somewhere over the rainbow

chapter one - the only chapter

I remember so much. Too much. Yet so little all at the same time.

I woke up early that saturday. January 12th. It was supposed to be a good day. My mum had a day off work and we were getting ready to take a train out to the city. We were going to our favourite cafe. It was our spot. We'd been going for years. I searched through my closet to put together the best possible outfit for the day. The phone rang in the other room but I didn't think much of it. We lived with my grandma so her buddies from bingo are calling up the home phone all the time. I heard my grandma call out my mums name. The name that only she uses.
"HELEN!!" 
"What is it?!" my mum yelled from the bathtub
"Its.. it's tony."
Tony was my auntie karen's ex husband who i'd thought to have no reason to be calling here. But my grandma was in a state of panic. Something was most definitely wrong. I ran down the hallway just as my mum walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her. We all stood awkwardly in the hallway.
"Karens been abducted"
His words rang out across the line. I didn't know what to think. With a word like abducted, the first thing my mind went to was aliens, but judging by the look on my family's face, this was no joke.
My mum grabbed the phone away from my grandma. I don't remember much of their conversation. I was confused. I mean I was just 11 years old. How could I have understood what was going on.
Once mum had had enough of that conversation and she was done yelling through the phone, she bitterly slammed it back down onto the receiver, like she couldn't get it out of her grasp quick enough. As if the phone, the call, what tony had said, was a disease and it she let go fast enough she wouldn't catch it. But unfortunately that's not how it worked. What she had heard was real. It happened. We had to face it.
I began to ask what was going on. I needed someone to explain. What was happening? What was this all about? But before I could even ask, my mum had started to yell. She was angry, angry at Karen. She was angry that she moved out to the country. Mad that she left this family. Frustrated about every little thing she could possibly think of. My mum and my grandma fought and screamed and yelled for the next thirty minutes. I disappeared off to my room and listened from the comfort of my bed. When would this be over.
For the next few days we had people who hadn't spoken to us in years, coming by and giving us flowers and people who we had spoken to just yesterday, not speaking to us at all. People are funny like that. My mum seemed to find it rude but I could understand. They probably just didn't know what to say anymore, how to act around us.
Police came by and asked us if we knew anything about where she could be. I sat in the living room and listened in. My mum made an attempt to lighten the mood, asking why they became police officers. I remember one of them joking about just wanting to drive fast cars.
I still didn't think she was gone. She was coming back. In my eleven- year-old mind, I pictured her in a dark room somewhere, a pimply guy in a flannel holding her captive. She would come home to us even if my mum seemed to think she was dead.
The next day a burnt car was found. It had been completely set alight. The case got so much more serious after this. We had news reporters coming by. My mum and grandma were being interviewed. Photos were being taken. We had people I barely knew telling us their theories on what they thought happened and who they thought did it. Kids who went to my school, that couldn't care less about me were asking about it after seeing my mum on the news. They didn't really care. They just wanted some inside information. It was probably interesting to them. I guess I don't blame them.

January 14th and it was Karens daughter, Kate's 14th birthday and on that same day, a body was found. Karens body. It had been confirmed. It was a murder. When I came home from school, I saw my grandma in the kitchen crying. My grandma is one of the toughest people I know. I had never seen her cry. It was soul crushing. Watching the tears roll down her cheeks, I wanted to hug her. To tell her it would all be okay but I couldn't promise that, and if she knew i'd seen her, she would probably feel embarrassed.
I couldn't sleep that night. I looked out my window into my dimly lit backyard. I just kept imagining his haunting face emerging out of the darkness and pressing against my glass. Angry at first. But then his anger would turn into a smile and he'd just stand there, smiling at me through the foggy window. Closing the curtains couldn't help. My nine year old sister was sound asleep. I had to sleep in my mums room.
I didn't have the best sleep there either. We had a main suspect. His stories didn't match up with the crime scene. Everyone was pretty certain it was him, there just wasn't any complete evidence. My mum had somehow gotten a hold of his number and she kept calling it, over and over again for hours. He never answered but that didn't stop her from yelling into the voicemail and I'm not exaggerating when I say she did that all night long. I kept warning her to stop. I was so scared it would only anger him and he'd come after her too. I couldn't lose my mum. She was all I had. My dad wasn't around anymore. I needed her.

I guess there isn't much of a conclusion to this story. It wasn't really solved. Solved would mean my auntie coming home. But eventually Michael Cardemone went to jail even if it took a year, and countless court cases. His mum went to jail alongside him for helping him try to frame someone else. I think the craziest part about writing this is when I was unsure about the timeline of events, i could just do a google search and find out. It's so insane to search up information about something that happened to your own family and something you went through that felt so personal yet at the same time, everyone knew about it. 'Somewhere over the rainbow' was played at her funeral. I still cry every time I hear the song.