Matching Rings [h.s]

55

POV: BAYLIN GRIGGS

Harry and I brought the letter with us so we could show Alice once we got to see her. I'm not going to pretend it didn't freak me out, it very much did, it made me much more fucking scared as to what was to come.

I was also so eager to know more about this box that Alice told me they had found. Alice didn't give me any information on what the items inside were, she only told me they found it in Maya's room.

When Harry and I arrived at my house, I refused to call it my home anymore, there were a couple cop cars parked about. I had gotten used to seeing these kinds of cars around this house, it would be weird if it was empty and quiet like how it was before everything.

The second we walked in through the front door, we were greeted by Officer Hill. It's been a while since I had seen him, he had a thick beard now and I almost didn't recognize him.

"Hi there." He greets us as he used to. "Detective Williams is upstairs, I understand she called you so you could see the piece of evidence?"

"Yeah, she did." I say shyly.

I took a peek at the doorway which led to the living room, the room in which I had seen my mother's lifeless body sprawled out on the couch. The open door frame was sectioned off with police tape, two lines of the yellow plastic making an 'X' over the room.

I'm nervous out of my fucking mind, I feel like my entire body was shivering with flashes of anxiety. Harry saw this in me, and made sure to stay close to me to calm me.

This is when I notice another cop behind him, and an untouched small stack of paper on my old dining table. The cop waited for this interaction to be over with, so that he could get back to the conversation I had interrupted.

"Right, well, you go right on up. I'll tell her you're here." He gives me a flash of a smile before walking back to the other officer. As Harry and I turn to make our way up the stairs, I hear him talk into the little walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

The ambience of the quiet house as we made our way up the staircase was weird, to say the least. It's strange to think I lived here all my life, when as of now I can never imagine living here now full time. It was a packed away memory, already beginning to fade by force at the traumatic events that took place inside. I didn't even have enough room in my head to think about this place anymore.

We walk past my old bedroom, the scent of nostalgia at just the sight of my closed door seeping into my memory as if it had been years. Clips of my childhood ran through my mind, the memories I've made in that room.

The weird part is that I don't miss it, this house is dead to me.

When we reached my sister's room at the end of the hall, the door was shut, but I could hear muffled voices at the other end. Harry pushed the door open, inside was Alice as well as that familiar blonde photographer from all the other times the police had been here.

The photographer had her signature camera strapped around her neck, showing the pictures she had taken of the evidence to Alice for approval.

Nothing around the room looks out of the ordinary. My sister's bed was stripped, to which I assume the police had taken, and there was a pile of used and unused ziplock bags. Her vanity drawers were open but left alone, her bookshelf also untouched. But I was overall very uncomfortable being in here, it reminded me so much of my sister. I just miss her very much, it's hard for me to see all her things like this... so abandoned.

"Those'll work, thank-" Alice stops mid-sentence when she notices the two of us walk in. "Baylin, hello." Her eyes fall to Harry behind me, to which she gives him a nod of acknowledgment followed by a simple, "Harry."