Into the Dark

Chapter 3

My throat, once again, grew dry when I heard my dad's voice. A big ball of unwanted emotions swelled up inside my chest, mainly anger and sadness. I didn't want to turn and face him. I didn't want to waste my breath speaking to him.

He was already doing that with me.

But I defied my conscience anyway and reluctantly turned around. He stood smiling, as if nothing was wrong, and took a step towards me.

I took a step back.

"What's wrong, Sweetheart?" he asked with utter confusion, his smile fading. I felt the need to slap him. To go against everything I'd learned about respect for elders. I wanted him to feel my emotional pain, not only about us moving, but by him and Mom not bothering to listen to my reasoning.

I felt they were ignoring me.

"Dad, don't stand there and pretend. You know what's wrong," I said. "We can't move. We can't just... abandon our home!"

"But, Honey... we're not abandoning our home. I promise that after we move, you'll see that there's nothing to worry about! Everything will be okay."

Now I knew for a fact he wasn't listening to me. I wasn't worried about moving; nor was I scared that things wouldn't be okay. I just wanted to stay home.

I tried to calm myself with a deep breath and turned back to a box of Daniel's old toys. Dad was silent behind me, probably still trying to find something else to say. I decided to make that easier for him.

"You don't understand..." I mumbled. "Can you please just... leave me alone?" The words came out harsher than I had planned but for right now, I didn't care. Although it was wrong of me to want Dad to hurt, I couldn't help myself.

My emotions always came out stronger than anticipated.

After a few long moments of silence, I finally heard my dad's footsteps go down the stairs. Somehow, I could hear the grief they carried with them.

I tried to push the bad thoughts out of my head, along with the worries bubbling up inside. If I let those things consume me, I'd never get anything done.

***

After I'd packed up all of Daniel's old toys and then Lilly's, I got to work on everyone's clothes (the ones that weren't already in bins).

Rummaging through the ol' junk we had, I came across a few family albums that were filled with pictures of family vacations, birthday parties, Christmases, and even random pictures of us around the... house.

The house.

Staring at the pictures didn't help at all. It just made me realize even more that we had memories built up inside these walls. So why get rid of them?

The albums, along with the other junk I'd collected, were thrown into an empty box, carrying a part of my remembrance with them.

I pushed that box to the far end of the attic.

As I got to work, things started to look neater and more boxes began to pile up near the stairs. I of course came across more things that brought back too many memories and did my best to hide them amongst the less painful things.

Albeit it being cold, lugging heavy boxes actually made me a bit warm... hot actually. I wanted to slip off my hoodie but knowing the temperature up here, I'd probably put it back on in no more than five minutes.