✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE】

—chapter thirty-three.

  ❛ the day that was. ❜ 

ELODIE TURNED HER HEAD, PRESSING A quick kiss to her brother's temple. He was already half asleep on her shoulder, the poor kid. He must have been exhausted, waiting for her to come back.

"You should get to bed, you got school in the morning."

"Mm." Ellis peeled off her and she immediately missed the embrace, silently wondering if they would get that again. He headed towards the stairs wearily, only to pause at the very first step. "I forgot. I picked up the mail for you."

"Thanks bud. Anything good?"

He shrugged. "Don't think so. There was an ad for a guy running for city council...some letter, too."

"Like, a bill sorta letter?"

Ellis frowned. "I didn't look closely at it. But it didn't look like a bill. It was sent from..." the boy paused as he tried to remember what he had seen. "Uh...South - no, New York."

The words hit like a truck. Elodie had never experienced a real heart attack, but she certainly felt like she was having one as she stared at her brother, all oxygen fleeing her body and leaving her a gaping, wide-eyed, shell of a woman behind.

"I just put it on the counter," Ellis continued, oblivious to his sister's shock in his exhaustion. "With the rest of the stuff. Just thought you would like to know."

"T-thanks," she choked out, still struggling with how hard her heart beat. It felt like a giant press was slamming up and down on her chest, forcing air in and out too quickly for her to grab onto. She had to physically cough out an 'I love you' and barely recognised that he said it back. She was already full consumed by the fact that there was a letter from New York City with her name on it.

Somehow she managed to get on her feet and moving. Elodie floated through the house as though in a trance, bumping into the kitchen doorframe without even hesitation, stumbling but then walking straight through again. Her hands fumbled at the wood of their table, struggling to find the envelopes as her eyes darted about and lights flashed in them, temporarily blinding her, searching for the familiar feeling of that crisp white paper.

Finally she found it and held tight, stumbling over to a chair to fall into. It was as thought; black cursive letters spelling just her name and then a neatly printed address and information box in the top. It looked inconspicuous, and yet it made her more nervous than maybe anything ever in her life before. Just one letter, holding all the secrets of the universe -- or absolutely nothing at all."