Why Are You Crying?
I could feel how hot my forehead was, the blood starting to seep through the scrape and onto the ground. Three pairs of eager noses sniffed at me as I lay face down on a cobblestone walkway in front of my client’s house.
I angrily shoved the dogs away from me as I flipped over and began to loosen the leash around my legs. I stood up, knees aching, and dusted myself off while looking at the house looming before me.
It was brick. They were all brick. They all had vines creeping up the sides of the house to make them look old fashioned, even though they were all built about 40 years ago. They had the huge white doors, the tall skinny windows, the balcony on the second floor which looked out at the street. Every house in the neighborhood enclosed behind the thick iron gates looked the same. It was a miracle I could even tell whose house was whose. The dogs knew their houses obviously, and of course I knew where mine was. Mine was located at the very back of the neighborhood, next to the river and a large gray rock which served as a tombstone for my neighbor's cat. And mine always gave me a sense of dread every time I got near it ever since she went missing.
I was ten years old when I woke up that morning. It was a Saturday, and I was getting up earlier than usual so I could sneak downstairs and watch my cartoons. To my surprise, my parents were already up. My father was holding my mother’s hand, the two of them looking disheveled and whispering to one another. When they turned their attention to me, I remembered their eyes were red and bloodshot, it was like they hadn’t slept all night.
“Morning!” I said cheerfully, passing them on the way to the TV.
“Lilly,” my dad called out, his voice breaking, “there’s something we need to tell you.” I didn’t know what to expect. The only things that were on my mind were Fruit Loops and Spongebob.
“Dani didn’t come home last night from Eliza’s,” my mom choked out. She gripped my father’s hand tighter. “We don’t know where she is, she’s--she’s--”
“She’s missing,” my father finished for her. I don’t remember what I said. In all honesty, I don’t remember much of what happened after that conversation. I know there were search teams, or at least one. I know there was a lot of security added to the neighborhood. And I know that about a year after that conversation, there was a funeral for my sister. But I mostly just remember crying. All alone in my room, or in Dani’s room. I would often wander to Dani’s room in the middle of the night and curl up in her bed. I would wrap her purple blanket that she slept with around my arms. I used to think it was silly that she slept with a blanket. She was five years older than me, and I didn’t even sleep with a blanket. But to this day, I still have that ratty purple blanket next to me every night. I’ve always wanted to know what happened to her, just some sign so I could make sure justice was served in some way.
As I made my way back over to my house after dropping off the last dog, I started to prepare myself for the horrible feeling about to wash over me. It always happened as soon as I was right in front of the gate, staring at the balcony. Dani and I always used to stand on the balcony, dropping little parachute toys and watching them plummet to the ground. I made my way down the sidewalk, noticing a tall, dark haired girl walking in front of me. She was limping, but she was making a beeline for something.
My house. It was the only place she could be going, if she was going to one of my neighbors’ houses she would have already turned a corner. She didn’t look like anyone I knew from school, but for some reason I still felt like I recognized her. Her chestnut brown hair was so long and silky, it looked so much like--
“Dani!” I don’t know why I said that. Even if I thought she looked remotely like her, I don’t know why I would have shouted that at this random girl. She stopped and began to turn around, and I started jogging up to her to apologize for startling her.
“Hey, sorry. I thought you were someone else, I didn’t mean to--” my heart dropped to the ground. My jaw went along with it, both plummeting to the ground like the parachute men I used to play with. It only returned in order for me to muster up the courage to speak.
“Dani?” She could have been missing for twenty years.. The length of time didn’t matter. I knew that the girl who stood in front of me was my missing sister. I was dehydrated. Concussed from my fall on the sidewalk. This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be Dani. But it was. It could have been a hallucination, but I didn’t care about looking crazy. I ran into the open arms of my dead sister.
“I-I’ve missed you so much Dan,” I choked out between sobs, “where have you been?” Dani shook her head, tears streaming down her face. She placed a cold hand on my shoulder while using her other to brush my blonde hair out of my eyes. Shaking her head again, she gestured to her throat, and my eyes widened as I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A faint, scarlett scar creeped across Dani’s throat like a thin piece of twine choking her out. She shook her head for a third time, followed by flapping her pale fingers up and down imitating a mouth speaking.
“Oh my gosh, Dani. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. You don’t need to,” I reassured her. Dani nodded and smiled again, looking me up and down. She pointed to me and placed her hand on the top of her head, then raised it to the height of mine. “Yeah, I’m taller than you now,” I chuckled, “it’s been a while. C’mon, let’s go inside.”
Dani’s smile faltered for a second, and her big blue eyes turned into narrow slits with a flash of red. I blinked, thinking it was just the glare from the sun. Thankfully it was, Dani looked like herself. A now twenty-two-ish, paler, scarred version of herself, but it was Dani nonetheless.
The two of us walked up the pathway to our front door, Dani slowly trailing behind me as she stared at the balcony above, unblinking. Once we were inside, I beckoned Dani over towards the kitchen, where I could hear my mom and dad beginning to prepare dinner.
