Burned (Hate at First Flight #2) ✔️

24. Slowly Understanding Douglas Burns

PLEASE VOTE / COMMENT / FOLLOW

XOXO,
LOSALINI

•••||||•••

I remembered everything from the day my parents died.

The rain had been coming down endlessly for hours and it didn't give reprieve to the sun to shine. I had planned to sleep in, tugging hard on my blanket to keep warm whilst at the same time enjoying the refreshing kiss of cold the rain had enveloped me in, but my pitifully empty stomach had other plans, which dragged me into the kitchen.

I pulled out my favorite cereal from the cupboard and found the box empty, so I settled for some toast and scrambled eggs. Nancy had gone out to do some grocery shopping which I knew would have taken her half the day.

But that day, unlike the countless others, she returned early, only an hour after she'd left. This was the first sign that something was very wrong. The second sign was when she didn't walk into the house with tons of grocery bags in tow. Instead of carrying the brown paper bags with the red small letter 'q' the logo for our local supermarket, Nancy was empty handed. Another sign was that her face and eyes red, her shoulders were slumped as if she was defeated and from where I stood, behind the counter she looked like she was hanging on by a thread, her feet ready to fall out from under her.

She stopped by the doorway, her eyes unfocused and her expression spaced out. Then as if it took a momentous amount of effort, her eyes focused on me.

After a stunted silence and me literally begging her for some sort of explanation for her state she said five words that I would never forget, even to this day.

"They're gone. Their plane crashed."

I remembered a flash of frustration run through me before confusion then understanding settled in. My toast slipped through my fingers and landed with an echoing thud on the floor before I followed after and sank down onto the floor beside it.

Pain. Despair. Grief. Fear. Sadness. Emptiness then anger. My emotions were everywhere that day. My whole world was crashing down around me and only one thought rang clear through the following days. How was I going to be able to continue without them?

But that was me.

That was just what I went through, even without truly witnessing it happen myself.

I couldn't even fathom what Douglas went through. He'd been the one to find his mother. He was the first one to see her after she died. He was the one who discovered her lifeless body, the first one to experience his desperate calls unanswered and the feel of her icy cold touch.

My heart tore at his grief. No child should have seen that. No child should be the one to discover their parent's body. No child should have gone through what he did.

I couldn't even begin to fathom how he felt, the void that experience had left behind, nor the trauma that caused him.

And with just a couple of paragraphs, I began to slowly understand Douglas Burns.