Family

Why Stay Put?

13 Jan, 2022

The last of the dirt fell upon the coffins, and after a while the crowd began to disperse. Soon only a handful of people still remained at the grave, and the Chloe look-alike was among them. Bunny approached her slowly, and as she got closer even more similarities between the two began to appear.

"Hi," Bunny smiled. "What's your name?"

"Oh, hi!" the girl exclaimed. "I'm Renata. I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you, you too," Bunny responded formally. "So - why are you here?"

"Oh, well - that's complicated," she answered. "My step dad, he runs the hospital? Well, Mr Soileh was a very important man in the city, and for a long time was a good friend of Michael's, that's my step dad. Michael himself couldn't make it because of hospital business and shit, so he wanted me to come on his behalf. I honestly didn't want to, myself, purely because it was Michael telling me to do it. But my Mum told me I should so here I am. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound insensitive. I heard your speech, and I can't imagine what you're going through."

"No, no, it's okay," Bunny smiled. "Only reason I asked about you in the first place is because you look exactly like an old friend of mine."

"Oh, well that's - interesting," Renata grinned back. "I actually had a - oh, never mind. Better not to get into right now. You know what, if you could give me your number, I'll call you sometime whenever I'm available and if you want you could come over to my parent's house and they could talk to you about my visual similarities to this - friend of yours. They might know something about it."

"Yeah, sure. That'd be great." Bunny nodded and quickly scribbled her number and address onto a piece of paper. Renata gave her her condolences and walked away, leaving Bunny more content than she was before.

Meanwhile, Liam had hurriedly rushed towards where Doctor Moresby stood and was now looking at the man face to face. "Oh, hello, Liam." he grinned and Liam looked back with puzzled confusion.

"Why are you here?" the man asked grimly.

"Oh - well, there are two reasons, Liam," the doctor nodded. "First off, given how many funds and such Mr Soileh pumped into his businesses, he's always been well known and well received at the hospital. Therefore, all of the employees there were sent an invite to the funeral. But the reason I came was because I saw that you guys would be speaking, and because I saw that Phy died too. I took quite a liking to you guys while Pandora was in our care, and - I thought I could help by showing any support that I could. Why do you ask, is everything okay?"

"Um, yeah," Liam swallowed and took a step back. "Yeah. Everything's all right."

"Okay," the man smiled gently. "Remember, you can call me whenever you like if you have any problems. Like I said previously, my aunt was a therapist so if you feel like you need it I could hook you up."

"Thanks, Doc." Liam nodded and gave a fake smile.

"Oh, James is fine," he nodded. "No need for the formalities at the end of the day, eh?"

"Yeah," Liam chuckled. "Thanks, James."

"Any time."

"Hey, so, Pandora?" Felucca began.

"Don't speak to me, you piece of shit." She rolled her eyes and turned her back away.

"What the fuck? Where did that come from?" the man exclaimed.

"Because you're a fucking asshole," she shook her head. "In your speech, why did you make it sound like we were still together?"