Strange Days

Why she stayed.

His hand hung over the keys with hesitation before he took a deep breath and let his fingers dance over the cool, familiar marble. His mind wavered as he let his fingers wander, his head feeling heavy and hazy like he was about to have a heat stroke.

His mother stood outside the room and listened silently, with her forehead resting against the cool wood of her son's bedroom door. After her ex-husband had passed, the boy had given up on of the few gifts his father had given him, and hearing him used that gift, use it so beautifully, she couldn't help herself and smiled with relief washing over her exhausted features.

But the music stopped abruptly, and silence overcame them both until a high pitch came from the wooden floor as he pushed the bench away from the piano. She let out an inaudible sigh and gently knocked on the door. A faint "Yes?" came from the other side before she opened the door.

She gave her son a gentle smile, but as she looks around the empty room, her heart skipped a beat. She shook the shock of reality from her head and focused back on her kid. She sat down beside him, as he laid stretch out on his naked mattress, and with a light hand, she stroked his coffee brown hair.

"We have to go," she whispered to him, and he shook his head ever so gently. "I don't want to leave him," he whispered back at her, opening his eyes to look at his mother.

She understood the feeling. The feeling of leaving something important behind, but she also realized very few hours after the funeral, that staying would never help them, her, him, heal the wounds their loved one left them.

"I know, I understand, but it's for the best, I promise," she told him, while continuously caressing his messy strands. He let out a sigh and rose from the bed with a heavy heart. He held out his hand for his mother to take, and together they walked out to her old, red Volvo.

They spent the following hours singing off key to the latest pop songs playing on the radio and sharing the memories of the house and life they've left behind. They share stories of the lost ones and the living ones. They laugh as the landscape pass them by as they cross the country to start fresh.

After the hour's pass, his mind finally lay at peace as his russet eyes close. A gentle smile rest on her lips as her heart felt lighter than the last months of illness had let it. She reached over to give his thigh a gentle squeeze, before turning off the radio to cross the last miles in restful silence.

When the Volvo finally cross the border to their destination, a small town in Maine, she reached over and rubbed her knuckles against his arm, and with a quiet hum, he wiggled in his seat to sit up. His russet eyes met her baby blues, and with a slight, wistful smile she greeted him welcome home.

His mother turned down a street and with curious eyes, he watched over the houses. He caught the sight of a few bikes left on the lawn, and a couple girls playing with a jumping rope on the sidewalk. The street seemed to continue endlessly, but after a few breaths, she turned into a driveway.

The house in front of them wasn't the biggest on the street, it was seemingly one of the smallest on the block, of what he had seen. The wooden walls were a worn, dusty blue, and the window pane an egg-white color.

The house looked run down but clean. He remembers vaguely that his mother visited the place a few weeks' prior the move, just to make sure that the house stood. They glanced at each other before they both slid out of the car to stretch their cramped legs.

"The rest of our boxes should be here sometime tomorrow," she told him over the roof of the car, and he gave her a nod before he glanced at the trunk. They had decided on taking the most important in the trunk of her car, a few things like an air mattress and a few blanket and pillows, a set of clothes for both, and a few toiletries, nothing else.