Paint It Red

Chapter Four Part Two: Missing

*(Chapter Four Part Two takes place in Lilly's point of view, to show her interpretation of the same chapter.)*

When we awoke after our first real night in the inn I felt so much more well rested then where James lives, I mean how can he sleep with all those rats around.

I swear I had to wash my hair a hundred times last night just to get the first layer of gross off. But I guess I shouldn't be complaining, Archie got it so much worse in the hospital.

Not only did he fall through the floorboards, but he had to sleep on the ground, I mean yes there was luckily no rats in the basement but still that couldn't have been fun.

Dad is still missing, and I can tell that it's getting to Bethany since he's actually her biological father, unlike me and Archie who don't know our real parents.

We knew the first time we met Bethany's mom for the first that we were the odd ones of the family, I mean even Bethany has that darker skin but when your five you really don't notice.

But when we got registered for grade school and Bethany couldn't join us I knew something was different about her.

Yet me and Archie didn't care, we loved our sister. Though my hair might be blond and straight and hers black and curly, and our skin might be different colors that didn't mean anything to me since she's my sister either way.

But as her and I  went out to find our father I could tell that people were looking at us weirdly and most refused to help us, and after an hour of looking around we got fed up with people's judgment and thought to find James for help.

When we looked through the front door and saw where Archie had fallen through we remembered that it was dangerous inside. So, we went to the back and found the secret panel that led to the basement that James showed us the last time we went down there.

The door was so pretty in my eyes for it had the engraving of a sheep on it, it reminded me of all my fluffy friends back at home.

But when we went down the creaky steps we saw that he wasn't home, so in the end, we headed back to the inn instead.

Once there the innkeeper was happy to tell us that our father had returned. We ran up the stairs to greet him but once we got there we questioned if he was ok.

He had a cut on the top of his head, there were small pieces of clay where the vase used to be, and he lied on the ground always yelling,

"Archie I'm sorry, please come back."

Him being drunk explained the cut and the vase but both Bethany and I questioned what happened to Archie.

I used the still intact vase in the room to splash water on him to get him to make sense. When he came to he patted my head saying,

"Oh, sweet Elizabeth I've missed you."

 I growled at him and reminded him I like to be called Lilly or Liz never Elizabeth, and then asked him what happened to Archie.

It took him a moment but when he sobered up more he began to make more sense saying,

"He got hurt because you guys didn't listen to me, I sent him to find you guys, so we could chat."

I questioned if we were talking about the vase or the wound he got yesterday, but either way, questioning this poor excuse of a man was no use.

Bethany and I headed to the clerk who seemed confused about Archie saying he had just seen him a moment ago. But the clerk did ensure us the vase was not Archie's fault but his own our father picked a fight with him and lost.