“Mom? Dad?” I called out to them, walking over to the counter where my dad was chopping tomatoes. They turned their focus to me, but I knew their attention was still on dinner. “Look who I ran into,” I whispered, my eyes beginning to fill with tears again. Dani slowly stepped through the doorway, not breaking eye contact with my parents.
The slicing of tomatoes slowly came to a stop, and a loud crash filled the room as my mother’s teacup laid in pieces on the ground. It seemed like my parents and Dani had been frozen in time, they were just standing still, staring at each other. I could see my mother’s eyes beginning to well up with tears, her hands trembling. She quickly glanced at my father, then at me, then back to Dani. Surprisingly, my mother sprinted past me over to the sitting room, slamming the glass doors behind her.
I turned to Dani, hoping she wouldn’t be too crushed at our mother’s reaction. But Dani wasn’t paying attention to her, she was still glaring at my father, whose eyes were locked on Dani’s. “Your mother is just…in shock, honey.” my dad said, blinking hard, “I’m going to go check on her.” He started to make his way over to the glass doors, then stopped himself as he let go of the knife he had been making dinner with. He set it down on the counter and stared back at Dani before rushing into the sitting room.
Dani grabbed my shoulder, then pointed at me and made a writing motion before gesturing to herself. “I’ll write for you, I’ll write you a letter?” I asked. Dani shook her head, then mimed a magnifying glass, the writing motion, then pointed to herself. “You want to write! You want me to find you something to write with!” Dani smiled, then waltzed upstairs to her bedroom.
I was busy searching through our wooden school supplies cabinets in the living room when I heard my mother enter. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were bloodshot, but I didn’t need to ask why she had been crying. She looked round frantically before asking, “Where’s your sister, where’s Dani?” she wore an expression that looked like a mixture of worry and relief at the same time.
“Upstairs,” I responded, “I’m trying to find her a notepad so she can communicate.”
“She can’t tell you anything--er, talk to you?”
“No, you probably didn’t see it, but there’s a huge scar across her throat.” A whimper escaped my mother’s mouth before she nodded.
“Oh,” she answered before turning her head away from me, “well, you find her that notebook. Your father is, um, making some dinner right now. I’m going to…” her voice trailed off, “I’m going to help him with that, okay sweetie? I-I love you so much darling.”
Her footsteps got further away until I could hear someone going upstairs, hopefully she was going to properly welcome Dani back. I pulled out one of my old black algebra notebooks, then took it with me to the kitchen where I saw my father sitting alone at the dining room table. “Dani, I have a notebook!” I shouted upstairs. My father’s head snapped up and he stood up to face me. I could hear the thudding of footsteps coming downstairs as my father snatched the notebook out of my hand.
“What the heck Dad, that’s for Dani!” I exclaimed. He tossed the notebook onto the floor as he grabbed my left arm. “Let go! You guys have been acting so weird around her, what’s up?”
“That’s not Dani,” my dad muttered, attempting to drag me towards the front door. My mother went to his side, whispering something in his ear and pushing him on the shoulder. Dani glided by him, picking up the notebook on the ground.
“What are you talking about Dad, you’re insane! Let me go!” I tried to get out of his grip, but he was very intent on taking me wherever he was going. Suddenly, my father was hit in the head with the notebook, and the two of us turned over to Dani, who clutched it in her right hand along with a red pen. She scribbled on one of the blank pages and flipped it over to face my parents and I.
“I can’t speak,” the notepad read, “but I can listen. Maybe that was my downfall.” I watched as my mother’s became glossy and my father tightened his grip on my arm.
“Please!” I begged, “If you’re not going to let me go, at least tell me what happened!” I looked at my mother, hoping that she would be able to make some sense of the situation. Our eyes locked, and to the behest of my father, the words began to flow out of her…
?
“Well if you can’t bring yourself to do it then I’ll have to do it myself!” Rob bellowed, “The time is now Theresa. The longer we wait, the more likely he’ll be to rewrite it. Especially if he ends up going to dinner with your brother next weekend.”
“He’s my father Robert!” Theresa fired back, “You could never harm your own blood, you can’t fault me for that!”
“So you can be the one to tell our children that we won’t be able to provide for them anymore! Is that what you want?” Rob slid closer to his wife and began to stroke her hand gently, “We need these assets Tessie. Everything in that will, we need. And I don’t want to make you do it,” he stood up, clutching a bottle labeled Hydrogen Cyanide, “so all you have to do is keep quiet.”
Theresa began to cry, but stopped when she heard the creaking of the floorboards. Rob stopped too, and the two parents exchanged glances before a short, dark haired girl silently stepped into the room. Her crystal blue eyes were wide with fear as she stared at Rob, then the bottle, then Theresa.
“Mom,” she whispered, “why are you crying?” Theresa stared at the girl, not knowing what to say. She heard movement behind her and leapt up to save her daughter, but it was too late.
