𝐓𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 - 𝙨.𝙧𝙚𝙞𝙙

𝘧𝘪𝘷𝘦: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳

[ act one, chapter five: the dinner ]

🦋🌟🩺

     BIRDS ARE chirping by the time Finley wakes up. Her head pounding and her mouth dry as the desert, she drowsily picks her head up off of the floor, (where she ended up sleeping last night) and opens her eyes.

The sun is shining way too brightly through the windows of her living room, and Finley lets out a groan at how blinded she is. It takes a few minutes for her to register who and where she is, but when she does, she realizes why she woke up in the first place.

Her phone gives off another ding, which causes Fin to roll her eyes. But she grabs it and her eyes widen at the text messages she had received, more so who the message was from.

Finley quickly sobers up, blinking rapidly to make sure she's not reading it wrong.

Her mom's name pops up on her screen, this alone made Finley sit upright. It wasn't the fact that she never texted her that shocked her, in fact, she did all the time. But Fin was either too busy or just didn't care enough to ever respond. So no, it wasn't that, it was what the message entailed that made her insides churn — or maybe that was the hangover, she couldn't be sure.

Apparently her dad had arrived back in the states and her mom had the brilliant idea of sitting the family down and having dinner together. In any normal family, this probably wouldn't be a big deal, but with her mother's almost obsessive personality and her father's absence since a young age, you could definitely say they weren't "normal".

When Finley was a kid, she never really gave her parents' relationship much thought, but now that she's older and can practically see the tension in the air whenever they're together, she can't help but stick her nose into something she probably shouldn't.

Finley's mom didn't work, never has and never will. Her parents had married at a young age right before her dad enlisted in the military. And while he was on his first tour, her mother gave birth to Finley. She thinks that the reason why her mom is so obsessed with who she is and why she has controlled every aspect of her life is because she was forced to raise her all alone. And when you think about it, and how hard it must have been to realize that your child is not like the others in their preschool class while being a stay-at-home mom, it starts to make a little bit of sense.

The fear that her child would get bullied for being different, the fear that her husband might never come home. The threat of war loomed on everyone's shoulders during that time. So Finley understands it somewhat.

But it's when her dad finally does come home that it starts to get weird. He's distant, locking himself away in the basement every day, only coming out when it was time to eat. Even at that young age, Fin was smart enough to know that he was showing symptoms of PTSD.