Memoirs

My Mother is Gone

The sudden knock from the front of the flat caught his attention, rousing him from his restless slumber. It was past noon, a rather late hour for him to sleep in to - but no one had ever said that Reinien Argene was especially motivated, and definitely not at this juncture. He'd been waiting for his parents to come home for nearly a week now, and in his thirteen-year-old mind, that was quite the large piece of forever. When the front door was knocked again, he jumped, his thoughts immediately going to his missing parents, and nothing else.

The noonday sun shone down on the front stoop on which his visitor was waiting - a visitor whom, he noticed with some dismay, he was not related to. It was unusually hot and bright outside for the time of year and location both; summer was a long way off, a couple of months in the making at best. Most others would have stayed indoors to relieve themselves of the weight of the heat-laden air, but there seemed to be an exception to that in the man who stood before him now.
Reinie recognized him immediately. Carter was a friend of his parents' - of his father's, especially. Heavyset and broad, he always wore a kind smile, despite the intimidation that his size and build would assume of his personality. If his parents had believed in naming godfathers, Carter would have been his.

But his presence was no comfort now, in light of the boy's parents' absence. They had left without any unusual formalities last Tuesday, his mother's usual kiss to his forehead and his father's ruffling of his hair; however, when the morning sun had woken him the next day, they still hadn't returned. A detail he had remembered from their departure was Carter's presence in the background as they departed, idly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his car. Now, he was here alone - and Reinie worried.

For days, he had waited, with only his adopted sister sitting by to keep him company and attempt to relieve his worry. She was no real comfort, though - he had known her for barely five months. She was a virtual stranger to him, and rather distant besides. Her attempts at comfort seemed forced, as though she didn't know quite how to go about it.
Of course, he'd appreciated the attempts, but he had taken to staying in his room all day regardless, staring at his featureless ceiling and hoping that the rest of his family would return to him. He'd found some old family pictures and pasted them there, right above his bed, and would stare at his mother's smiling face as he drifted off to sleep every night.

That had been going on for a week. Now, some sort of hope seemed to linger in his eyes as he greeted the man who'd appeared at his door, a tired mumble that betrayed his lack of sleep. The dark bags under his eyes showed it as well, but the darker rims of his glasses did something to mask the majority of said flaw. His face turned up to the older male, and he attempted a small smile, as though he was trying to be brave in the face of the inevitable. He could hope, he told himself, but he should never expect the best. Hope would only mislead, and you would always be hurt in the end.

"Any news...?" he queried, his whole future hanging on the words. This wasn't the first time he'd had to worry over his reckless parents, the people who thought they could be heroes but only seemed to be caught up in trouble to the very end - but it had certainly been the longest. "They're okay, right? It's just taking them a while to..."

He was smarter than that, and so his voice soon petered out into silence, fear and worry growing like cancer in his dark eyes. Still, the man said nothing, did nothing but sigh and avert his eyes, as though he wished to be anywhere else but here, in front of Reinie's parents' little brownstone flat. The expression on his face made Reinie's heart clench.

"Carter. Please. Say something."

Still, Carter was silent.

"Please, just tell me what happened to them... I can take it."

Nothing.

"Carter," he said finally, more insistently. "Please. I don't know why you came, but you can't just stand here and stare at the ground instead of talking. I'll just go back insi-"