Brighter Than The Stars: Book One

𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒩𝒾𝓃𝑒: 𝑅𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝐼𝓃 𝐻𝑒𝓁𝓁

2010

Harrison Fox's death wasn't deserving of the color black, which was visible by the modest number of people at his funeral. He wasn't worthy of tears or mournful looks. He wasn't worthy of kind stories, as there weren't any to tell.

No.

The few people who came to his funeral weren't there to grieve the loss of life. They were here to make sure the prick was genuinely dead.

Madeline would only miss two classes by attending this funeral. The accident happened earlier in the week, on a Tuesday. Accident probably wasn't the right word, since her neighbor drove drunk nearly every night. Fortunately, when he flew through the stop sign, it was a semi he'd hit, so the other driver was unscathed, while Harrison Fox was wiped off the planet in an instant.

Not even his sister had bothered to step up to the podium, nor the brother of his deceased wife. Every single person in this room knew the world was better off without that man walking around in it. Madeline would have found that fact sad if she hadn't hated him so goddamn much.

Madeline knew he was dead. She wasn't here to check the casket or provide condolences. She'd come for one reason, and one reason only.

To see if word managed to spread to Elijah wherever he was.

She still remembered the night he left. She recalled her parents' tears, and could still remember the feel of her own dripping down her face. The cracks in Elijah's voice. Most of all, she remembered watching him drive away in her father's car.

It was a while before Madeline understood that night, and all of her parents' arrangements, right down to the letter explaining why Elijah was driving someone else's vehicle. They'd prepared for that moment. They knew that once Elijah came of age, he'd disappear from their lives, or suffer certain death. It was why they'd paid him twenty dollars an hour to watch her when he babysat, why they'd put money aside for him for two years. He needed money to establish a new life, and her parents made sure he had it.

Madeline was too young to remember the kind of man Harrison was before his wife's death, but her mom said he'd always had a screw loose. Not physically abusive, but still very much toxic. Before Elijah's mother died of cancer, she'd made her mother pledge to always look out for her little boy. It was the best her parents were able to do.

Every night for twelve years, when the sky was clear, Madeline stared into the sky to find the North Star, wondering if Elijah would look up that same night in search of it. He'd told her that he still did, though that was two and a half years ago. Sometimes she'd make a wish on that star, but never for him to come home. She made a wish for him to find her in college, but it never took.

"You're the only person who could ever talk me into staying, M&M, so I'm begging you not to ask me to."

As a child, the first night after he left, she'd nearly wished for it. The words were moments away from escaping her. Then Madeline remembered what he said. If he stayed, or if he came back, either he or his father would end up dead.

Now one of them was.

The night after Harrison's death was the first time she dared make the forbidden wish aloud.

There was a quote, 'It isn't hard at all to make a wish. The difficultly lies in how to make what you wish for a reality.'. The particular wish that was in her heart, but never spoken aloud until only a few days ago, was difficult to hold back. Once Madeline finally gave herself approval to make it, she'd stared out the window all night. It'd hadn't become reality.

Nor was it a reality now.

Madeline had kept her eyes on the door, waiting for some glimpse of Elijah in the hopes he'd come to see his father's demise for himself. But if word had somehow managed to reach him, it wasn't enough reason to bring him home.

Except this wasn't his home anymore. Elijah had kept to the promise he made to her dad. He got as far away from their small town as he could and only looked back once.

Tonight she'd go back to making her wish on the North Star that'd she'd been making for the last three years. For his nightmares to end. For him to find his calm.

"Sweetheart," her mom said as she shook Madeline's shoulder, "it's time to go."

She took one last look at the casket, then another around the room, before standing up to join her parents.

"This isn't his home anymore, Maddie," her dad reminded her. "Elijah is out there somewhere, living his life without pain or fear. That boy is a survivor, and wherever he is, I promise you he's safe."

"How old would he be?" Her mom asked.

She could see her dad doing the math in his head, but she didn't have to. She'd lit a candle every year on his birthday, hoping he somehow felt it. "Thirty. Elijah's thirty this year."

Her mom put her arm around her as they walked down the center of the church toward the exit. "Got any plans for the night?"

"By the time I get home, I won't have the energy or interest in doing anything," Madeline admitted. "But since it's Friday, I should have the house to myself, which will be a nice change of pace."

Her dad placed his arm around her as they stepped out of the building and into the sunlight. "You don't have to leave after they bury the son-of-a-bitch, you know. You can spend the weekend, go through Thanksgiving plans with your mom, have a couple of days off from the big city."

It was somewhat intriguing. Madeline much preferred her hometown to the hustle and bustle of her college city, but she knew if she stayed, all she would be doing is staring out her bedroom window, toward the house next door, hoping for a glimpse of a man she wouldn't see. It would be torture. "I have some work to finish up for class on Monday, so I have to get back."

Her mother nodded, squeezed her hand, then allowed hers to fall to her side. "I know you wanted this all to turn out differently, Maddie. I think we were all holding onto hope that big church door would open, and Elijah would walk through with all these pieces we could finally use to fill our family puzzle.

"But we told him to move on, Maddie. We told him to take that car, drive as far away as he could, and never look back. We wanted that new life for him, even if it meant we'd never be included in it, because Elijah deserved something more. We can't ask him to give all that up, or look back just because his father died. We need to accept that we are part of the old life we asked him to leave behind."