Chapter 5
1729 Words
The apartment was silent.
I sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hands, staring at the empty voicemail screen.
No trace that Bella had ever left me a voicemail.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
"Elena?"
I didn't answer, but Claire stepped inside anyway, carrying a mug of tea.
She placed it on the nightstand and sat beside me without saying anything for a long moment.
"I know you're angry," she said finally.
"I'm not angry. I'm tired."
She looked at me carefully.
"I'm sorry nobody believed you."
That hurt more than I expected, because somewhere beneath everything, I wasn't sure I believed myself anymore. I looked down at my phone.
"Maybe they're right. Maybe I imagined it."
"You don't believe that."
I didn't answer, because she was right.
I didn't.
I could still hear Bella's voice clearly, still hear the fear threading through every word.
"If anything happens to me."
Claire squeezed my hand gently.
"You don't have to figure everything out today."
Voices drifted up from downstairs.
My parents.
I closed my eyes.
A few minutes later Claire's phone buzzed, and when she told me they were asking if we were coming down, I already knew I had no real choice.
Every part of me felt heavy as I walked downstairs, as though I were carrying stones inside my chest.
The moment I stepped into the living room, everyone looked up.
My mother stood first.
Her eyes were red and swollen, her face carrying the kind of exhaustion grief leaves behind when it has been sitting too long.
"Sweetheart," she said softly.
The room stayed quiet, nobody seeming to know what to say, until my mother spoke again.
"You said Bella forgave you." I froze.
"You said that's what the voicemail said."
"Yes."
She looked at me for a long moment before asking quietly.
"What did she forgive you for?"
The air left my lungs.
I stared at my mother, at the tears shining in her eyes, at the hope and the fear living side by side in her expression, and suddenly I felt like a child again.
One who had done something terrible and had nowhere left to hide.
"Elena?"
My father's voice was too gentle.
I looked down at my hands.
"Please don't ask me."
"What happened between you and your sister?"
A sob caught in my throat, because suddenly I could see it all again.
The dock.
The moonlight.
Adrian's hand against my face.
Bella standing there.
The look in her eyes.
I pressed my hands against my mouth and tried to hold myself together.
"Elena."
My mother stepped closer.
"What did she forgive you for?"
I broke.
"It was a mistake."
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"It was never supposed to happen. I never wanted to hurt her."
My father took a step forward.
"What are you talking about?"
I lowered my hands and looked up, and for the first time since Bella died, I said the words out loud.
"She saw me kissing Adrian."
Absolute silence.
I could hear my own heartbeat in the stillness that followed.
My mother's face went white.
My father's expression emptied completely.
Claire inhaled sharply beside me.
I kept my eyes on the floor, because I already knew what was coming and I knew I deserved every bit of it.
"What did you say?"
My mother's voice was barely a whisper.
"She saw me kissing Adrian."
The words sounded even uglier the second time.
A small, broken sound escaped my mother, and when I looked up, tears were already sliding down her cheeks.
"No," she whispered. "No…"
"Mom, I didn't mean for it to happen."
"You kissed your sister's fiancé?"
I flinched.
"I didn't mean for it to happen."
My father looked as though someone had struck him.
"When?" he asked quietly.
"The night she…" My voice broke. "The night she died."
My mother covered her mouth with both hands.
"Oh, God."
"I never wanted to hurt her," I said quickly.
"I swear I didn't."
But the words sounded weak, because the truth was simple.
I had hurt her.
I had broken her heart, and hours later she was gone.
"You knew this for two weeks?" my father asked.
I couldn't answer.
"Elena."
I lowered my head.
"Yes."
My mother began to cry, not loudly, not dramatically, just quiet and devastated, and somehow those tears hurt the most.
"You let us bury her," she whispered.
"You let us stand there and wonder why she did this, and you knew?"
"I was scared."
"You should have told us."
"I know."
The word came out as a sob.
I pressed my hands against my face.
"I know."
When I looked up, my father was staring at me.
Just disappointed, and I would have preferred anger.
"You were her sister," he said quietly.
"She loved you. She trusted you."
Every word felt like a knife going deeper.
Then my mother spoke, her voice small and broken.
"If she saw that, I can't imagine how much it hurt her."
