#ProudLife

/3/

The blue and pink fluorescent lights inside Ray's Diner cast light upon a lone figure sitting with a blueberry milkshake in his hand, his gaze transfixed on his phone, as if anxiously waiting for a call or a text.

He had just had a sip of his milkshake when a girl in blue dungarees and brown hair tied in a messy bun entered the diner and looked around. Spotting who she was looking for, she went straight towards his table and sat opposite them, bending over and sipping his blueberry milkshake.

"So...you say you're innocent..." The girl said, still sipping from the tall glass of milkshake.

The man looked at her from his heavily lidded eyes and said "Leia, I know you must be...sceptical about me...but I'm not lying to you. At this point, I cannot."

Leia looked at her father and asked him "How can I believe you, dad?? You left us alone! Mom did not even have a job back then and you just left. We were all alone. Do you understand that dad?!"

Leia took a deep breath and composed herself. "If you say mom is indeed having an affair with Mrs. Peterson, do you have anything to prove it to me?"

There was a vase on their table containing a single white rose which Mr. Bayern now picked up and said, "No lies, no secrets. That's what makes our love eternal. Right, Lee-pea?"

Leia's mind suddenly took her to the fireplace in their house, seven years ago. Her father was leaning in front on his knees and she had just come home after stealing candy from Scott's Halloween haul. She remembered feeling guilty about it but her father had said to her smiling, "No lies, no secrets. It makes our love eternal, Lee-pea."

She came back to the present and nothing much had changed really, except that it was she who was asking for the truth this time. Her gaze determined now, and her mind focused on finding out the truth, Leia said "Do you have any proof, dad?"

Mr. Bayern, his mind troubled but his thoughts clear removed a photo from his pocket. Leia took it and saw two young women smiling and holding hands in it. It had to be an old picture by its quality and its faded edges, Leia thought.

"That's Clarissa and Penelope, your mum and Mrs. Peterson back in their uni days. They were...together at that time. I only met your mother five years later, we were in the same shift at a restaurant. Lei, I did not know about this picture until some time ago...also, I managed to take screenshots of your mother's phone and send them to myself a couple months ago, when I first suspected her...let's say that the texts were quite detailed.

Half an hour later, Leia left the diner. She was now fully convinced of who was actually innocent and who was cleverly playing games with everyone around them.

~~~~~

The lamp was the only source of light in the room.

Taylor was sitting at her desk, her form casting dark shadows on her bedroom wall. At that moment she did not know what to do; her feelings weren't allowing her to think straight.

She was falling through a dark tunnel into an infinite abyss with no sense of direction, her heart pounding, her mind filled with every last horrible memory she had had.

Her turbulent thoughts were scattered all over the place like brown leaves on an Autumn day. The wildest hope of freedom was suppressed by the dark memories in the farthest recesses of her mind.

Her nightmares had returned. Along with the crashing fear of going through it again....Taylor did not want to fall prey to it again...depression was her abyss and her past, she couldn't let it be her future.