THE END

3. Bye, mother

"Wake up honey!" The midde aged father calls his daughter from downstairs.

"Ahhhhhh!" She shouts back and pulls up her blankets.

She feels someone's presence and knows it's her dad. He sits on the bed and pulls the covers back.

"It's 10 AM already." He smiles and pats her forehead.

"But it's SUNDAY. Seven year olds don't wake so early on a sunday." She defends.

"Honey, your mother is visiting today."

This is the only statement it takes for the little girl to jump up from the bed and rush to take a shower. Her father prepares breakfast for her. When she finally comes down, he braids her hair and puts little flower clips between them as she eats her sandwich.

"How about you prepare something for your mother till she arrives ?" The man suggests.

The little girl goes to her room from the spiral stairs and returns with a box of art supplies as she prepares a picture for her mother. The father sits on the couch and does his work on the laptop.

The silence is peaceful. The silence is comforting.

But the silence is short-lived as the doorbell rings past 11:30 in the morning.

"I'll get it !" The little girl rushes to open the door. It's her mother. The rain falls in the background and she goes ahead to hug her mother.

"Don't. " is the only thing the lady says to the girl.

Upon looking at the upset face of her daughter,  the father offers a simple excuse to the reaction.

"Honey, your mother has just come from far away and that too in rain. She must be carrying some germs so let her freshen up and then you can touch her so that you don't catch any infections." He explains.

"Till then, why don't you go inside and fetch the drawing you made." He suggests.

The little girl runs to the study room where she was sitting and realizes that the portrait is incomplete and begins to do her work.

After a good 10 minutes, she hears shouts coming from outside. From the window, she sees that the rain has stopped yet the sunlight barely reaches the land. Then she hears the sound of heels clicking on the gravel stairs down their house.

She knows that something is off. This might be her only chance to mend everything. And so she runs.

She runs barefoot to the lawn and calls out to her mother, "MOM!"

The mother stops and turns around. Seeing the child come to her, she rolls her eyes and pulls her head back, simultaneously looking at her husband still standing on the doorway.

Her soon-to-be ex husband.

For a second, the world stops. There just stands a mother and a daughter, amidst the middle of the lawn. Both were brunette, but for a passerby, they did not resemble to be a mother-daughter duo.

The little girl in a pink frock and the young woman in a black suit. Nothing was similar. Not even the smile.

The father glares at her from the doorway as if giving her a warning not to upset HIS daughter. The warning is understood by the lady. So is the irony of the situation.

She kneels beside the child and pats her head gently. She looks at her brunette hair made into braids and traces her hand along the length. Then she takes her arms in hers and places a kiss on her knuckles.

"Silly little girl." She attempts to smile as she looks at her dirty barefoot. "Wash it first when you go inside."

"Look mom, I made a drawing !" The girl brings her other hand out to show the drawing.

The woman does not even spare a look to the girl as she takes in the drawing.

It's their family. The house and lawn is drawn and they stand in the middle, the little girl holding hands with both her parents. She wears a pink frock and her father wears a pink sweater. But the mother wears a black suit. She realised that this was coloured after she came to visit.

She even drew a black dog beside the mother so that the mother wouldn't look odd between the pink coloured people.

She smiled. This time, it was a genuine one.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it." The woman finally looks into the eyes of the child. "I love you."

The girl smiles and it reaches her grey-eyes. "I love you too."

A scoff can be heard from behind them but Cassandra decides to ignore it. It's probably her soon-to-be ex husband, Phineas.

When she finally withdraws, her brown eyes meet the grey ones once more. This time it evokes anger in her. She recalls her mistakes, her punishments and her debts.

Oh the debts she hates to repay.

And so she stands abruptly. Without giving another look to the girl, she looks straight ahead to the man. "Take care, Phineas." She looks away.

"Good bye Adira." She walks away and gets into the car.

Adira stands there till the car turns at the end of the street,  gently waving back.

"Bye, mother."

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A/N
Song: All you had to do was stay

So that's the introduction of the family. For me, the name CASSANDRA rings for someone who is savage but often hurts others with her remarks. So that explains her name.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE !!