How to Kill a Man in Thirty Seconds

Chapter 2: The Last Straw

It was midnight when my mother reached home. It was apparent that she was exhausted, the bags under her eyes and weary expression standing testimony of her sleepless nights.

"Lily's in bed?" she asked, her voice low as I served her the soup I had prepared.

"She is. Don't worry," I replied, sitting beside her as I watched her gobble up her dinner ravenously.

"I should spend more time with her," she murmured, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. My mother sighed then, covering her face in defeat.

I studied her. Her beautiful blonde hair, which she usually neatly tied atop her head, was an unruly disaster, her lips pale and her makeup long gone. The happy woman I had once known had disappeared along with my father's death. Mum was trying her be best deal with our situation, I knew, but often she blamed herself too much for our hardships.

"I agree, you should spend more time with her," I replied honestly and added as she continued to watch me sadly, "But given the circumstances, mum, I don't think you can. We need to be okay with that."

I noticed the glassy sheen that had come over her eyes and my hand reached almost instinctively to hold hers, "Don't worry about Lily, alright? I spend every second that you're not here with her. I don't ever let her feel alone and believe it or not, she's happy. I know she is."

"But what about you?" My mother countered, her voice breaking, "You've got school and exams and all your extracurricular activities, and a part-time job too. You're a kid too, Charley. What about you?."

I rolled my eyes, "Come on, mum. I'm almost eighteen. And the last time I checked, my grades were nothing less of an A plus; trust me, you don't need to worry about me."

Mum chuckled, wiping her eyes, "I'm your mother, Charley. It's my job to worry about you."

My lips kicked up at the words.

Mum had been a straight- A student when she was in school, even pursuing engineering but had had to drop out of college when she discovered she was pregnant with me. She took pride in the fact that she hadn't ever considered abortion. My parents had instead decided to get married while my mum stayed at home to take care of me. For as long as my dad was with us, life had been good. His small startup had eventually begun to prosper and for many years, it had more than supported us. That is, until my father's death.

It was after my mother had retired to her bedroom and called it a night, that I sat in bed, deep in thought. Reaching under my bed, I retrieved the thick bulky book I had hidden beneath the floorboards. It was my family's photo album, encompassing all of our most cherished memories in the fifteen best years of my life, and I opened it now, turning the pages slowly.

A young man with cocoa colored hair and the same chocolate brown eyes I had, stared back at me from the first page: my father. In the photograph, he sat beside a piano with a small baby me held securely in his arms. I smiled, my hand unconsciously reaching out to touch his face. There was countless other pictures, ones of him in a business suit as he set off to work, on holidays as he chased me playfully along the beach, playing soccer with me in the rain and even one of him reading me a bedtime story when I was five.

I caught a stray tear that fell from my eye, sniffling as I turned to the next page. There were pictures of the day Lily was born, as a weeping infant clinging to mum for dear life. In the photo, I stood by the corner of the hospital room, glaring in clear envy as my mum cuddled my little sister lovingly. All the while, my father stood by the side of the bed with happy tears in his eyes. For as long as he was alive, he hadn't been aware about Lily's condition, even though I was positive that even if he had, he wouldn't have loved her any less.

Passing time was apparent as the pages were turned, dad's brown hair taking on a shade of white. He seemed to be becoming more exhausted as time passed, with his face gaunt and his stubble more prominent as the years went by, but his familiar grin remained unchanged and as wide as it had always been.

If I had envisioned my fate three years ago, I would have called it a nightmare. Something too horrific to possibly be real.

When my father's corpse had been discovered, I hadn't understood how this was happening to us or why we deserved it, still didn't. No one did.

My father had been a good man. Why would something so unfathomably inhumane happen to someone like him?

What had truly blown out the final feeble flames of the once raging fire that was our strength, was the news we had received mere days after his death: dad's company had been experiencing drastic losses for the final year and had fallen into a great deal of debt.

Much to our horror, it took all the money that remained to ensure these sudden debts were paid for. Mum had been distraught, had sunken into depression for days and even I'd felt that the world I knew and loved was crashing down all around me. After the funeral, we had still not moved on, our town, the places we regularly visited and our friends being a constant reminder of the safe haven that had once been our life and was no more.

So, we had moved away, in a desperate attempt to escape our demons and begin a new life by ourselves. It was I who had decided that our new home should be in Apple Valley, the place that mum had grown up in and had spent the most cherished times of her life in as a child.

Yet, the mystery of my father's death was never solved, justice was never spoken of, and I was forced to believe that my father Anthony Green, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For almost three years, no suspects had been discovered and it had caused our family to live bitterly in the past, unable to give ourselves the fresh start we deserved.

I was beyond weary of it.

It was time I discovered what exactly had happened that fateful Christmas Eve.

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A/N- So I just wanted to introduce her mum here :D What do you think about Charley so far?? Do you like her or are u still on the edge?? More of Adrian coming up soon!!!