The Travelers of the Tree

Chapter 22 - Backstory

The day that Tommy's parents died had been one of the best days that he could remember; before he received the news of course. His parents had left him with his grandma on a Saturday, so that they could spend the day together in celebration of their twelfth wedding anniversary, which had passed during the previous week. They were driving to the town where his father had asked her to marry him, and would be spending the night in a hotel. They never made it.

Tommy had been excited about spending a day and night with his grandma. His mother's mom had always spoiled him in the past, and this day was no exception. After she had made him breakfast, French toast, (although he had already had breakfast before he had gotten there, but she knew he loved her French toast), she had taken him to the park. It was a bright, sunny day, early in the summer, and Tommy had spent two hours running through the sprinklers, and climbing on the monkey bars. At nine, he was just starting to get to the age when doing those things sometimes made a kid feel silly, but there was something about his grandma that made him feel like it was okay to be silly.

After they had come home from the park, his grandma gave him milk and cookies. His parents strictly held him to two cookies a day. His grandmother let him have four. "My sweetie has a sweet tooth," his grandma always said. He was her only grandchild, and had been born after her husband had passed away. After milk and cookies, Tommy had fallen asleep on the couch watching T.V. His grandmother had woken him at twelve thirty for lunch. French toast again.

After lunch, his grandma had taken out the old projector. His mother's family had old home movies that had no sound. Tommy loved watching old footage of his mother as a baby, and a little girl, as well as seeing his grandma as a younger woman, and the grandfather that he had never known. Usually he would curl up in his mother's lap and listen to the long stories that his grandma had to tell to go along with each clip. On that day, he listened to the stories while sitting up in a chair, and although he practically knew all of them by heart, he was still completely entertained by the way she told them.

For dinner, they did not have French toast, but they did have Tommy's second favorite meal. They ordered a pizza. Tommy had eaten three slices. His grandma told him that his parents wouldn't recognize him the next day when they came to pick him up because of all the food she had let him eat. Then she brought out the ice cream.

That was when the door bell had rung. His grandma said that it might be the newspaper boy, who sometimes came on Saturdays to collect the money for the weekly deliveries. Through the small door that led from the kitchen, where Tommy was, to the living room, he could see his grandma enter with two police men. His grandma had told him to wait in the bedroom. Tommy did. He didn't let himself think that there might be something wrong with his parents. Maybe the police were there because a crime had been committed nearby.

Ten minutes later, his grandma had come into the room. She sat down on the bed next to him. Tommy could tell that she had been crying. He knew that something was wrong with his parents, but he didn't know how bad it was. He had closed his eyes and opened them strongly, hoping that he would wake up, and find that he was just having a bad dream. Then his grandma had told him the news, gently, with a hand on his arm.

His parent's car had been found at four PM at the bottom of a steep ravine. Apparently, his father had somehow driven off the road. At the moment there were no witnesses, and no one ever did come forth to say they saw what happened. Both of his parents had passed away. His grandma made a point of telling him that there would have been no time for either of them to have suffered.

Tommy had taken the news badly. He had been in shock. Although the pain came relatively quickly, the shock did not wear off for several weeks. Every morning that Tommy had woken up for a few months after the accident, he had been convinced that it had all been a bad dream. Then the pain would hit him again as he realized that it hadn't been. His grandma had taken him in immediately, and although she tried her best to lift his spirits, he was inconsolable for a long time. The pain eventually faded, but he missed them every day.

The shock that he felt when his grandma told him what had happened to his parents was nearly matched when the boy with his face, in the great room in the castle told him that he was his twin brother. Tommy's mouth opened wide, and he almost sat down, but remembered at the last moment that there was no seat beneath him. He started to say something, but closed his mouth. The boy who had told him that he was his brother all the while kept a bemused look on his face.