Continued Silence

Eleven : never been this far

9th May, 2011.

True love. What a rare feeling. You can get a nice house and a nice job. You can have midnight swims in your mansion or smoke endless cigarettes.
But if you don't have love.
You have nothing.
Money is not all.
A life with love is a life that's been lived.

If someone you love decides to love you back, you are luckiest person alive.

Everything was different and the same. I was still Daniel. She was still Grace. But we were both more somehow. I knew her in a new way, and for the first time, I felt known too. It felt good to belong somewhere, to someone, to know that you have a home.

xxxxx

Two months later, me, mum and Chris all sat in our incredibly small living room with a police officer.

My mum was seated uncomfortably on the couch, her hair falling lose from her bun. She lifted her head slowly, as if it hurt. Well, everything at that moment hurt, even the sunlight that bursted inside our lounge on the smallest thing possible.
Mum said, her voice shaking,
"Officer, he never hid anything from us, especially from me."
The officer, who looked like C.s Lewis, in a well ironed suit, nodded slightly and replied,
"Who knows? Maybe he did. I've heard millions of stories like these, madam."
His accent was thick British and he slurted his very word.
But my mum, who was convinced that the shattered world would never be put back to pieces unless and until all of the people knew she was right, said,
"I know my husband more than any of you, sir."
The officer shrugged and said,
"What was his business again?"
My mum said,
"He is the manager of McGraw Estate, which is an engineering company."
Officer's eyes sparkled, as he was Sherlock Holmes who solved the mystery. He said,
"I think, after all this information, Mr. Steve was forced to leave, maybe he had some bad relations with someone."
I could see mum was about to cry as she said,
"Look, I don't think he had such kind of relations with anyone, but I can tell you this: past few months, he hardly talked to anyone, he would just come home from work, eat and sleep. I tried to ask what was wrong, but he wouldn't tell. That's all I know, Mr. Jeremy."
The officer, now with a name, said,
"Mam, we deal with such situations everyday, I just need to visit his company and surf his laptop."
Mum nodded, which was a hurtful kind of nod.

She went inside and handed the officer my dad's laptop that wasn't luckily secured with password.
The officer took it and set off to the police station with mum leaving me and Chris alone.

Back In the morning, when we woke up, our dad wasn't in his room. We searched everywhere and then called him but the phone was powered off so mum immediately called the police.
I didn't know what happened. Why he left us just like that??
I was crying so badly. Like, life could never be fine always, something bad was always the part of it.
Finally Chris broke the silence. All my thoughts disappeared like a dew drop.
"It's really hard."
I couldn't meet his dark chocolate brown eyes. I was really screwed up. Even our lounge felt so lonely.
I started crying, tears endlessly falling down like raindrops, and said,
"Why my life always gets me drowned into a sea? Like whenever I'm up in the sky, something always keeps me down, why?"
My brother also had a worried look on his face as he leaned in.
"Daniel" he said, his hand on my shoulder, "nobody's life is perfect. That's the beauty of it too, you know?"
I nodded a little and went back to my room, still not understanding what life was.