The Glass Rose

Chapter Fourteen

Sleep did not come easily to Adelaide that evening. She stared up at the ceiling of Sherlock's room, hoping that sleep would take her away from the cruel reality she faced for at least a few hours. She had forgotten sleep could be just as cruel.

A young Adelaide skipped along the broken sidewalk, holding tightly to her father's calloused hand. He watched his daughter with a bright smile. He always considered his children as his greatest accomplishment. Even at the age of five, he knew the girl would give the world a run for its money. His three children were the reason he woke every morning just to work in the fields all day. The young girl beside him was happy and that was enough.

Well, it was enough. Things had changed so quickly. Her father had dropped her hand and stepped in front of her. The young Adelaide couldn't understand what was happening. Why were these men yelling at her father? Why were they asking for the money that was for their dinners for the week? The world only seemed to make less sense when a loud sound echoed through the streets and her father crumpled to the ground beside her. A red fluid spread across his white shirt. Her mother had scolded her on multiple occasions for getting grass stains on her skirts, but she couldn't imagine this crimson would be able to come out of the shirt. She fell beside her father but was pushed away as the two men searched the man's empty pockets. All that they found was a letter with the young girl's name on it. Determining there was no more money to be had, they ran off.

About a year earlier, Adelaide had found a bird that was covered in the same crimson fluid as her father. She held it gently in her hands, able to feel its every breath. Until the breaths became less regular and the bird at last stilled. She learned of death that day. Yet, seeing it happen to her father was surreal. She placed her hands over the wound as if her small hands could hold in the blood. As if her small hands could keep her father alive.

A sad smile spread across the dying man's lips. He raised a shaky hand to his daughter's cheek and handed her the letter with the other. When he wrote that letter for the girl's fifth birthday that day, he didn't realize it would act as a farewell as well. He was just grateful that the girl would have at least something to remember him by. He was also grateful that the last thing he saw before death took him was the face of the wonderful daughter he raised.

The hours after her father's death were the most difficult of young Adelaide's life. She held her father's corpse tightly until the rest of her family arrived. Her older brother pried her away from the body that used to contain one of the people she loved most in the world to hold her in his arms. Their sister wrapped her arms around the two, watching their mother sadly. The brown-haired woman knelt beside her husband. There was very little in life that she loved, but she loved him. Without him, her life no longer made sense. She was his wife, not a mother. He wanted children, she only ever wanted him. Now she was left with his cooling corpse before her and three crying children behind her.

They buried him the next afternoon. He was placed in a lopsided wooden coffin. There wasn't a cloud in the sky that day. In all of the stories her older sibling had read her, Adelaide heard how it rained when bad things happened. The sun shining above them gave her a strange sense of hope. Her father was alright. Yes, she'd miss him, but he'd live on inside of each of them.

That night, Adelaide awoke to the sound of something hitting the wooden floor in the room beside where she slept. Neither of her siblings beside her woke to the sound so she carefully slipped from their grasp to make her way to her mother's room. Inside, her mother desperately shoved her belongings into a suitcase.

"What are you doing, Maman?" The woman turned to look at the girl. She let out a sigh before returning to her packing.

"I am leaving."