Broken Glass

Chapter 2

No matter how old Emilia seemed to be, the death of her parents remained haunting her memory. She had been lucky enough that day to have Uncle Pietro there to send her stateside, but it hadn't been easy. The address her uncle had given her all those years ago was to nunnery, they knew her family well. After decades of dedication to the catholic church, they had offered to build her parents a safe house if ever they needed to flee somewhere without question. When Emilia had landed that day, seventeen years prior, she had to find the nunnery and prove who she was before they took her to the house. No one knew how to find it except her father, the Abbot, and now Emilia, being that was where she resided from then on. She'd lived a modest life, help of what money her father had cultivated before their intended escape. When she was old enough, she made sure to work hard as she was able, to ensure that she lived comfortably and didn't run out of her father's savings.

Emilia was resting her head against the wall and had closed her eyes. She was trying to erase the pain she felt from her dream, hot baths always seemed to help. When she felt pruned and relaxed enough to get out, she checked the time. There was about forty-five minutes before she had to be at school. Emilia finished her hair and decided as she was grabbing her briefcase, that it would be better to pick something up when she got to school, no sense in making a breakfast she wasn't feeling up to eating. It was a brisk autumn morning, as she descended the steps to her house, a few fallen leaves crinkled beneath her feet. She lived in a pleasant neighborhood, the houses around her already filled with Halloween décor. Turning down the street, she began to walk towards the subway station, her house seemed to be perfectly aligned with all major means of transportation, she never needed to travel far to get where she was going.

When she had gotten off the subway, she was about a block from the university she attended. She looked down at her watch again, twenty minutes. She made this trek every day, always punctual Emilia was, at least until someone had bumped into her. While checking her watch Emilia had felt something run into her, they knocked her briefcase from her grasp, and both collapsed.

"I'm so sorry!" a soft voice cried.

"No, it's my fault, I was checking the time rather than looking ahead." Emilia comforted. When she looked up, she noticed a face she recognized.

"Oh Emilia, I'm glad it's only you," it was Maria, a girl that was in her debate club freshman year, they hadn't seen one another since. "I'm very sorry, but I'm late for my next class. Sorry, again." In a blink, Maria was gone.

Emilia stood up, dusted off, then checked her watch, ten minutes. Panic overwhelmed her, today would not be the first day that she was late. She'd broken into a run and hurried across campus to the theatre building. Thankfully she reached the double doors in time.

As the day went on, Emilia couldn't help but think about her encounter with Maria that morning. They hadn't seen each other since that first year in debate club, even then, the two weren't exactly close. Their professor had assigned them as partners once, but they hadn't become friends over it. Emilia would see Maria around campus, but she had her own friends and they weren't the kind of people Emilia normally associated with. Emilia hadn't found any interest in debate after that year, so she hadn't gone back, and do to that fact, she and Maria had thereafter not interacted. It had caught her by surprise that she'd remembered her name.

At the end of the day Emilia made her way to the black box theatre for rehearsal, they were about a week away from their first show, hell week as it was often referred to. There was a lot more to do this week than just running lines. Staging every scene, making sure there were back-ups of props present if there was a malfunction, the stage hands were just as busy as the rest of the cast, if not a bit more so, because they were the ones running sets on and off stage. The bustling life of a young thespian kept Emilia on her toes, it was one of the few things in her life that made her feel close to her parents. Her mother had been well known in the West End, her death had been played off to the public as an accident, 'caught in the crossfire while on vacation with her family'. Emilia always found that to not bring justice to her legacy, she was murdered in cold blood. But she'd been forced to come to terms with that.