Carlisle

5

Cautiously, Carlisle came to sit down at the breakfast table. There was no talking, no idle chat about how school had been the previous day, just somber quiet. His mother was looking blankly down at the table before shaking her head as if she were waking up and went into the kitchen to busy herself setting food on the table. Carlisle looked warily at the places already set at the table and gulped. Three mats. Had his father regretted his decision and allowed Bardroy back into the house? What would that mean for him? 

He suddenly felt sick, deciding to sit down and wait patiently for his breakfast and the verbal lashings from his returned brother. There was the sound of a door closing loudly and both he and his mother jumped, the latter almost spilling a bowl of cereal onto Carlisle's lap. 
   Carlisle could have cried from relief when his father sat down in the chair in front of him. The man looked weary and tired, but he managed a smile at his wife and son. They continued with eating their breakfast silently. Carlisle swirled his cereal around in his bowl, not hungry after last night's events. He was finding it difficult to come up with how his father had come home early, how he knew what was happening, etc. 

He risked a quick glance up at his parents. They were holding hands atop the table and eating with their free ones. His father's expression was indifferent if not serene, but his hand seemed to clutch onto the smaller, more dainty hand of his mother for dear life. Carlisle frowned. His father shouldn't be there eating with them and consoling them- he should be sleeping and caring for himself so not to interrupt his work schedule. His work was important for him. 

Carlisle's father's head shot up at the sound of him hiccuping quietly, eyes wide and surprised at the sudden  whimper. Before he could even register that tears were streaming down his face and his lip was quivering, Carlisle's father had rushed around the table to his side to kneel and embrace him. As if a dam had burst with that single hug, strong sobs wracked his small body. 

"It's okay, you'll be okay now," his father promised, pulling away enough to look at him. Carlisle's mother swiftly retrieved a cloth from the table and brought it up to his lip. He sniveled as she wiped the blood from his busted lip that he had reopened, biting it in an attempt not to cry. A lull fell over them as Carlisle's mother finished dabbing his lip with the cloth and slowly each of them felt their walls crumbling. His parents wrapped their arms around him and they all clung to each other as if, should they loosen their grip, one of them would disappear. 

       Carlisle did not go to school that morning. His father did not leave for work and his mother did not clean the house. They allowed themselves a day to recuperate, a day away from the rest of the world. They took their first day without Roy and it was good.