle of tequila. Pandora quickly recognized the items in the boxes belonging to her dad. She felt her eyes tear up at the sight of the pictures, clothes, old CDs, and the baseball caps he used to collect. Pandora took a shaky breath before moving into the room, kneeling beside her mother. She recognized the sweatshirt her mother was wearing as her father's, the lingering scent of his cologne quickly becoming overwhelming for Pandora.

"Your father used to take you and your sister to the zoo all the time. You three would beg me to go with you." Pandora looked down at the photo in her mother's hand, her heart dropping to her stomach. In it was her, her father, and her sister. They were laughing, Pandora clinging onto her father's leg as Luna held onto his hand. Pandora's four-year-old face was painted to look like a tiger and five-year-old Luna had a panda painted on her face. Pandora remembered her father telling her that she should've gotten the panda on her face, but Pandora hated pandas at the time. Getting upset when her father called her 'his little panda bear'. Now, Pandora would give anything to hear her father call her that one more time.

"You hated the fact that the animals were in cages," Pandora recalled.

"And yet I went anyway," Pandora's mother sniffled and shook her head. "I would do anything for that man."

Pandora bit her lip, unsure what to say. "Come on, mom. Let's get you into bed." Pandora wrapped her arms around her mother, jumping when her mother yelled.

"He left me Pandora! We were supposed to grow old together! And now I have no one!"

"You have me, mom." Pandora said quietly. "But you pushed me away."

"Baby." Pandora closed her eyes as her mother wrapped her arms around her. Pandora sighed, relieved when her mother let her take her to the bed. "Your father would be proud of you."

Pandora froze, watching as her mother tucked herself into bed. "Dad would be proud of you too, mom."

Pandora said nothing as she walked away from her mother's bed, hesitating as she approached the boxes. Reaching forward, she grabbed a cap from the box, recognizing it from their first trip to DisneyLand when Pandora was seven. It was a plain navy blue hat with a small Mickey Mouse logo on the front, the bill slightly torn from the years of being worn.