“Watch Lily,” Rob ordered under his breath before he swiftly grabbed Dani by the arm and dragged her down the stairs, muffling her shrieks with free hand. Not paying attention to the pleads of his wife or the screams of his daughter, Rob heaved Dani out onto the front steps just below the balcony. “If you won’t be quiet now, then I’m afraid you won’t make it to the river.” he said, “I’m sorry, I love you, Danielle.” Within the next few seconds, Dani’s attempted cries for help were silenced. She lay limp in her father’s arms, a deep red gash across her throat and blood dripping down to the rest of her body.
Rob tearfully sauntered over to the back of the house, making his way down to the rushing river located behind their fence. As if she were a bundle of useless trash, Rob shoved Dani’s body into the rapids, not batting an eye as her left ankle smashed into a boulder on the river bed. Using his bare hands, Rob knelt down and started digging. After reaching a hole about four feet deep, Rob removed his blood stained shirt and tossed it down, along with the tainted kitchen knife and cyanide bottle. He kicked the dirt back into place with his shoe, then after washing his hands off in the river, placed a large gray rock labeled “Mittens” on top of the buried evidence.
?
I gazed in horror at my father, whose grip had loosened on my arm. He was looking sorrowfully at my mother, who was choking out tearful apologies to everyone in the room. My attention then turned to Dani, whose cold, pale skin glinted in the moonlight. The scar stretched across her throat. The swollen ankle covered by a large white sock. And the clothes torn and sagging, the color mostly faded away.
“But, but you’re not…” the word escaped me. I couldn’t even bear to think about it for the second time in my life. “You can’t be, we-we hugged,” I could feel a lump in my throat starting to form. I just got Dani back, why did it have to be like this?
Dani smiled at me, but something about her smile seemed so tragic. She began to write furiously on the notepad, tearing off an old page and shoving it in my pocket out of my father's reach. His grip once again tightened on my arm as he positioned himself to face me.
“You don’t understand honey, it’s a lot more complicated than it seems,” he tried to reassure me, a menacing glint in his eyes. He began to inch us closer to the kitchen, where behind him a noticed a long, slender item shining on the counter. “We did it for the good of the family, and in the end it all worked out. Sure, we didn’t get as much as we would have in the will, but the donations from everyone after Dani’s--”
“We deserve to rot in hell for what we did!” a sharp voice cut through the house, “And I’ll be glad if I never have to see you again in my life.” My mom was trembling, but for the first time that night she looked my father in the eyes.
“Theresa, you didn’t,” my father gruffed, his fingernails piercing into my arm in frustration.
“I did,” my mother replied, “as soon as I went upstairs.”
My father’s frantic looks at my mother and sister were stopped with the sudden appearance of flashing lights. I looked at my father, his face tinted red, blue, red, all while the siren blared as if to say, “Your time is up.”
Dani flipped over her notepad and stepped in front of my father to show him, “Unless you want another daughter’s blood on your hands before you serve your time, I suggest you let her go.”
“We were finally starting to live a normal life before you came back,” my father grimaced, “now you’re leaving your sister alone for the rest of her life.” A sharp sound of banging and shouting interrupted the conversation, and my father shoved me towards Dani while raising his hands to his head. My mother did the same, and while looking at the two of us, she smiled a smile that showed seven years worth of love and apologies.
Dani guided me into the living room, her icy hands holding onto my wrists. She pointed to herself, then gestured to the ceiling. “Upstairs? Yeah, you can go there when the police come in.” She shook her head to my response, then pointed upwards again followed by a gentle wave. I knew what she meant, but I just didn’t want to believe it. I nodded slowly, trying to keep up my fake smile and prevent myself from crying. Dani’s lips began to quiver, and the two of us embraced for the final time.
“Littleton Police, we’re coming in!” bellowed the officers. Dani quickly stepped back into the light, and her pale skin started to become almost translucent. As she started to fade away, I couldn’t stop the tears anymore. I fell to my knees as I saw her blue eyes twinkle, then slowly disappear with the moonlight. The only thing that remained of my sister was the same thing I had clung onto for years, her purple blanket.
The note. I had forgotten about the note. The officers brought me outside my house and sat me on my front steps, and after a few questions they went to attend to my parents. I pulled the crumpled yellow piece of paper out of my pocket and began to read.
“Lily, I’m really sorry about today. You were never supposed to be home, I thought you would be working. It worked out in the end, now you know the story and I’m assuming Mom turned themselves in. I just wanted you to have some sort of explanation, I know you’ve been wondering what happened for years. But I didn’t want to get you in the middle of all of this, I knew Dad would have tried something if you were home, and he did. I’m glad I did see you though, you’ve grown up so much. I know you can’t see me anymore, but I’m always with you. I love you”
Neighbors began to gather around my gate and peer out from their balconies, for them it was just deja vu from seven years ago. For me, it was different however. This time, I wouldn’t come out of this with my parents to comfort me, but I would gain something I didn’t have before: closure.
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