*The following chapter contains mentions of suicide- reader discretion is adviced!*
Resigned, Kim sat on her bed and held her knees. There was no point in trying to correct Trudy. Once that woman assumed she was right, it was impossible to change her mind. And this wait before Tristan got home was simply the eye of the hurricane. She had enough sense to know that this was not over and Trudy would be back with a vengeance. Downstairs, she could even hear her on the phone, probably to Tristan, screaming about what Kim had “done.”
“I can’t for the life of me figure out why she’d do something so stupid! Must be for attention, wouldn’t shock me! From what I’ve heard about her mother, it runs in that family’s blood!”
Kim’s heart dropped further into her core and she stared at the floor. She should have known that Trudy would mention her mother at some point. If she was not able to find something with Kim to complain about, her mother was the next best thing.
Sighing deeply, Kim lied on her back, staring at the ceiling. Without looking, she felt across the bed and pulled over a small blue teddy bear, and held it in her arms against her chest. It was old and tatty, with an eye missing and a battered, velvet and red bow tie around its neck. It would not be out of place in some dusty antique shop. Nevertheless it was Kim’s most prized possession. Fraser had been allowed almost everything but not this bear. For this tatty little teddy was Kim’s only physical connection with her mother.
Kim barely knew her; she had died when she was four years old. While Kim could not remember the event herself, sometimes, in her sleep, she would visit a moment that she even now could not understand. She could see her mother’s face. Her loving brown eyes, her soft voice, and a hand gently caressing her cheek. Kim could never hear what her mother had said, but it had been laden with love. But then, her mother’s form would vanish like sand in the wind, and she would then be cold, alone, wandering a dark area with only her bear, whimpering for her mother to return.
But she never did.
Kim had never been allowed to ask about her. Trudy forbade it and any vague reference to her would send her father into an even deeper spiral. The last time the matter had been brought up, he had left the house and wandered the roads for hours until he returned in the wee hours of the morning. Kim had received an especially hard punishment for this.
No photos hung on the walls, no momentos sat around the house, and not even a whisper of her mother was ever mentioned. All Kim knew was that the last time she had been seen, she had driven onto the Erskin bridge, and by the time the police arrived all they found was a broken down car, with no sign of its driver. One unanimous conclusion had been reached- she had jumped.
Kim felt a hot prickling at the corners of her eyes. It hurt to imagine what those last moments would have been like for her. Why? Why did she do it? Kim could never hope to know. She almost did not want to. All she knew was that after her death, Tristan was never the same again. The once attentive and paternal man turned distant and sad, only perpetuated by Trudy’s presence. Kim would have hated Trudy for taking her father… if there had been a father to take. Kim had tried to get closer to Tristan but had long since given up. It seemed that the only things he focused on was work and reading in his office. He seemed to take much more of an initiative with Fraser, but given that Trudy was his mother, she assumed this was why. He took Fraser to swimming, football and out to movies. Kim was lucky to even get a glance from him.
Kim had no idea how long she lied on her bed, staring at the ceiling and allowing these thoughts to swirl through her head like a heavy halo. It was past dinner time before Kim became aware of the time, as she was brought back to reality from a grumble in her stomach. Sitting up, Kim took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself for coming up against Trudy again. If she did not require nourishment, she would have barricaded herself in this room for the rest of the night. She really did not want to go downstairs. Something told her that bad things would happen if she went down. But she needed to eat, and no doubt if she did not make an appearance soon, Trudy would make true on her constant threat of breaking down her door. It would not have been the first time.
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