First Angel: The Source {Goddess Class Creation Series: Book Three}

FA:TS- Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-seven

Taking a very deep breathe, Dawn pushed open her father's old study with Stephan right behind her. Their mouths and noses covered with their bandanas to fight against the dust that was in the room still. Mark and Amber wanted to help them with this room, but they wanted to do this as just them together.

Stephan stopped just a few steps inside the door and looked up at the balcony of the second level in the study. His eyes seeing only the remains of a rope tied to one of the spindles. His heart squeezing in his chest just being this close to that rope.

Dawn put her hand in his. "You okay?" Her own voice crackling and thick with emotion.

"This is where he did it. Right here."

Her eyes watered. "Will you tell me about it?"

He nodded as he pulled her into his arms. Needing her strength to even speak. "I only saw some of the photos from the police." Stephan looked down at his sister. Now feeling all his years since he left. "Our beloved father had hung himself..." He looked again to the rope. "Right there. I was told that it wasn't murder, that he really did it himself."

She frowned at him. "You asked whether someone had killed dad?"

He nodded. "With Nicholas getting everything in the will, I had to ask."

Dawn tugged her brother over to the worn leather couch and threw off the cloth before pulling Stephan down with her. She tucked her head on his shoulder and cuddled him like she used to with their father. The father she had grown up with and loved with all her heart. The man she will always think of him as and not the man Nicholas made him into. The man who couldn't live after everyone was gone.

Stephan sighed. "My daughter does this with me sometimes when she visits. Always when I was looking at a picture of you up in one of the citrus trees." He looked down at his sister. "She is so much like you that it was like you were still with me."

Dawn looked up at him. "Tell me more about everything."

He tucked her head under his chin and just held her. His arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders. "Mom was never the same without you around. She didn't bake or even cooked so much. Most days, she just sat in the kitchen looking out at the citrus trees.

"Whenever I saw our father try to touch her, to comfort her, she would turn her head away and seemed to collapse in on herself. He would always bow his head and walked away to his study. For as long as I had stayed here after that, father was always in this room."

"How did mom pass?"

Stephan laid his cheek on top of Dawn's head. "She had stopped eating and died from grief. The doctor said that she just gave up living." He smiled. "I placed a few dried lemon skins in her casket."

"She would have loved that."

He nodded as they both fell into silence. They just laid there comforting each other. This time was what they really needed more than to clean this room. Dawn needed to know what happened to her parents and needed comfort while comforting her brother all the same.

~~~

"What should we make this room?"

Dawn looked over at her brother. "I want to keep it a study. A study for all our family to use. We can add books and change the look a bit, but I love having this as a study."

She dusted over a statue and smiled at it. "Did dad ever tell you about this statue of an owl wearing a greek helmet and shield?"

Stephan came over and looked at the owl. "He said it represented our patron goddess. Athena."