Cry to Me

17.

She remembered a time when she was in her mid-teens and things seemed perfect in the world. It was the middle of summer, sunlight illuminating the flowers and green grass. It was warm but not too hot, a slight refreshing breeze in the air. Her parents were together then, and she remembered them being happy. It seemed like her whole future was in front of her, with endless possibilities, no endeavour unachievable. She had plans to travel around the world, to fall in love with the perfect guy, to become rich and famous so she could enjoy the fanciest of lifestyles. And of course music was the soundtrack to her life – she listened to the same songs over and over again because they inspired her. It took a few years before her dreams slowly started to shatter. Her grades were not good enough to get into the elite universities that she had once thought she would go to, she had no money to travel because she had to save everything for school and rent, and - something that would have perplexed her sixteen year-old self – she never became famous for anything. As for the guy, well, she never truly stopped believing he was out there.

The way she felt now reminded her of that time in her life, when she had no serious worries except what she might wear or what colour of nail polish she should put on. But she also felt something nagging at her from that time – a storm brewing inside the calm. It was that winter that things started to change, that her parents started to become more distant from each other. They tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but what child does not know that something is happening between their parents? They eventually separated after years of increasingly vulgar decline, and after that it was a confusing time of trying to figure out who she wanted to be and where she wanted to spend her time. She was in a limbo of trying to make both her parents happy while trying not to pick sides. That was when she decided she had to go away to school, to avoid the confusion the whole situation caused.

From the limited amount David had mentioned about his divorce, she could tell it was ugly as well, and that he only tolerated talking to his ex-wife because it meant he could still talk to his daughter. She hated how horrible that was – how could you love someone enough to get married and have a child, but then end up hating them? Part of her wanted to know more about his relationship with his ex-wife, but at the same time she feared what she might find out.

So when she saw her parents together for the first time during that video call after everything that had happened, she was ecstatic with happiness to even see them in the same room talking to each other. Once her calls became more regular, her parents were more often apart then together, but she felt the time they had been seperated had helped them learn how to tolerate each other. That was all she could have asked for during the years before their divorce.

It was as if she could predict something bad was going to happen just by how well things seemed to be going. She had just returned from a shift at the med ward to see that she had missed several calls, all from her mom's number. She called her back immediately, wondering what was going on since her mom knew she worked during the weekdays. When her mom answered the call, she could tell something was wrong immediately. Her face looked like it had aged twenty years in a matter of days, and there was no light behind her eyes. It was as if she was a living corpse.

Mom: It's your dad. He had a... a heart attack... he's gone...

This was the last thing Taylor was expecting. She would have been less surprised if her mom told her creatures had invaded their city and eaten everyone alive. But this... this was wrong. She knew what she had to do. She would immediately go to Colorado to be with her mom. As soon as they ended the call, she started packing and purchased a train ticket online for the next morning. When David arrived home, he was initially confused at seeing all of her bags lying open, clothes piled inside. When he found her, he could see she had been crying, with streaks of mascara running down her face and the blotchy red spots she always got when she was upset. She ran up to him immediately and they hugged. She explained everything to him.