Deep In The Woods| ✅

Chapter 23: The Clue!

The chapter dedicated to 
Never-Ending_Story, snitchseekervn, Jannysweet487 and yoursweetestgelato. Thank you, guys!!

Any mistakes, let me know!

Comment and vote! :)

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Plant hope in your heart's wounds.
~Alexandra Vasiliu
(Author of Blooming)

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Cassandra:

☆*: .｡. Flashback .｡.:*☆

I celebrated my eleventh birthday without Mom. Dad told me that my ill Grandma passed away in spite of being taken care of by my Mother and that had broken my Mom down. When she came home from Grandma's place, she just wouldn't talk. My heart weighed down hearing my Mom's sobs from behind that door.

Dad opened the door and stepped inside pulling me along. He approached her and hugged her from behind. I just stood there reeling from the shock of the news. I was told that she had very little time two days back but none of us thought she would collapse this quickly.  

I watched my Mom push my Dad away, "Greggory, stop... What you're doing is suffocating me! Stop trying! Get the hell out of my room and don't disturb me," she snapped at him and I flinched. This was the first time I saw her talk so rudely to Dad. She wouldn't even look at me. 

Dad just sighed and pulled me out of the room. He gave me my coat and threw on his. We walked down the streets quietly, hand in hand. I jumped over the puddles. It was a rainy summer.

"Dad, Mom looked so angry at us..." I told him, my voice breaking. Mom was always pleasant, loving and kind to Dad and me. She almost looked like a very different person back there and it scared me and broke my heart at the same time.

"She isn't angry at us, little pumpkin... She's just angry at herself. She thinks she let Grandma down. She thinks that she failed. The best we can do is to give her space." He smiled and looked at me like I was the greatest treasure he could ever get.

I just nodded but I had more on my mind, "I almost thought she didn't want us..." tears pooled in my eyes making my vision blurry. 

He just smiled again and pulled me to the nearby ice-cream stall. We decided on a different flavor from the last time. We always do that. It's our aim to explore as many flavors as possible!

We sat down with our bowl of ice-cream and dug into it. After a while he spoke up, "Mom would never hate us, Little Sandra... She's just having a hard time. We can only try our best to help her through this and assure her that we would never leave. We'll always be here when she decides to come to us."

We then walked out of the stall. When I thought we were going home, Dad pulled me across the street away from home. 

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see," He grinned.

We walked down for a while. Dad then pulled me inside a small gardening store. We walked through shelves of different kinds of plants. He then stopped abruptly in front of a small plant. It was a small bud of a rare sky blue rose blooming on a stock of leaves and thorns. Dad smiled widely.