𝙱𝙰𝙻𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙰𝙲𝚃 | 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚔𝚒

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐗𝐕: 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫

The Tell

After Lydia's, and a couple dozen unanswered calls to Scott, Stiles dropped Hazel at her place. She hadn't figured out what to do with the video yet, hence the calls to Scott, but she let it slip from her mind as she wasted the afternoon away with her parents.

It proved to be the push she needed to get her into gear, and for the first time all school year she found herself doing homework at a decent hour. Since their lives were thrown into disarray, the importance of school had diminished. Still, good grades were important to Hazel, so she had been staying up to odd hours of the night doing homework.

Now, she was sitting at the kitchen bench doing homework while daylight still filtered through her house. It was revolutionary. Her parents were flitting around, going about the housework while conversation was traded between the three of them. They had stocked up the fridge and the pantry, and they were more full than they had been in a long time.

Hazel did the shopping, of course; she had to when she was alone for extended periods, but she only ever stocked up for one person. Her parents had bought food for three, and food that was a lot healthier than she would normally buy. She took it as a good sign. Surely the excess of food meant they planned to stay a while.

She loved when her parents were home. When they were playing happy family, she could almost pretend she was young again. Abandoning her chemistry, Hazel looked to the door, half expecting Violet to burst through after a day out with friends. Things were so uniform when she was a child.

Hazel was always the first sister home, normally having spent the hour after school with Scott and Stiles. She would do her homework at the bench, and her parents would get home soon after. Violet had picked up the bad habit of getting home late, so the door wouldn't swing open for her arrival until much later.

When she arrived, Violet would tease Hazel about Stiles, while Scarlet prepped her daughters' lunches for the next day, and Martin read the news to them all. Then at dinner they all had the chance to talk about their days, and before bed they would watch reruns of whatever crappy TV show was on. She really missed that.

The day it all came crashing down was horrible.

Because Violet was always late, Hazel had sat at the bench for hours waiting for her, not questioning it. She never took her eyes off the door. Not when night fell, not when her bed time passed, and not when her parents tried to force her to move (even then, they hadn't been as freaked out as her). But Violet never came home.

The first letter had been waiting in Hazel's room for her. It was tucked under her pillows. She couldn't remember the exact wording anymore, but in it Violet had written about how she would be home to get Hazel and explain everything soon. Then it finished with a warning not to show her parents the letter.