Beauty and the Beast | Fillie

Unchained Lives

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Millie was driving slowly through the Canadian traffic; with the delicious smell of the take away food placed on the passenger seat, she felt her stomach grumble. She hadn't eaten all day because all she did was study, and basically, nothing else. If her dad discovered that... he simply hated when she didn't eat because she had "better things to do than eating and sleeping". She was all her mother in that: too busy, with a million of things to do, plenty of books to read and a little time for living outside in the real world.

It was in that moment, while she was stuck in the traffic, she thought of her mother after a while; that woman was insanely beautiful; brown hair, deer eyes, porcelain skin, a Goddess type. Millie always admired how her mother was beautiful even when she did the smallest little things: smoking a cigarette slowly, blowing out the smoke, or simply when she elegantly wrote something on a piece of paper.

"You always remind me of her."

She was beautiful, indeed; but gone with another man, abandoning her when she was only six and disappearing without traces, with just a note left on the table. Millie had read it before David did:

"I'm not happy with you anymore. I am with another man. Please, take care of Millie. Tell her one day we will meet again. I just wish I were a better mother, but I never wanted to be it anyway. Don't look for me, you know this day would have come anyway. Take care of yourself, David. Goodbye."

Millie closed her eyes, biting her lips, that moment hunting her through all her childhood. What kind of mother abandons a family after six years just because she is in love with another man? Why didn't she care about her? Why didn't she deserve a maternal figure like anyone else? And her father, oh, her father suffered so much. He blamed himself for everything wrong she did; the debts, her drinking problems, her unsatisfaction, him founding her sleeping with different men when Millie was just a baby.

Winona tried to be a good mom, but she never wanted a child, Millie simply came in her way, and she was forced to marry David for the sake of the new family member, with the only exception that David truly loved her.

And he never forgot her.

He never had another woman for eleven years. The only woman he cared about was his daughter, the only one who deserved everything she wished. They were a duo, father - daughter, the best team who won a singing competition in the parents-children talent show in Middle school: Millie playing the piano and singing, David accompanying her with the guitar.

She smiled, finally removing the thought of that wretched woman, driving again to her home, a nice and little blue house with a pretty garden in an isolated neighborhood.

It was 6 p.m, just in time for dinner.

"I'm home!"

Millie opened the door of her house, expecting an answer to come soon. Usually, David, a librarian who owned a bookshop in the city center of Vancouver, was sitting on the sofa, with a cup of coffee, reading a book while waiting for her. It was an old habit of his: he simply couldn't eat without all the members of the family reunited at the same table.

"Hey Dad! I got Chinese's food!" she screamed again in a victorious way, walking around the house. But no response came, again.

She frowned and started to walk around the house while removing her pink coat and her high heeled black boots, looking around the dark living room, surprised by that awful quietness.