Breaking Brielle

T E N

Breaking Brielle

Chapter Ten

Not Edited

~ Brielle Clark's POV ~

Thanksgiving was never a big holiday in my family. If you have to ask why, you haven't been paying much attention. My family was always small. Me and Mom. And now Aunt Miriam, Faye and I.

Thanksgiving is always depicted as this big family holiday. The mom cooks an entire meal for her husband and x amount of kids. Cousins, grandparents, aunt's and uncles come over and it's a grand old time.

For me it never was like that. Not that I minded. Mom and I would always go to this 24 hour Chinese food place by our apartment. We would spend hours there eating, talking about friends, school etc. But my favorite would be when she would start talking about her childhood. It would always be after she drank 2 and half beers.

She would talk about her childhood home, her childhood best friend, the things her, Aunt Miriam and their brother would get into and dad. This was the one time a year she would love to talk about dad.

She would always start off with how they met. She was close with the head cheerleader (I now know that it was Taylor Preston) and Dad was close with the captain of the football team (Adam Preston.) Mr. And Mrs. Preston had been dating at the time and set them up on a blind double date with them.

Dad spilt his drink all over Mom's white blouse. That started their rivalry. The blind date didn't do anything but send them off into years of prank wars, arguments and eventually love.

They would claim that they hated each other but Mom would say that they were actually best friends. He was the one person that would always be on her side. When Mom's boyfriend sophomore year cheated on her with another girl on the cheerleading team, Dad beat him up.

She first realized she had feelings for him when they were Juniors. Dad had gotten his first real girlfriend that year and Mom was really jealous. Her playful banter had turned bitter and Dad realized after time. The girl he was dating ended up leaving him because she believed he was in love with my mom. She was right because when Mom and Dad walked into school their senior year, they were a couple.

She loved telling me about all the dates they went on but her favorite thing to tell me about was their wedding. It was an accident. Them and their friends went to Vegas as soon as all of them turned 21. After winning a lot of cash, they celebrated by getting married for $25 down the street. She had always said she had a video of it but could never find it.

After the wedding story, she would drift off into her thoughts. That's when I knew it was time to go home. She was thinking about how he died a year later.

"Are you okay baby?" Aunt Miriam asked.

I had been leaning against the refrigerator for the past 20 minutes. We were working at the diner today so we could give the rest of the workers the day off for Thanksgiving.

"Just thinking about Mom" I smiled slightly.

"I always wanted you guys to come visit for Thanksgiving" Aunt Miriam smiled over at me.

"She didn't want to come back" I said.

"She told me... that she didn't want to taint anymore memories" She sighed. "She had so many good memories here but River's death tainted them all."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Your mother was very poetic" Aunt Miriam smiled sadly. "Everything she remembered would always have River's death looming over. If we talked about the time we rode our bikes to the movie theatre on the other side of town, she would think about how 10 years later River would die on that rode. If we talked about the time I broke my arm after jumping off the sheds roof, she would remember how the hospital I was taken to was the same hospital River was taken to"