The girl behind her smile

- 30 -

Ezra interrupts my train of thoughts, "Who are these people?"

"It's dad... It's dad's family." Elijah's focus on the image was unwavering, "I've seen this before, he's shown it to me once."

"Oh." I look at him with shock, I had never seen nor heard of his family, it was a taboo topic of sorts. He would avoid questions with jokes or by sneakily changing our attention to another topic.

"That's our aunt," He points to the small girl, "I think he said her name was Mayu." 

After a few moments in silence, I slide it to the back, settling our eyes on the next image of colour. It holds a mature, yet younger version of the father I knew, smiling and playing with children. A woman stands behind them, laughing into the camera, as her eyes watch the three children below her.

"That must be them when they're older." I conclude, "These three kids must be our aunts children then."

I turn the back of the photo, and in small cursive writing were three names.

Ryo, Kaiyo, Sora - 15th October

We all sit in silence for a few moments, studying each face on the page. A small feeling of anger resides within me, we had family. Our entire lives we had been conditioned to believe that we really had no one else outside of this family, mum had no siblings and dad never revealed anything about his past. And now knowing that there were people we could have known, or grow up with makes me hateful. What reason could dad have had to hide his family, hide the fact that we had relatives? And although they are no more than strangers to me right now, the sadness from a missed opportunity to know them overwhelms me.

Do they even know of his passing?

"What the hell?" Ezra's voice interrupts our train of thoughts, "We have cousins."

I pass the images in my hand to Elijah, as I continue shuffling through the box, finding old clothes and items of dad that no longer have any function.

"Every one has relatives." Elijah deadpans.

Ezra lifts his head up to look at Elijah with a face indifference, "No, I know that. But we have cousins, that we don't know anything about."

Eli sighs, looking back down at the image, "Yeah, I guess that does feel weird."

I pick up a bundle of letters, all tied together with a coarse rope. The paper was starting to yellow at the edges, indicating that they were aged. I open the first one, letting my eyes fester upon more characters I cannot decipher. 

"Oi," I nudge Elijah, "Do you reckon you can read this?"

He shakes his head, "No, it's too much, it would genuinely take me a week to figure all of it out, and look at the handwriting, it's really hard to understand."

I sigh, and let the letters fall back into the box, "So what do we do with all of this?"

Ezra releases a breath, "Well it feels wrong to throw it out, so I say we just leave it here to be honest, minus the photos, we can take that down and ask mum what she knows."

-

Mum had returned later that day, earlier than when her shif thad ended. We were all laying around in the living room, each of us studying the different photos that were sprawled across the length of the living room. We could hear her small groans and grumbles, before making her way upstairs. All three of us exchange glances in silence, before coming to s decision to follow her to her room.

I knock on the door quietly, making sure not to drop he image in my hand, "Mum?"

She lets out a hum, before we pile into the room, Eli beats us to asking the question we were all thinking, "Why are you back so early?"

I let my eyes fester on her figure, that was lying in the bed, the purple sheets closing in on her body, which had gotten smaller since Christmas. She was losing weight. 

"It's nothing you guys, just chest pain, the ward manager let me leave early." She replies, her voice was masked to sound firm, but there was something hidden in her tone, something close to worry.

"Are you sure?" I ask cautiously.

She turns her head slightly, so it faces away from me, "Yes."

Ezra moves around, seating himself on her side of the bed, his voice is Calma s he asks, "We cleaned out the loft like you asked, but we found these, do you know who they are?"

She holds the pictures, bringing it closer to her face as she studies the people in the image, "Oh, this is your dad, and that's his sister, and her friend there. I don't remember her friends name, but your aunt's name is Mayu."

"Why haven't we met her?" 

She pauses for a moment, before taking a breath in, "Well, to begin with she lives all the way in Japan, so it wasn't feasible for us to meet her there. And generally speaking, your dad's family was a hard topic for him, he had a difficult childhood, I could tell from he way he would speak about his own father. I think thats the main reason he decided to cut off all contact to his family. But I had no idea he even had these images." She sighs, looking down, "I'm sure he missed his mum and sister though."

We lapse into a silence, and I know all three of us are thinking the same thing. Something big had happened for the breakdown of that family. And now that dad was no longer here, there was no way we'd ever find out. Mum doesn't know enough to tell us, or she does know and is purposely withdrawing information from us.

Either way, I want to find out more, and I need the others to be on board for this to work out.

__ __ __

Hey guys,

So this is the final chapter that I will be releasing, I will be back by July, do not fear. But thankyou so much for all the support so far, I really do appreciate each and every one of the views and votes I get!

Elle x