Flowers//Elavan

~24~

"Mommy!" Amelia hollers from her position in the laundry room, in front of the dryer. "It stopped spinning!"

Liz smiled to herself from her work space. She shuts her laptop and heads towards their small laundry room to find her five-year-old staring at the dryer machine like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

"Whatcha doing there, bear?"

"Why'd it stop spinning?" she cocks her little head to the side.

The mother chuckles as she opens the dryer and scoops the load into the hamper. She smiles to herself as Mia tries with her little hands to help her mother.

"Because the clothes are dry," she answered as she started folding the clothes on top of the waist-high machines.

"How does it dry inside?"

Liz breathes out an impressed laugh. Her little one was such a smart girl and wanted to gather as much knowledge as she could.

"I don't know, baby," she answers honestly. "But someday, you're gonna be smarter than I am and you're going to know, okay?"

Mia nods, "Okay."

She knew she wouldn't always have the answers to all of Mia's questions, and so she came clean about it. Hell, she didn't even have answers to some of her own questions so it would only make sense that she couldn't give the right information to somebody else's queries.

Even if Liz remembered majority of her life before the accident, she still couldn't remember what caused the accident or how it was before then. Her memories seemed to have stopped right when Mia turned four, almost like it was perfectly planned out. It was a wonder to her why nothing could seem to trigger her later memories, not even Mia's chattering.

"Do you want to help me put the clothes in the closets?" she asked the small girl as she finished folding the last piece of clothing.

"No, thank you," Amelia shakes her head from side to side. "Can I go play, Momma?"

"Of course, babe," Liz nods and watches as her daughter jogs out of the room and into her own.

Majority of the clothes she folded were hers and Avan's since Mia's clothes were washed nearly everyday and did not add up as much as their parents'. So, Liz walks upstairs and into their bedroom.

She opens her closet first and neatly tucks in the clothes in their proper places. Liz finds herself shaking her head as she opened her husband's closet. His clothes were messily stacked on top of each other and looked bulky. She placed his newly washed clothes before taking out the messy stacks of clothing he had in his closet to rearrange them.

In the back of his closet, a small brown box is stuffed. She knew that she probably shouldn't look but her curiosity got the beat of her and so she took the box onto her lap. Lifting up the lid, she was greeted by a piles of paper that were folded into many different sizes. On top, there were two different envelopes.

She lifts the one with Mia's name in cursive writing scribbled onto its back. Opening it, she pulls up several different sonograms starting from when she was nothing but a small dot to when she was all cramped up in the small amnionic sac inside of her mother's womb.

Liz grins while she recalls the reason why Mia was called bear. They first saw her on the screen at a young age and immaturely, she had said that their baby looked like a little gummy bear. Liz and Avan ended up referring to their baby as their gummy bear and was later shortened to bear even after she was born.

"Mommy, come play!" she hears her daughter call from her room.

"Just a minute, bear," she replies.

Her eyes catch the other envelope that looked smaller in width compared to Mia's sonogram envelope. For some reason, her hands started shaking as she picked it up and flipped it over. Compared to Mia's name that was written in such a beautiful font, the word scribbled onto this envelope was poorly written. It was almost illegible and the last letter was smudged slightly.

"Momma!"

"What is it, baby?" she replies, her attention not really on her daughter.

"Please come play."

"In a while, Mia-bear. Mommy's doing something really quick."

Liz was hesitating to open the small paper envelope. With her hands sweating profusely and shaking uncontrollably, she raises the small flap up and pulls out whatever it was inside with her eyes closed.

She didn't want to look. She was too afraid to know what it held and she didn't know why. This has been bugging her for quite some time already but now that it was finally within her grasp to know and to understand the source of all this attachment, she was cowering in fear of the unknown.

Avan, who was just fresh out of work, slips into their house as quietly as he could. He tiptoes to his daughter's room to find her playing teacher with her little dolls. A smile tingles on his lips as Mia's eyes light up at the mere sight of him.

"Hi, Papa's girl," he greets as he squatted to be in her level. "Can I get a snuggle?"

Mia runs into his arms and kisses both of his cheeks lovingly before hugging his neck snugly.

"How was your day, baby?" he asked as she pulled away.

"Good! I learned to read the word always today and Mommy taught me to play the piano," she proudly states at her father.

"That's amazing, Mi," he pinches both of her cheeks. "Where's mom?"

"Maybe in your room," she shrugs.

Avan nods as the little girl skips back to her toys. He stands up straight and sneaks into their dimly lit bedroom. The door had already been opened wide enough for him to enter so he was able to creep in silently.

He looked curiously at his wife who was squatting on the floor with her back turned to him. She was in the midst of piles of clothes that made her look so small.

"Love?" he softly calls out to her, stepping just a little closer to her small figure.

Liz abruptly turns around with cold, blue eyes that asserted dominance and demanded respect. In her hands she held what he had been keeping from her for so long now.

"You said we didn't know anyone named Rafa," she spits.
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Word count: 1084 words

I guess you guys probably know who Rafa is at this point so I'm not even gonna ask for y'all to guess haha

Hope you enjoyed this. Don't be afraid to comment down your thoughts! Lots of love! Be kind, y'all!