Nobody said a word, because there was nothing left to say.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
My mother stepped back. The movement was small but it felt enormous.
"I don't know how to look at you right now."
I went completely still. I had lost my sister, and now I was losing my family too.
After a long silence, my father spoke.
"Maybe you should give your mother some space."
The words were gentle, but they landed like a blow.
"You want me to leave?"
"Not forever."
But he couldn't look me in the eye, and something inside me broke at that.
"I understand."
I turned before anyone could see the tears falling down my face and walked upstairs.
I heard my mother crying behind me.
I heard Claire call my name. I didn't stop.
A few minutes later, the door opened again and Claire sat beside me without a word.
Finally she said softly,
"Come back to the apartment with me. You shouldn't be here tonight."
I looked around the room, at the pictures and the books and the memories, and suddenly it didn't feel like my room anymore.
It felt like somewhere I no longer belonged.
"Okay," I said quietly.
She began packing while I sat watching her, and after a while I stood and helped.
Neither of us spoke, because there was nothing left to say.
By the time we finished, the sun was beginning to set, and I looked around the room one last time before picking up my suitcase.
Downstairs, my parents were still in the living room.
My mother sat on the couch staring at nothing.
My father stood by the window.
Neither looked up immediately.
"I'm going to stay at my place," I said.
My mother blinked as if she had forgotten I was still there.
No one stopped me, and that hurt more than if they had.
"Mom?"
Her eyes filled with tears but she didn't answer.
I swallowed hard and turned toward the door.
"Elena."
My father. I looked back.
He looked exhausted, somehow older than he had this morning.
"Take care of yourself."
The words nearly broke me. I nodded once and walked out.
The drive home was quiet.
Streetlights flickered past the window while I rested my forehead against the glass.
Everything hurt, my chest, my heart, even breathing felt difficult.
Claire didn't try to fill the silence. She simply drove, and after a while she reached across the console and squeezed my hand.
Then her phone rang.
She glanced at the screen and then at me.
"It's Nathan."
I looked away.
"I don't want to talk."
She answered anyway, and something in her expression changed as she listened.
She pulled over.
"What happened?" I asked.
She ended the call and turned toward me.
"He knows. Your mom called him."
I closed my eyes. Of course she had.
Across town, Nathan stood outside Adrian's apartment building with his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.
The image of Elena crying wouldn't leave his mind. Neither would the words my mum had said.
"She kissed Adrian. Bella saw."
His hands curled into fists before he walked inside.
Adrian opened the door looking pale and hollow, like a man who hadn't slept in weeks.
The punch landed before he could say anything.
Adrian stumbled backward.
"You kissed her sister?" Nathan shouted.
"I didn't mean for any of this to happen," Adrian said, wiping blood from his lip.
"Funny. That's exactly what Elena said."
Pain flashed across Adrian's face, and Nathan's anger shifted slightly, because the man standing before him didn't look like a villain.
He looked broken.
Absolutely broken.
"I loved Bella," Adrian said quietly.
"Then why?"
Adrian closed his eyes.
"I don't know."
The words came out hollow, and the silence that followed carried the weight of everything neither of them could fix.
Nathan stared at him for a long moment before turning and walking away.
"Where are you going?"
Adrian called after him. Nathan stopped without looking back.
"To check on the person you left to carry all of this alone."
Later that night, after Claire had fallen asleep, I sat alone on the dark couch holding my phone.
Bella smiled at me from a photo on the screen, her arm around my shoulders, both of us laughing at something I couldn't remember anymore.
I touched her face with my thumb.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
The room stayed quiet.
I looked at the empty voicemail screen, then back at her picture, and a strange feeling settled inside me.
Small and fragile, barely there, but refusing to leave.
If Bella had truly said those words, if anything happens to me, then there had been something she needed me to know.
Something she had been trying to tell me before the line went dead.
I set the phone down slowly.
For the first time in two weeks, a single thought rose clearly above the grief.
I was going to find out why my sister died. Not because I was ready. Not because I was brave. But because if I did nothing, then Bella's last words would die with her.
I was afraid there might never be an answer at all, and I couldn't let Bella become a question that was never allowed to be answered.
- Writer
