Watching Time (Novel): Chapter 7 (Extended Pain)

Naomi decided to visit her grandmother again. She didn’t do it often, but she always came for advice. When she knocked on the rickety house, a young lady answered immediately.

          “Hello, Solus,” Naomi told her with a smile. Solus Lupa went under her pen name only, although Earl knew her real name and had promised Naomi that she wasn’t dangerous. “How are you?”

          “Good, good,” Solus responded cheerfully. “Mrs. Scarlett was just wondering when you’d visit again!” Solus hesitated. “She’s still a bit upset about her daughter’s death, though, as I’m sure you are.”

          Mother…

          “It’s getting easier,” Naomi shrugged, forcing her emotions back down. She needed to be strong for her grandmother.

          They entered the house and Naomi gasped. “You look older than you did two weeks ago!” she told her grandmother, who was sitting on a couch, and immediately felt guilty.

          Mrs. Scarlett, her grandmother, simply laughed. “Yes, I do. Time has a funny way of changing your hair.”

          Naomi let go of her breath. She had been worried about offending her grandmother. “How are you doing?”

          “I’m okay,” Mrs. Scarlett assured her. “Trust me, I am not in grief like Solus would lead you to believe. I understand the passing of time.”

          “Oh, please, you barely eat anything, now,” Solus muttered, rolling her eyes.

          “Maybe that means I don’t like your cooking,” Mrs. Scarlett suggested with a playful shrug. Naomi held back a giggle.

          Playful shrugs don’t look too good on old people!

          “So, to what do we owe this visit?” Mrs. Scarlett inquired of Naomi.

          “My new sister, Myra,” Naomi told her. “I keep trying to get closer to her, but…well…she keeps pushing me away.”

          “Did you offer to buy her ice cream?” Solus checked. In response to Naomi’s glare, she muttered a quick, “Just wondering.”

          “Maybe you should be patient,” Mrs. Scarlett suggested. “Why, when I was your age-“

          “Here we go again,” Solus sighed.

          “Shush!” Mrs. Scarlett ordered. “When I was your age, I wanted to change writing for the better. So I started a movement!”

          “Which died within fifty years,” Solus mumbled.

          Ignoring her, Mrs. Scarlett continued. “The movement inspired thousands-“

          “Out of billions of people,” Solus added.

          “-and soon, novels began to appear everywhere!” Mrs. Scarlett finished. “But it took so much patience. Just wait. Soon, Myra will open herself up, and when she does, I bet you’ll be the first to know of it!”

          “Well, she opened herself up to John,” Naomi shrugged. “So she kinda has started.”

          “Well, when she opens herself up to you, you’ll know,” Mrs. Scarlett conceded. “Sometimes it’s best to step back and wait. You’ll see.”

          Naomi hoped she was right.

         

Ethan and Fia stood in front of a waterfall. Fia, as always, was being hyperaware of everything around her, and was worrying about every detail of her appearance. She knew she looked calm to Ethan, but she was anything but.

          Should I have worn my blue dress instead of my red one? Should I have done something to my hair? OH NO, I wore my green sandals, not my black ones!

          And, of course, she noted how she had started thinking in past tense, as if there was no way to change anything. Dummy, there isn’t a way to change anything!

          She felt stupid. Ethan was wearing a gray T-shirt and blue-jeans, as well as having ear-length hair that looked crazy, but she still felt like a complete slob near him.

          He’s so perfect he makes me look stupid. Awesome!

          “So…” Ethan muttered, obviously uncomfortable. Fia frowned at this. He had been uncomfortable all day. Ever since she left for Florida, he had been acting strange.

          I guess that means he’s not very charismatic. Neither am I.

          His next words were unexpected. “How’s school?”

          “Good,” Fia responded nervously. “How’s school for you?”

          “Alright,” Ethan assured her. The silence that followed was unsteady, like they were about to fall off a cliff.

Myra strode into the living room to find strangers talking to Earl. “Um…am I interrupting anything?” she asked.

          “Oh, yes, I forgot!” Earl exclaimed. “Myra, meet my brother Jerome, his wife Emily, his twin sons Kyle and Philip, and his daughter Rebekah.”

          The family waved at Myra.

          “And this is Myra, whom you’ve heard about,” Earl finished.

          Myra made a mental note about them. Jerome looked a lot like Earl, but his hair was more gray than white, and his face seemed boxier. But Emily looked foreign. Her first guess was Mexican, although she knew she had a hard time distinguishing Mexican, Portuguese, and Cuban, so she wasn’t positive. Emily and their three children all had smooth black hair that seemed to almost reflect light, and all of them seemed to have no use for combs, as their hair was all a giant mess, although Emily put hers in a ponytail and Rebekah wore it in a bun.

          “More Hammingtons,” Myra noted. How do they stand the name?

          “Well, most of us, yes,” Jerome shrugged. “Rebekah is adopted. But, she is part of the family, nonetheless!”

          Rebekah gave a small smile. “Hi.”

          Myra compared Emily and Rebekah’s faces. They looked shockingly similar, except for the fact that Emily had a few wrinkles that Rebekah was missing. “I’d have guessed Jerome was the adopted one,” Myra told them. This caused a round of laughter to erupt, and Myra just shrugged.

          “You are such a comedian!” Emily declared. “Rebekah is, too. She loves making wacky jokes.”

          Rebekah shrugged wordlessly. Myra began to feel like Rebekah was cool. Another adopted daughter who tries to keep to herself!

          “Want to see my room? Myra asked the shy girl, who hesitantly nodded and got up to follow Myra. She belated realized she had forgotten to clean up. She was glad, at least, that her dirty clothes weren’t spread across the floor mindlessly. “Sorry for the mess,” she apologized.

          “It looks exactly like my room,” Rebekah shrugged. “And I don’t just mean the mess. My bed is against that wall, too, the door is in this position, and the closet is there. I don’t have a wardrobe, though.”

          Myra was initially stunned. She had said precisely one word, and then as soon as she was away from her family, she started speaking a ton. “You weren’t talking that much before we came here,” Myra commented.

          “I’m at war with Kyle for destroying my favorite cape,” Rebekah muttered, her expression growing dark. “Oh, trust me, I’ve got something in mind for him, later.”

          “You…wear capes?” Myra wondered.

          “Occasionally, yeah,” Rebekah nodded. “I love role-playing. My…sister and I used to do it together. Before the accident.”

          Myra knew when enough questions were asked. “I lost my sister, too. Except, I lost her because she wasn’t adopted by Earl, so we were separated. I can’t imagine how hard it’d be if she had died instead.”

          “It’s not as difficult as you’d think,” Rebekah sighed. “All my friends died of poverty when it should have been me. Then we managed to get a financial foothold. We bought our own house, a car, we were eating great meals, and then my grandpa died. And then my aunt. My parents and sister were going to drive up here to be with my aunt before she died, but they were in an accident, and…they died, too. I went to an orphanage and made new friends, but they all began to die as well. I was eventually adopted, and then my family died again, and then I was adopted again. I’ve kinda gotten used to death by now.”

          Myra stared unseeing at her wall. That was a lot of death. She would have died of grief before reaching that point. She’s like one of those book characters who’s unrealistically strong when it comes to emotions. Come to think of it, if this was a book, she would probably be the mentor. I wonder, is she the kind that has my back no matter what, or is she the kind that will abandon me in my moment of greatest need?