The Boy She Left Behind ✓

Chapter 9

He sighed into the phone's speaker.

"So, I think I should stop procrastinating and actually ring the bell now."

The faint sound of the door bell came across the speaker.

"Here goes everything,

"I love you. See you soon, Ems."

As soon as the voicemail ended, I threw the phone away; and after a few rebounds, it landed on my bed with a soft thump.

Groaning, I palmed my face and let out a silent scream.

My parents had died in the mid of January in 2014, about a year before Mathew had even woken up. Yet there he must have been, standing outside their black-coloured door with a smile on his face and hope in his heart.

For the umpteenth time that day, I felt tears rolling down my now permanently flushed cheeks. However, the reason behind the ache in my chest was not the reminder of parents' death, no. I couldn't even bring myself to feel sad because of them anymore. All I felt for my parents now was a hurtful kind of numbness, the kind that just leaves a gaping hole in your body.

The reason behind the continuous tug at my heart-strings, the stream of tears down my face, the quivering of my lip and the inability of my lungs to breathe, was Mathew.

It was the thought of his face when his smile must have gotten replaced with confusion and then hurt and then remorse. It was the idea of what he must have felt when he would've realised that now he had lost his one clear chance of finding his wife.

It was the imagined sight of him crying that had me weeping then.

*----------*

After what felt like hours, but in actuality was only a few minutes, I had gathered the courage to pick up the phone again. I found the voicemail where I had stopped listening and scrolled down to the next one. It was dated for the evening of the very same day as that of the last voicemail.

I breathed in deeply for I had a faint idea of what the next message would consist of. With shaking fingers, I pressed play and held the phone tightly against my ear.

Voicemail of 20th February' 2015

06:38 p.m.

"Emma,"

He heavily breathed into the phone.

From the clear sound of rushed breaths and sniffles, it was easy to tell that he was pressing the phone against his face and was holding onto it for dear life.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know. I was...

"I...If you're listening to these then you already knew that they were dead and here I was, rambling on about how great it would be to see them. To see you,"

He cursed into the phone. Multiple times.

I sighed deeply: No, I'm sorry.

"I don't think sorry will even cover up for this one."

A few seconds passed in silence, his rugged breathing the only thing filling it up. I felt my own heartbeat pick up pace as I heard his strangled one.

Finally then he spoke again in a quiet voice.

"I'm here you know; in the graveyard, staring down at their headstones."

That's when he said it. He said the one thing that simultaneously broke my world apart even further and crashed my reality into a deformed mush.

"Emma, I've lost my parents once again today, and God it hurts."