Dead and Departed

Chapter Fifteen:

Miya woke up the next morning to the front door opening. She got out of bed and saw her dad, Lucy, and the woman who'd yelled at her dad that one time. She wasn't yelling now, though. She just looked mostly... sad. And tired. Her dad looked tired too. Lucy was the only one who looked wide awake.

"Miya! How'd it go?" her dad yelled up the stairs to where Miya was standing as he handed some money to the babysitter, who promptly left.

"It was fine, dad!" Miya yelled back. "What's going on?"

She walked down the stairs. Her dad sighed.

"You know what, I'll tell you after a quick nap, okay?" He rubbed her head and she removed his hand and ran her hand through her now even-more-tangled hair.

"We both know it won't be a quick nap, right?" she replied. "It'll take, like, the whole morning. That's what you consider short."

"Yup." Her dad smiled and removed his shoes. The woman smiled at Miya as she walked away with Lucy into the next room over.

"Who's she? Why is she here?" Miya asked. Her dad sighed.

"After the nap, Miya. After the nap. But you have to promise to be an adult about it, okay?"

"Okay..." Miya replied. He walked off and collapsed on the couch, promptly falling asleep. Miya rolled her eyes and went back upstairs to get dressed and brush her teeth.

. . .

Charlotte sat down in a chair. "So I'm supposed to pretend to be that girl's long-lost first cousin who had amnesia? It sounds sort of far-fetched."

Lucy shrugged as she started to pull out cereal and milk. "It was Mitchel's idea, not mine. He calls the shots when it comes to his daughter, so I learn not to argue when it comes to cover stories. Do you want Raisin Bran or Cheerios?"

"Cheerios," Charlotte answered. "But isn't he worried that if he uses weird covers then she'll find out?"

"I don't know. He still thinks of her as a little kid. He stopped believing she was aging when her mother died," Lucy said, shrugging. She handed Charlotte a bowl of cereal. "He's a bit overprotective. I think Miya's old enough to handle the truth, and smart enough to figure it out soon, but he still thinks of her as an eight-year-old."

"I wish my parents did that when I was young," Charlotte said, swallowing a bite of Cheerios. "It was a bit unhealthy for me to be out on my own all the time. I guess it was fine in the end, though."

"Oh, you don't want it, trust me," Lucy replied. "My mom was like that and we fought all the time. Miya's smart enough not to fight it and to be patient. I wasn't." She laughed. "I'm pretty sure my mom still thinks of me as an unruly teenager."

"Well, Miya seems like a good kid." Charlotte said, then paused for a second. "I wonder what Vega would have been like."

"Hey, no depressing stuff here." Lucy waved her finger.

"But the reason I'm here is depressing," Charlotte replied.

"Haha," Lucy said. They heard footsteps down the stairs. "Remember, amnesia."

Charlotte sighed. "Right."