I Wish To Die Peacefully

Chapter 9: Something Broken

BRANDON

"Brother! What were you thinking, telling Ava about the annulment? Didn't we agree to keep this from her?" I exclaimed, storming into Brother Landon's chambers following his lead. Greyson was behind me and gave his share of berating.

"We agreed to get rid of that document. Why did you suddenly tell her about it? Please explain yourself, brother!" Greyson interjected, clearly upset.

"Keep it from her and what? Risk the possibility of Ava trying to escape the mansion by her own means again? Or are we going to place an army of escorts by her side and keep her supervised day and night? Haven't the two of you been getting reports about Ava as well? Didn't your servants tell you how much suffocated Ava had been due to the strict security?" Brother Landon answered with annoyance in his tone.

Greyson and I resigned into silence at his words.

"Even so, to tell her about annulling the adoption... I feel like brother had been too impulsive," Greyson remarked quietly.

"I might have but it's the best thing I could come up with to keep Ava at bay," Brother Landon replied with a sigh. "I didn't want to tell her as well, but I don't want to make things more complicated. We don't know about what's going on in Ava's head but she made one thing clear today. Even though she's being treated better in the duchy, she doesn't want to stay here. We can simply keep her here by locking her up and restricting her freedom but do you guys want to do that?"

I clenched my hand into a fist. I understand what brother is trying to say. Restricting Ava's freedom to keep her in the mansion won't be any different from where we started. Ava would probably hate us more than she already does.

"There's still over a month's time before Ava's birthday. It's not as if the document had been made official and she'll be leaving for good," Brother Landon said and paused with a sigh. "We can still... do something to change her mind..." he added, but he sounded as if he's also trying to convince himself.

"To be honest, I'm really anxious about it... But we reaped what we sowed. We made the child suffer so much. I understand why she wants to leave," Brother Landon continued and gave a bitter smile. "Isn't it ironic? I wanted her gone so many times in the past, but now I'm clinging to her and doing everything to make her stay... It's pathetic, truly pathetic..."

Silence enveloped the three of us as we shared the same thoughts. Our unreasonable dislike towards Ava as young children is finally giving us the punishment we deserve. If only we treated her well and accepted her as part of the family earlier, things wouldn't have gone this bad.

Strangely, I recalled a childhood memory when I was playing and accidentally broke my favorite toy. I fussed and cried and whined for it to be fixed but it was beyond fixing. Father comforted me and said that he'll have a craftsman make the very same toy thus I should give up on the broken one. He told me that fixing something broken is much more difficult than making something from scratch.

With Father's words in mind, I looked back on the day I saw Ava for the first time. Thinking about it, the child back then was confused and probably scared, but all I noticed was the fact that she was clothed in Lottie's clothes and being called Lottie's name by Mother. I never saw the cowering little girl; I only saw the circumstances that upset me. I was never the empathetic type but that was no reason to overlook how I treated her.

If... rather than pushing and tripping her and playing stupid pranks on her, I held her hand instead... Would she have called me 'brother', not because she was told to do so but because she wants to?

Is it really too late for us to patch things up?

"So... how much are you planning to tell her later?" Greyson suddenly said and I snapped out of my own thoughts.