found (clay jensen)

teddy bear

this chapter is short but i wanted to include Isabelle's family for some character, it's kind of a filler but there's also some important plot development here! the next chapter is hella long though so i won't leave it hanging!!

enjoy <3

The door slams as I arrive at my house for the first time in four days. Taking a deep breath, I open my door to hear the sounds of my dogs ecstatic barks, leaping up into my lap and pushing her nose into my ear.

"Hiya, Blue." I smile brightly as happiness radiates off of her, squirming excitedly in my arms.

I had found her on the street as a child and hid her in my room until Jeff ratted me out to my parents. I named her Blue because her eyes were the color of the ocean, her fur charcoal grey with brown patches and white splotches on her paws and chest.

My parents thought she was a show dog who needed to be returned, until a veterinarian told us she had been abused before in her life, which convinced my family to take her in.

Blue loved Hannah, since she always gave her treats and kisses, mostly because her parents wouldn't let her have a dog.

My heart breaks when I see Blue missing her, I've walked in on her tiny paws gently kneading at the jacket that Hannah left behind, which I never got the chance to return.

She would never know why she left.

I look up from stroking Blue's soft, fluffy ears to see the fragile outline of my mother sitting solemnly on the couch. Her eyes are bright with tears and her face is swollen as she turns to me with a gasp of shock.

"Mija!" she sighs, running up to greet and envelope me in a hug.

Sugar yelps and barks at us as we rock back and forth, wrapped together with tears pouring down her eyes. I got a few of my genes from her, with our identical brown eyes and petite bodies, both standing at 5" 1' tall.

My Dad fell in love with my mother when he met her in Mexico on vacation, they instantly fell in love, and learnt each other's languages so they could marry. His parents, being a dominantly white family from the deep South, did not approve of him marrying my mother. We had moved to California after they had kicked my Dad out of their house.

My parents had Jeff two years later, who almost exactly like a male version of our mother, he got her beautiful tan skin and our father's height, clearly winning the gene pool. I had obtained everything from our father when they had me a year after him, with my spattered freckles and light complexion. The red hair that I've grown to hate came from my grandmother, even though I never met her. My mother was always so naturally beautiful, but the only DNA that I shared with her was our deep brown eyes and tiny bodies.

I pull away and hold her shoulders to look at her teary eyes. "I'm so sorry for being late, mamá, what's wrong?" I ask carefully, worried she is going to yell at me for not coming home.

She slaps me lightly on the back of the head with a choked sob. "The news, mija, where have you been?" Her voice is urgent and scared, which makes my heart rapidly pick up and beat with apprehension.

I shake my head and she grabs my hand, patting it in a calming way that she's done since I was four. She leads me to the kitchen where the smells of the warming, familiar food wafts into my nose.

A glance at my Dad's shaking hands confirms the urgency of the situation, and this is where I start to feel real panic.

A phone is shoved into my hands and I recoil from the suddenness of it. The bright screen hurts my eyes and I squint to read the words, emboldened in a glaring headline across the phone in red letters.