FLASHBACK TO WHEN THE MILLERS LEARNED OF CHARLOTTE'S DEATH:
"How did you not know?!" Rosemary shouted at him, barely realizing that her younger brother had run up the stairs. "You're twins. You're siblings! You live with her—"
"No."
Rosemary blinked, and tears spilled down her face. "What do you mean, 'no'?"
"I don't. Or, I didn't." James looked away, his thumbs twiddling with each other. "Rosemary...you remember what my parents were like."
Rosemary tilted her head. "You both told me they argued all the time," she said.
James nodded. "All you would ever hear would be them arguing. 'Charlotte deserves this!' and 'But James deserves that!' All their arguments would be centered around the both of us. They didn't understand what to do with twins. They wanted everything to be fair for the both of us, but that just made it more complicated. My dad worked. My mom didn't. Charlotte didn't like the movies I watched. I didn't like the ones she watched. My mom couldn't be in two places at once.
"At first, it was Charlotte and me against the both of them. But after your accident, we kind of...split up. The both of us were there when you'd gotten hit. Charlotte blamed it on me. After all, I was the one who wanted to race across the street. I didn't realize that the light had turned green. Charlotte had shouted. I stopped. You hadn't.
"So Charlotte blamed your accident on me. And I got defensive. We argued. It wasn't the normal sibling rivalry. We were both angry. At each other, for making our parents argue. At our parents. At basically everyone.
"We drifted. My parents divorced. I left with my dad. Charlotte stayed with my mom. We never talked. Never texted. At school, we'd see each other and walk in opposite directions." James's voice shook. "I shouldn't...I should've realized how stupid we were. I should've stopped it. I should've done something, told Charlotte I was sorry. I was stupid, so, so, so stupid."
"You were twelve," Rosemary whispered.
"And that made all the difference, didn't it? I lost Charlotte. I lost all the time I could've taken to be with her, before she died."
"If only she'd said something," Rosemary said, tears building up again. She tried not to think of how her best friend was probably pale and cold, stone dead.
"We should never have argued," James said, lost in his own world. "It was a mistake. A mistake that cost me her life in mine."
"It's not your fault," said Rosemary.
"It is," said James. "I should have listened. I'm not the one who gave her tuberculosis, but if only we hadn't fought...I would've been there for her."
---
He sat by her grave, his eyes closed as twin tears fell down his pale cheeks. He sniffed, staring at her name on the gravestone.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "How many times did you try and talk to me? How many times did I ignore you?
"You cared, all those times. I was stupid. I was hurting. So I hurt you, too."
He stared up at the sky. "I hope, wherever you are right now, you can bring it into yourself to forgive me. Because I'm sorry..."
~ Lyn
Words: 541
There you have it! The Reidall drama revealed!
It's not THAT amazing, but I'll just give a quick overview juuuust in case if it didn't make sense!
James and Charlotte's parents wanted the best for the both of them, but they quickly realized that Charlotte and James didn't like the same things, and with one parent being really busy because of work, it was hard to find things that the both of them liked. Both parents believed in equality for their children and didn't want to make it seem like they cared about one child more than the other, so things became complicated, FAST.
And because of its complexity, their parents started to argue. And argue. Charlotte and James tried their best to stick together and help each other out while their home was just arguments and arguments and arguments.
After Rosemary's accident, Charlotte blaming James for Rosemary being hurt, and James arguing with her, they started to play the blame game and started to drift away. They wouldn't talk nor look each other in the eye.
Their parents divorced, and James moved out with his dad while Charlotte stayed with her mom. Because they didn't talk or text or FaceTime, Charlotte felt no need to tell her twin that she had tuberculosis and that she would be dying.
Thank you to Fanficthor for letting me know (though I don't think it was intentionally) that I forgot to add in the revelation of their story!
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𝙳𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝙵𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚝...
General FictionA game against time. A story of sibling love. Would it be all right at the end? At twelve years old, Rosemary Miller had been part of an accident that had sent her into a coma for two years. Two years later, when she woke up, she wasn't the same...
