ROSES AND RUIN

Prologue:

December, 2013. Eight years ago.

~Willow~

The day my father died was one of the worst days in history for me. It marked the moment it'd all begun. He'd been on his way home from one of his business trips, a week before Christmas Eve.

My older brother, Reuben, was out at a friend's party with his usual crowd. At 18, he was in his final year of high school so it was just as well that he had his fun. Three years younger than him; my sister Osei, on the other hand, had gone for a girl's night out with a couple of friends, enjoying the buzz of the holiday season.

Then there was me. Twelve years old, and home alone with my mother when the call came in. It wasn't that I couldn't have gone out with friends; I didn't have many anyway, and I preferred the silent company of books over the noise of socializing; but today, I was restless. Excited, even.

My father was finally coming home after weeks of nothing but phone calls and FaceTime. He was running a bit late judging by the darkness outside. The anticipation of seeing him again, feeling his arms around me in one of his big, warm hugs, was electric.

Or maybe I was more excited about the gifts he always brought back from his trips. A little something, wrapped in his usual charming way; or rather, his Assistant's charming way. Father couldn't wrap for shit, but he could pick out the gifts, and it was always thoughtful and personal, letting me know that he'd been thinking of me while he was away.

I didn't know which I looked forward to more, his presence or the present. Semantics, I suppose. But the feeling was the same. I was ready for his return, ready for things to feel normal again.

I remember hearing the phone ring and thinking nothing of it at first, but then my mother answered, and something in the air shifted.

Perhaps it was the change in the sound of her voice; choked and brittle. Or maybe the way the color drained from her now tight features, but I knew something was painfully wrong.

I watched the phone slip from her hand, the way her body seemed to crumble under the weight of whatever news she'd heard. The shock, the pain; it was all etched so deeply on her face, I'm sure it left the same expression on mine too.

"Mom?" I called, worried, tentative. Her silence felt heavy, pressing down on me. My heart pounded in my chest, though I didn't fully understand why. Yet.

She didn't answer right away. Instead, her eyes, wide and glassy, remained fixed on the floor, as if trying to escape what she'd just heard. My stomach twisted in knots. Everything in the room felt off like the air had grown thicker and harder to breathe in.

"Mom?" I repeated, stepping closer. The light in her eyes faded with each blink, her lips trembling as she fought a losing battle to form words, but all that came out was a choked sob.

"Your father-" She started, blinking back new tears. "He-" She choked on the words again, unable to finish. But she didn't need to.

I saw it then; in the way, she couldn't complete her sentences, couldn't meet my eyes head-on; the dreaded news I wasn't prepared to face. Something inside me shattered, it became as though the world outside had come to a still, where all that remained was the devastating truth.

My father wasn't just late coming home. He wasn't coming home at all.

~•~•~•~

Our mother still had it the worst. We all felt it, but she...she completely broke down.

At first, it was gradual. But then everything started going south at an alarming pace, intensifying her depression. For some reason, our assets had been seized, and our accounts were frozen. The only thing we had that remained ours was the fancy old Victorian-style house we lived in, which was registered in my mother's name. Having lost everything else, we became the scum of high society.