The Timeline [h.s.]

75.

November 16th, 2018:

Claire was mad at her sister.

She had never been this mad at her sister before. But she was.

And it wasn't something irrational or stupid or trivial.

Sure, they had had their fair share of skirmishes over the years, as is pretty normal and standard in a siblings relationship - if she had to sit down and count the times she had Steven had had skirmishes and bickers and, sometimes, even physical fights (in jest) she'd lose count.

Those occasions had always been resolved in the span of a couple of days - save for that one time Claire had tried to shut her sister completely out when she had found out she was pregnant, for fear of being left behind by Anna and Richard, and forgotten about. By the end of the day, usually, either Claire or Anna were already on the phone or outside the other's door to apologize or simply act like it never had happened. More the latter than the former.

But this time....

Oh, Claire's blood boiled again if she thought about what had happened earlier in the day.

What her sister had caused, perhaps involuntarily, trying to help. Not knowing and - worse - not understanding that what she was doing was only going to complicate things even further and turn everything ugly and unpleasant for Claire.

Letting out a shaky breath, Claire let herself fall on top of the couch in the living room and stared at the turned off TV, without really seeing it.

It had been just an hour since everything had went down, but if she looked down at her hands, she knew she'd find them shaking; if she closed her eyes and remained silent for more than 15 seconds, she knew she'd start hearing her aggravated heartbeat in her ears, her cheeks heated, her eyes burning with unshed angry tears; her bottom lip was trembling, the back of her neck was sweating and she felt like she wanted to get up, grab the nearest thing she had and hurl it against the wall.

Just to hear it shatter.

She bet it'd feel extremely good.

But she couldn't do that, not really.

She glanced at the clock on the table - she could've checked her phone, but she had left it in the kitchen after discarding it rather unceremoniously on top of the kitchen table before she could do anything she might end up regretting later (like, throwing her phone to the wall) - and discovered that she had to be on her way to pick Theodore up from school in about... 15 minutes.

He got out of the school at 2PM now, after having lunch there with the other kids and playing some more; when he arrived at home he was pretty knackered and napped immediately for at least an hour and a half. That was his routine now, and Claire was fine with it.

Especially that day, when she had to unwind so much and - probably - have a good mental breakdown in the bathroom. She hoped Theodore would be asleep all through that, she didn't want to subject him to seeing her lose her mind over the events of that late morning.

Worse than that would only be Theodore seeing her cry, trying to console her, and realize that the main reason behind that powerful mental breakdown was him.

Biting her nails, Claire looked down at her outfit: comfortable house clothes she would never be caught wearing to pick Theodore up, on a normal day. Problem was, she had no time to change. She now had about 7 minutes before she had to be on her way to get to the school on time.

She hadn't even had lunch, but she didn't really care about that. Her stomach was closed, clamped shut, and she doubted it'd be accepting any type of food for the foreseeable future. Bile rose in her throat at the mere thought of sitting down and having a meal.