White Orchids {BOOK 1 COMPLETED}

Chapter 1

The rain pours down. Every raindrop that hits Emma's umbrella makes a loud and sharp sound. It's hard to focus, like it always is every time we visit the grave. Every time I'm here I have nothing to say. It feels like I'm talking to a stone and the few words I have ends up hollow and detached. I don't believe in heaven, in some paradise after death. When you're dead you're dead. You don't exist anymore – dad doesn't exist anymore.

Yet here I sit crouched down in front of the grave, my hand is caressing the cold and wet stone and I'm trying to find something else than the empty, hollow words I have to say.

My hair is wet, it sticks uncomfortably to my cheek and the rain forces itself underneath my thin spring jacket.

Emma takes a step closer and moves the umbrella so it protects me from the rain. It's too late, it's already gotten through my spring jacket and camisole, and is sticking to my back.

"Thank you," I mumble and I try to sound sad or troubled.

It's not like I'm not feeling any sorrow over my father's passing, I do. But I can't connect this stone with him. I can feel sorrow from photographs and videos, this makes me feel guilty that I don't feel anything. I'm not like Emma who could stay here for hours if she could.

I caress the cold stone one last time before I get up, I have an uncomfortable feeling, because I haven't said anything, just like how it always is. Not that I see a point with it when I believe it won't reach him.

The psychologist I had the first year after my dad's death told me that I didn't need to believe that my words reached him, but that it could be a beautiful thought. That I needed to say it, whether it reached my dad or not. I was never able to fully do it, it felt unnatural.

I know my dad would laugh if he saw me now. That I'm trying to feel something, struggling to cry so that I can seem like the others. He wouldn't care, he would have told me that I have the right to handle his death in my own way. "There is no right way to grieve," he told me a few months before his death. He knew I would question myself, even four years later.

"Do you want to say something?" I ask Emma.

"I already have."

It looks like she's somewhere else, not in the middle of a Swedish graveyard a rainy day. Her eyes are empty, no smile but she doesn't seem sad either.

Emma had always been the one who took dad's death the worst. I could keep on living, I finished high school and continued to work afterwards. I could make friends and laugh.

Emma couldn't. She had never been the most social of us, if anything she was anti-social already as a child. She kept to herself and would rather read a book or look at a movie instead of hanging out with friends. When dad died from cancer, she couldn't handle it. It's been years since he died, and she still won't leave her apartment in Gävle unless she has to. I don't think she has visited his grave for years even though she clearly wants to.

"We shouldn't let mom and Anders wait for us," I say and link my arm with hers.

All that she gives as an answer is a short, absent nod. I lead her out of the graveyard and into the parking lot where mom and Anders are waiting.

***

We're staying in the same room – the guestroom in mom's and Anders' new house. There are two single beds, both of them have the same white bedding with flower motives. They are small, yellow flowers, so small that you can't see what they are when you come into the room. Furthest in there is a big wardrobe next to a window and on the other side there is a large floor mirror. Emma is standing in front of it in her pajamas. She's matching the bedding, just like them, the pajama has floral patterns. They are slightly larger and have different colors. It doesn't fit. The pajamas look cute and it radiates something beautiful and positive. Emma's facial expressions is something completely different. The eyes are red, and the face is paler than it was a year ago, she looks sick. The curly hair is put in a low ponytail, a few strands of hair is hanging down from the forehead. It's terrifying to see those empty brown eyes staring into the mirror. The mouth is slightly open, and the round eyes look narrower, the eyebrows are relaxed – tired.