TRAIN [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 23: Our Secret - Part One

 Stefan and Aimee strolled through the front door.

"Hello?" Aimee sang into the house. "We're back!"

After a while, Molly sang back, and then she beckoned them into the TV room, where she waited, sitting on the couch together with Clifford and Celeste. Gavin was standing beside them, anticipating Aimee and Stefan's arrival. They were surprised, nervous, to see them all in one room.

"What's going on?"

"Celeste has something to tell you about your aunt –your biological aunt," muttered Molly.

"My aunt? What about my aunt, how do you know Suzanne?" she asked Celeste, guardedly.

Judging by everybody's dismal faces, Celeste had already revealed some discomforting news. Stefan stood against the wall and watched the event. Celeste had their full attention.

She mumbled, "Sh-She, uhm."

"What?"

She did not know if she could do it, get it off her chest. She had said it once, to the union of people in the lounge, but it would affect Aimee on a drastically deeper level. And those who knew the secret already looked like they were gathered around an occupied coffin.

Painfully, she muttered the words: "She's my mother."

And time stopped.

That was their secret, another vital enigma hanging on the tip of a tongue.

"You're my cousin?" she questioned, far from excited. She did not expect her voice to sound so steady, but it did.

"I'm your half-sister."

Their secret continued to unravel in itself. Aimee did not want to break down; the situation could only worsen. Lies and more lies was all that she was discovering after her bittersweet reunion with her mother. With Abba.

"How could you keep this from me?" she asked lightly.

"I couldn't," she choked, "I couldn't bring myself to tell you."

Aimee rolled her beady eyes and looked away for a moment, gathering her thoughts. Celeste stood and was about to touch Aimee's arm with her hand, a tool for comfort, but she rejected the gesture.

"Aimee, this pains me as much as it does you! I grew up without a father. I was told that he left before I was born, that he couldn't handle parenthood."

"Benjamin wouldn't cheat on Abba," she replied hastily, shaking her head, disbelieving.

"He didn't... he was dating Suzanne a year before marrying Abba, two years before they had you. Mom admitted it. And she wouldn't lie about this."

"Unbelievable," she whispered, more as a sole comment than a reply.

Her breaths were erratic, unstable. So many thoughts and emotions were fighting in her mind. The first was rage. How was it fair? Celeste had lived with her mother all this time, but she had been sent away, an ocean away!

She sniffed, "H-How old are you?" It was a struggle getting those few words out.

"Eighteen."

Stefan finally spoke, with great difficulty, "You should leave," he said, or ordered.

Celeste was holding a tight fist, as though she wanted to burst her fingers in her palms. She was hurt, not angry. For a moment, she could barely function.

Stefan came to Aimee as she wiped her tears from her cheeks. "Aimee –"

"It's okay," she said, but that was untrue. "I need a minute."

She absconded from the room, with her hand over her mouth and a fresh stream of tears escaping her eyes. Gavin watched her leave, anxiously clenching his jaw. Stefan did, too. He watched her as though he was a child and she was a kite he had lost to the wind – if he had had the luxury of kites. When she had gone upstairs, he stared at the ground helplessly, thinking, and all his thoughts had gone to pieces.

Aimee needed to be alone, alone and caged between furiousness and heartbreak. Every time Abba or Suzanne was brought up, she ended up feeling smothered. They were – supposed to be – her family. That was not how family worked.

But you don't belong to them.

Aimee was detached from her family in France, so why would she feel that way, emptied? Why did she miss them after years of moving on, or trying to? Why was it that no matter what Abba did, she wanted to forgive her? And Suzanne, well, Aimee knew then that she was alive and had a family of her own, but she was so confused. Had Suzanne been a part of Abba's plans, of the accident, of AIM? Had all of that been to rid themselves of her?

Was Suzanne as deranged as her sister?

Aimee's hands were pressed to her sides, one of them squeezing the hem of her tie-dye top. She stood leaning her back against her bedroom door, leaning into her thoughts.

Celeste was leaving the house. She felt spent, as if she had served her purpose there and was now of no worth to the Griffiths family. As Gavin followed her, Stefan held onto his arm mid-step and glanced between Celeste, the door, and him.

 "Did you know about this?" Stefan questioned him.

"No," he proclaimed, offended by the hint of accusation in his friend's voice, – he should have had more trust in him – but there was sympathy in Gavin's eyes, too.

He realised how neither Celeste nor Aimee had been treated fairly in this, and that Abba and this Suzanne woman were the ones to be despised. Impetuously, he took Celeste, wrapped his arm over her shoulder. No one bid them farewell, and in any case, Gavin had rushed off and shut the door so hastily that there was no chance to. And they drove off.

Meanwhile, Aimee sat on her bedroom floor, her legs held at her chest, her back against the frame of her bed. She took her diary out from below her mattress. She did not care about her wrist anymore, she had to write. It relieved her of frustration and heartache when she was younger, and she hoped for the same now.

Dear Diary, she thought, holding her pen in a trembling hand.

The point of her pen touched the page, but made a mess: a jagged line across it. Aimee screamed in frustration and tears ran down her cheeks mercilessly. She sighed shakily and inhaled and exhaled and inhaled and exhaled. She tried again. Dear Diary.